Peace in our time–and other times: on the futility of antiwar covenants

The New Neo Posted on by

After I made my flip comment in today’s Petrov post about undeserving Nobel Peace Prize winners, I decided to actually look up the list of recipients over the years. And they haven’t been as uniformly bad as I thought. Take a look.

However, the 1929 recipient, Frank Billings Kellogg, caught my eye.

Back in my school days, I remember hearing about the Kellogg-Briand Pact renouncing war. Kellogg, of course, was one of its co-authors.

The Pact had always seemed ironic to me; it was so clearly unrealistic, even without the benefit of hindsight. But nevertheless it expressed a sentiment for which countless people over the ages–and I number myself among them–have longed.

My mother had actually spoken of the Pact, as well; she mentioned a powerful memory of hers from when it had been newly signed. She was a fourteen-year old in high school then, and her teacher had turned to the class (later to be known as “The Greatest Generation,” the one that survived and endured the coming Depression and WWII) that they should be thankful, because they were the luckiest children ever on the face of the earth: they would never know war. My mother reported feeling an overwhelming and glorious sense of relief and gratitude.

So it just goes to show: never trust one’s teacher.

But what was going on with that pact, anyway? How could people have been so naive?

Both Kellogg (a fascinating man who rose from poverty and obscurity to become a trustbuster and Secretary of State) and the Frenchman who was involved, Aristide Briand, started out as lawyers. Perhaps that fact explains some of their predilection for international legal documents.

It turns out, though, that neither man was exactly a starry-eyed believer in the Pact itself. Here’s a nice summary of what appears to have actually been going on:

French foreign minister Aristide Briand first suggested a treaty between the United States and France renouncing war as a method of settling disputes between the two countries. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg was furious because Briand proposed the treaty in a speech made directly to the American people, rather than going through diplomatic channels. If he accepted Briand’s offer, he feared it would drag the United States into alliance with France in the event of another European war””which was what Briand had in mind. But if Kellogg declined, groups favoring such a treaty would attack him in Congress and in the press. Support for the treaty came from opposite ends of the political spectrum. For example, Nicholas Murray Butler, the internationalist president of Columbia University, believed a treaty would move America closer to the League of Nations, whereas isolationist senator William E. Borah, a pacifist, simply hoped that the treaty would end war.

Kellogg turned the tables on Briand by picking up an idea of Senator Borah’s for a multilateral treaty. Both Kellogg and Briand knew that such a treaty lacked force, but Briand, already a Nobel Peace Prize winner, could hardly ignore public demand for an antiwar treaty…

Great celebrations accompanied the signing of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but diplomats did not take the pledge seriously. In the United States, for example, the next order of business on the Senate floor after ratification was a bill appropriating $274 million to build warships.

So, what else is new?

But I’m interested in the Pact not only because it has a familial emotional resonance, but because I think it’s an exaggerated example of just what is wrong with using international law in the service of ending war. International law no doubt has many uses, but one of them is not, I’m afraid, that old dream.

The problem is neatly summed up here, in a short article about the Kellogg-Briand pact:

Although 62 nations ultimately ratified the pact, its effectiveness was vitiated by its failure to provide measures of enforcement.

Ah yes: its failure to provide measures of enforcement. And whatever could those measures be? Why force, of course.

Any covenant that would work could only be successful because the signatories had no interest in going to war in the first place, in which case the piece of paper would only be a formality (that was known even way back in the Kellogg-Briand days, as the agreement explicitly reserved the right to self-defense). But still, the dream dies hard.

A candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize: Stanislav Petrov

The New Neo Posted on by

How about awarding this guy (found via Dean Esmay) a Nobel Peace Prize, a bit belatedly? Unlike some of the recipients, he would have actually deserved it.

I hope the planned documentary Dean mentions makes a bundle and makes Petrov famous, so he can retire in style. And if it doesn’t, perhaps the blogosphere could take up a collection.

