Demosophia

And Now, Back to the Tour de France for Some Lessons About the "War on Terror"

Sure have been a lot of crashes this time around. Even Hamilton and Armstrong fell today. Partly has to do with the lousy wet weather, and partly with the race dynamics. There's a very long period of flat stages that basically raise the level of jumpiness before the pattern of dominance really emerges in the mountains after about stage 10.

The dominant principles are subtle. One might think that since "what goes up must come down" the average speed on a mountainous course ending at the start elevation would be similar to the average speed of the course if it were flat. If a rider goes uphill he's essentially storing energy that will be returned on the downhill, after all.

But it doesn't really work that way.

First of all it's impossible to re-aquire all the energy stored in an uphill segment of the race because the energy lost to mechanics, rather than gravity, is time rather than distance dependent. In other words, the energy lost to friction is, more or less, a constant function of time. So the longer the time you spend on an uphill segment the more energy you'll lose to something other than gravity, and that enery isn't stored... it's invested in heat, which does you no good if you're interested in speed.

But there's also the matter of average speed, which works against a cyclist in hilly or mountainous terrain. Let's suppose there's a big mountain right in the middle of a stage that's 25 miles uphill and 25 miles down, ending at the same elevation as the start. You can traverse a flat 50 mile couse at 25 mph, so the course would, if it were flat, take you 2 hours. But because the engine you use on the uphill segment is so inefficient, you average only 10 mph for the first 25 miles of the race, and that isn't out of line at all as a realistic estimate. The first 25 miles therefore take you 2.5 hours, and it's obvious that there's simply no way you'll be able to achieve a 25 mph average, even if you traversed the downhill at the speed of light.

So stage races are won and lost in the mountains. These early flat stages are mainly of interest to sprinters and their fans, but unless they lead to a crash that results in a serious handicap to one of the principle riders, capable of making good time in the mountains, they simply won't matter.

There's an analogy with life and politics. Ultimately one's success in life is determined not by how you deal with the good times, but how you deal with the bad or awful times. The "ersatz peace" movement pines away for the good times, the period before the underlying nature of a war, that really began over twenty years ago, was apparent. But, as Wretchard observes there's no way to return to that idyllic version of life, no matter how much we'd like to. The election of John Kerry won't change that reality, nor will anything else.

Our success in the "war on terror" will not be determined by how closely we can adhere to our projected performance "on the flat," because that level of performance isn't possible, or even relevant. It omits the critical variable, which has to do with an opposition that isn't really amenable to participation in our vision. Like gravity, they oppose us. Our overall success will be determined, almost exclusively (although there are some downhill daredevils that can make up significant time by taking significant risks) by the period of trial and conflict. Our overall fate is therefore primarily determined by how we perform in situations like Iraq, where we're confronting the "force of gravity" more or less directly. If you're inclined to think otherwise, forget it.

We haven't "defeated terrorism," although the public could clearly be lulled into that assumption since there have been few recent attacks, and none on American soil. But the concern about complacency is valid to the extent that the Bush Administration has, rather ignorantly, defined the conflict as a "War on Terrorism" (which is actually just a strategy, not a movement) and has, at the same time, singularly failed to make even the slightest effort to convince the public to "take the blue pill" and recognize that we're in a war at all, making the appropriate personal life adjustments. This is a fact, whether the observation is made by Michael Moore or John Edwards. It's valid, and important. In a sense if the Bush people pay for this lack of perspicacity it's on their heads.

Should Kerry win, it's definitely not the end of the world. There are loads of people on the left who, with the acceptance of the principle of accountability, have adopted the position that we're in a real war with real consequences (Hitchens, Kouchner, Roger L. Simon, etc.). And most have become more than open to the promotion of Democracy as a security issue for the Western Democracies. I'd expect Kerry and Edwards to have a similar post-election 'revelation' once in office, and if they don't I submit they'd become imensely vulnerable to a counter-attack from conservatives.

There really isn't any chance that the "peace movement" will win, even if they win.

Indeed, I'm quite willing to scuttle Bush simply to make the point that he's not good enough if he doesn't begin to act appropriately pretty soon. This war will last at least a generation, and possibly two, and it's therefore necessary to recognize that there'll be reversals, and that the ultimate winner will probably be the one who makes fewer mistakes. At this point I still support George W. Bush, but I'm not at all convinced that he's really the man for the job. This is an uphill struggle. The sprints won't matter in the long run.

Posted by Demosophist at July 9, 2004 07:46 PM | TrackBack