I’ve often wondered about the makeup of people who take on jobs that require enormous responsibility for the lives of others. Presidents, generals, and air traffic controllers, for example. Such positions require the ability to remain extremely cool under fire and stress, and to preserve one’s split-second and long-term decision-making capabilities without short-circuiting. A bit like the biathlon, which features punishing aerobic exercise followed by the need to compose oneself into stillness long enough to aim and shoot effectively. Not for everyone–and of course, those in positions of responsibility for the lives of numerous others are dealing with far greater stakes, staggeringly so.

For readers who refuse to follow links, a little background on the 1983 incident involving Petrov:

Just past midnight, at 00:40 hrs, the [Soviet nuclear monitoring] bunker’s computers indicated that an American missile was heading toward the Soviet Union. Lt. Col. Petrov [who was in charge] reasoned that a computer error had occurred, since the United States was not likely to launch just one missile if it were attacking the Soviet Union ”” it would launch many simultaneously. Also, the satellite system’s reliability had in the past been questioned, so he dismissed the warning as a false alarm, concluding that no missile had actually been launched by the United States.

If that had been the end of it, it would not have been quite as dramatic. But there was more:

A short time later the computers indicated that a second missile had been launched, followed by a third, a fourth and a fifth. Petrov still felt that the computer system was wrong, but there was no other source of information with which to confirm his suspicions…

Petrov’s dilemma was this: if he was disregarding a real attack, then the Soviet Union would be devastated by nuclear weapons without any warning or chance to retaliate, and he would have failed at his duty. On the other hand, if he were to report a non-existent attack, his superiors might launch an equally catastrophic assault against their enemies. In either case, millions of innocents would die.

Understanding that if he were wrong, nuclear missiles would soon be raining down on the Soviet Union, Petrov decided to trust his intuition and declare the system’s indications a false alarm.

Petrov had to override the information he was getting through instruments, and apparently decided to simply trust his gut. Astounding.

Perhaps Petrov knew how poor the system really was, and that was what was behind his ability to cast off the information he was receiving from it. At any rate, he was vindicated–although not rewarded till recently, and his career was effectively finished as a result of his disobeying orders.

And what of the warning system? The mistake apparently was caused by the following glitch:

…a subsequent investigation determined that the early warning satellite system had mistakenly interpreted sunlight reflections off clouds as the presence of enemy missiles.

Technology can only go so far, and the human element is key, as Petrov’s story amply demonstrates. It is not reassuring to hear how narrowly a spectacular and unprecedented tragedy was averted. But sometimes the right person is in the right place at the right time, and Petrov certainly fits that description.

Whew.

More notes from the spam folder

The New Neo Posted on by

This from Mister Ophelia Cummings, who not only undoubtedly shares a bit of life experience with “A Boy Named Sue,” but has a parsimonious yet expressive way with words: down-down your weight.

That’s the entire message, except for the link to a website.

And then there’s Ms. Imogene Webber, who pulls no punches with the following subject heading from her enticing email: 64% of our members got laid.

Although, on reflection, one might wonder what Imogene actually means by that. Ever? In their entire lives? Or as a result of her fabulous website?

And, as with many polls, I wonder just how scientifically this one was conducted. No information is given about sample size, for example, as well as how the questions were actually worded. So how can we truly believe?

The body of Imogene’s email goes on to say how its done, though: No cheezy pickup lines, no flowers, no walks on the beach, people here just want to have sex 😉

And girls just want to have fun. What a relief. The foreplay of all those walks along the beach can get so very tiresome.

Recommended reading: Oliver Kamm

The New Neo Posted on by

I think I know my way around the blogosphere, but I keep making new discoveries–new, that is, to me. The latest is Oliver Kamm, a self-described leftist who blogs here.

Kamm–whom I found via Austin Bay’s link to this Guardian article of Kamm’s on the reasons why, despite flaws in execution, he still supports the Iraq war–is what Norman Geras would call a “principled leftist” and what Kamm himself calls a “tough liberal.” Kamm is also the author of an intriguing-sounding book (although I couldn’t find it on Amazon) entitled: Anti-Totalitarianism: the Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy.

But what Kamm really is is smart, smart, smart, as well as being a writer of great clarity and graceful style. I’m sure there are points on which we disagree, but my hat is off to anyone who can wade through much of Noam Chomsky’s work and patiently demolish it, as Kamm has. This guy is good (Kamm that is, not Chomsky).

A great deal of Kamm’s Chomsky oeuvre has been reproduced here, at David Horowitz’s Frontpage. Kamm vibrates with the righteous anger of a leftist outraged by the likes of Chomsky. Kamm pulls no punches in this article when it comes to his own dislike of Nixon and his policies, but he shreds Chomsky’s own shredding of the man (keep clicking on the links at the end of each article to read the whole series):

It would be tempting to attribute the use Chomsky makes of this material to intellectual idleness and incompetence, but I fear this is too generous a judgement. There’s a pattern and a method here. Chomsky’s rhetorical attacks on the western democracies, and especially the United States, increasingly outdo anything else to be found in the adversary culture of far-Left politics…

Kamm goes on to give a detailed analysis of Chomsky’s methods, with typical examples. At the conclusion, he explains how it is that Chomsky (an incredibly popular writer and speaker) appeals to the susceptible and ignorant:

…Chomsky goes out of his way to omit the context that allows reasoned conclusions to be drawn. All that those readers have to go on is Chomsky’s ex cathedra judgements and the appearance of scholarship generated by innumerable foot-notes. Examine those foot-notes more closely and the careful reader will find (as in the absence of page references in the citation of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s memoirs) that the appearance is misleading. To those without background in the subjects covered, the argument may well appear convincing, and because the method of misdirection is to take things out of context it is not a quick and easy task to refute Chomsky; one has first to put back the material that Chomsky has taken out.

Chomsky’s methods remind me of those of another so-called “historian,” David Irving. Great lying minds must think alike, although of course Chomsky’s politics and field of “expertise” certainly differs with that of Irving.

Kamm is a self-identified leftist, as I said, although I haven’t read enough of his work to see what tenets of the left he believes in. One thing in which he clearly does believe is the importance of truth in history, whatever the political persuasion. I second the motion.

Dueling: defending one’s honor

The New Neo Posted on by

While I was researching something or other a while back (I think it may have been this post about the causes of war), I came across a brief reference to dueling.

It struck me that dueling seems related to the whole shame/honor question, about which a great deal has been written lately, especially in connection with the Arab world (for example, see this by my good friend Dr. Sanity).

But in this country we have our own–quite different–version of shame/honor. A fascinating book by Fox Butterfield entitled All God’s Children, which I read back when it first came out in 1996, deals with some of the more negative consequences of the shame/honor culture that the author feels permeates some areas of the American South.

Here’s a good summary of Butterfield’s thesis, taken from the first reader review at the Amazon link:

Butterfield argues that the white Southern mentality of easily aggrieved honor has made its way through time and the descendants of slaves, transmuted into the similar hair-trigger ethos of inner-city streets. The family he traces is from Edgefield, South Carolina. This was the home of Rep. Preston Brooks, who nearly beat abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner to death on the floor of the Senate. Butterfield shows that Southern society (of which Edgefield was an extreme example…measured “manhood” by the willingness to use violence in defense of one’s “honor.” “Honor” is defined as reputation, especially the reputation of being someone who cannot be insulted with impunity.

An emphasis on honor is one of those double-edged swords (an appropriate metaphor, given the topic of this post). Honor, of course, can lead to behavior that is–well, honorable–something any society would certainly want to encourage. But it can also lead to extreme sensitivity to slights to one’s honor, or even to perceived slights, and a resultant readiness to use violence to undo or avenge them.

The idea of a duel is something I remembered vaguely from the movies and romantic novels of my youth, as well as from Pushkin, whom I read in college; I tended to look on it as a sort of quaint literary device. But seen in terms of the whole honor/shame culture scenario, it seems to be a dramatic historical example of how such a dynamic used to work in our own culture.

My concept of dueling was as follows: after the insult and the challenge, the two men went with their “seconds” to the forest, stood back to back, stepped a few paces away from each other, turned, and fired their revolvers. A process that seemed very stupid and very strange. But it turns out the whole thing was far more complex than that (isn’t everything?), with styles and rules that make the NFL look simple.

Here’s an example of one such code that governed dueling in America for a while. The entire undertaking seems to have been rigidly controlled, with various points along the way at which a person could bail through apology (although my guess is that such an apology was rarely, if ever, tendered).

Here are a few highlights:

Rule 16. The challenged has the right to choose his own weapon, unless the challenger gives his honor he is no swordsman; after which, however, he can decline any second species of weapon proposed by the challenged.

Rule 17. The challenged chooses his ground; the challenger chooses his distance; the seconds fix the time and terms of firing.

Rule 18. The seconds load in presence of each other, unless they give their mutual honors they have charged smooth and single, which should be held sufficient.

Rule 19. Firing may be regulated — first by signal; secondly, by word of command; or thirdly, at pleasure — as may be agreeable to the parties. In the latter case, the parties may fire at their reasonable leisure, but second presents and rests are strictly prohibited…

Rule 22. Any wound sufficient to agitate the nerves and necessarily make the hand shake, must end the business for that day.

Rule 23. If the cause of the meeting be of such a nature that no apology or explanation can or will be received, the challenged takes his ground, and calls on the challenger to proceed as he chooses; in such cases, firing at pleasure is the usual practice, but may be varied by agreement.

Wikipedia seems to be a font of knowledge on the general course of events that led to duels, and the way they were customarily conducted:

After the offense, whether real or imagined, the offended party would demand “satisfaction” from the offender, signalling this demand with an inescapably insulting gesture, such as hitting the offender in the face with a glove, or throwing the glove before him, hence the phrase “throwing down the gauntlet”…Both parties would name a trusted representative (a second) who would, between them, determine a suitable “field of honour”, the chief criterion being isolation from interruptions. Duels traditionally took place at dawn, for this very reason. It was also the duty of each party’s second to check that the weapons were equal and that the duel was fair.

At the choice of the offended party, the duel could be:

* at first blood, in which case the first man to bleed would lose;
* till one man was heavily wounded and unable to physically continue the duel;
* to the death, in which case there would be no satisfaction until the other party was mortally wounded;
* or, in the case of pistol duels, each party would agree to fire one shot each, after which the duel would be declared over.

…For a pistol duel, the parties would be placed back to back with loaded weapons in hand and walk a set number of paces, turn to face the opponent, and shoot. Typically, the graver the insult, the fewer the paces agreed upon. Alternately, a pre-agreed length of ground would be measured out by the seconds and marked, often with swords stuck in the ground. At a given signal, often the dropping of a handkerchief, the principals could advance to the marker and fire at will. This latter system reduced the possibility of cheating, as neither principal had to trust the other not to turn too soon. Another system involved alternate shots being taken – the challenged firing first.

This short article mentions the role of the death of Alexander Hamilton in a duel as being an important factor in the decline of dueling in America, and also that the practice lasted longest in the South (as one might expect, given its emphasis on honor).

And here we have a discussion of why dueling was so important to upperclass men of the time:

Duels were fought over anything and everything, from revenge for violent crime against a friend, family member or lover, to philosophical, religious or scientific disagreement. It wasn’t just stupid young thugs who engaged in dueling, either. In the 1700’s, the famous mathematician Galois left the world puzzled when, at the age of 21, he wrote in his notes an incredibly useful formula, with a note attached saying “The Proof is obvious. I shall write it out later”, went off to fight a duel, and was killed. Nobody has been able to work out his ‘obvious’ proof, but the formula works, and forms a key part of a branch of modern mathematics.

So, why would a brilliant scholar go off to a fight he may very well die in, when the worst he would suffer for it by refusing is social ostracism? That is, in fact, the answer. If a nobleman will not defend his honour, then what is his word worth? He obviously doesn’t value his own principles, for he will not defend them! Why, then, would anyone take his verbal guarantee on anything? Why would tradesmen do work for him without being paid up front, if he is not a man of his word? Why would anyone lend him money? Why would polite society tolerate him at all? How can judges rule in his favour when his word cannot be trusted? In a society where a person’s word is taken as a commitment as binding as any court-order is today, demonstrating that your word is valueless is effectively social death.

A practice that appears irrational and wasteful and destructive–and no doubt is irrational and wasteful and destructive–is not without its purposes, if embedded in the proper context. A man’s honor (and that of his womenfolk) was not a little thing, it was nearly everything; and losing it perhaps did seem something worse than death. So, why not risk death to defend it?

Just to make it clear: I’m not a fan of duels, nor am I advocating them (in blogging, I’ve learned to try to make everything crystal clear in an attempt to defend my own “honor” and head off various slings and arrows in the comments section, often to no avail).

In a sense, what is going on in the Arab world–the sense of desperate and outraged honor and the need to ward off and/or expunge feelings of shame–is not utterly foreign to our culture. Nor is the act of resorting to violence to do so. What’s different–and it’s very different, so different as to constitute a universe of difference–is the form such violence takes. Old-fashioned duelers would no more kill women and children than they would take an insult lying down; their honor did not allow such acts. The proper course of action was clear and prescribed, and it was specific to the person who had dealt the insult and he who received it.

In the Arab world where terrorists and jihadists are spawned, those inhibitions have been removed. The killing of anyone (women, children, and noncombatants included) who is part of a group identified as the source of insult and shame is not only allowed, but is encouraged by those “spiritual leaders” we’ve heard so much about. Honor is a double-edged sword, indeed.

We will bury you

The New Neo Posted on by

Callimachus writes here about Oriana Fallaci’s new book, which deals in part with the question of whether a certain segment of the Arab/Moslem world is trying to overwhelm the West, both demographically and otherwise. He offers some quotes to that effect from Fallaci’s writings, taken from a book review by Brendan Bernhard’s in LA Weekly.

The first quote is from a 1972 interview (in her heyday, Fallaci was renowned for her pull-no-punches style of questioning) with Palestinian terrorist George Habash, who declared that the goal was to:

…wage war “against Europe and America” and to ensure that henceforth “there would be no peace for the West.” The Arabs, he informed her, would “advance step by step. Millimeter by millimeter. Year after year. Decade after decade. Determined, stubborn, patient. This is our strategy. A strategy that we shall expand throughout the whole planet.”

At the time, Fallaci thought he was referring simply to terrorism. Only later–much later–did she understand that:

…he “also meant the cultural war, the demographic war, the religious war waged by stealing a country from its citizens ”¦ In short, the war waged through immigration, fertility, presumed pluriculturalism.”

Cold wars, terrorism wars, demographic wars. As far as the latter goes, Bernhard (and Callimachus) offers an explicit declaration, this time from Algerian President Boumedienne way back in 1974:

One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere of this planet to burst into the northern one. But not as friends. Because they will burst in to conquer, and they will conquer by populating it with their children. Victory will come to us from the wombs of our women.

You can’t say the West wasn’t warned. But warnings often only seem important in retrospect. It was the sort of thing few were paying attention to at the time, “typical hyperbole.” Bombast. And perhaps it was, at that.

At least back then the threats were peaceful and reproductive in nature. More recently they took on a more chilling (or rather, a decidedly “hot”) tone–witness this Haaretz article (via Little Green Footballs) that quotes Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran telling former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar at a meeting in 2001 that “Iran must declare war on Israel and the United States until they are completely destroyed,” and that “setting Israel on fire” was the first order of the day.

Unless Khamenei is a man especially given to metaphor, it seems we must take his intent seriously. The Haaretz article concludes with the words, “Khamenei still holds the post of Iranian spiritual leader, and [is] considered to be the powerful man in the country.”

There’s that “spiritual leader” phrase again, one which actually deserves the much-abused designation “Orwellian.” I’ve written about “spiritual leaders” before, here, in a post entitled “Yeah, and Goebbels was the ‘spiritual leader’ of the Nazis, too.”

What I wrote then still applies, to Khamenei in this case:

…how are people such as Abu Bakar Bashir, a cleric who most agree is the one who inspires and guides the murderers of Jemaah Islamiyah “spiritual” (unless, of course, the spirit of evil and hatred counts)? Is it because he hides behind the role of cleric? Well, the mere title “cleric” does not a spiritual leader make. It’s a perversion of the word and the concept “spiritual”…

These “spiritual” guys must never have heard of Teddy Roosevelt, who famously counseled “speak softly and carry a big stick” (a bit of trivia here: it turns out that Teddy was actually quoting a West African proverb. But I digress).

The extremely spiritual Iranian ayatollah may not speak softly, but he seems determined to obtain the biggest stick of all, and he’s not all that shy about saying what he plans to do with it. Whether he will accomplish either goal remains to be seen.

This all puts me in mind of a very different leader (who was quite unspiritual, unless you count Communism as a religion): Nikita Khrushchev, whose terrifying words, spoken in 1956 to Western ambassadors at a Moscow reception, haunted my childhood, “We will bury you.”

What did Khrushchev mean? Some thought he meant an ideological victory in the cold war (although that victory was not thought to be primarily demographic). Some feared a hot war such as Khamenei appears to be promising. The preponderance of evidence seems to be that Khrushchev meant the former, although there’s no doubt he had a plethora of big sticks available for the latter:

The translation has been controversial by being presented as belligerent out of context. The phrase may well have been intended to suggest “we will outlast you” as a more complete version of the quote reads: “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you” – a meaning more akin to “we will attend your funeral” than “we shall cause your funeral”.

Those big sticks were never used, and the long war between the USSR and the USA remained cold, although it provided kindling for large and heated brushfires in many parts of the world. And history has dictated that the seemingly final burial (in the ideological sense) went in the other direction.. But history has yet to be written on the final outcome of the threats–cold and/or hot–of those others.

[HISTORICAL SIDELIGHT: Khrushchev was frightening in my youth, but little did I know at the time what a big improvement he was over his predecessor, Stalin. Nor was I aware how relatively rational he would seem compared to the current crop of Islamic supremacists.

Khrushchev himself often appeared to be somewhat of a loose cannon and a buffoon, a reputation he may have purposely manipulated and played on; witness the famous shoe-banging incident of 1960, which didn’t frighten me but certainly puzzled me at the time:

The shoe sits in front of Khrushchev, behind the shoulder of the man looking with a mixture of hope and resignation at his watch. What was the shoe incident about?

Well, according to his granddaughter Nina Khrushchev, it was an act of humorous theater in which Khrushchev purposely played the fool in order to make a point. And, who knows? She might even be correct (although I’m not sure. At any rate, I can’t quite imagine the Ayatollah doing the same, although Saddam may give it a go at his trial).

Here’s her version, for what it’s worth :

The head of the Philippine delegation, Senator Lorenzo Sumulong, expressed his surprise at the Soviet Union’s concerns over western imperialism, while it, in turn, swallowed the whole of eastern Europe. Khrushchev’s rage was beyond anything he had ever shown before. He called the poor Filipino “a jerk, a stooge and a lackey of imperialism”, then he put his shoe on the desk and banged it….

According to Khrushchev, there was abundant evidence that western powers had mistreated and mistrusted the Soviet Union…Dismissing him as a worthy opponent, capitalists thought of Khrushchev as a vaudeville character. Very well then, he would become one. He needed the UN stage to make an important statement: it is better to take the socialist world seriously. He wanted to be heard. But next to the noble Macmillan, smart Eisenhower, refined De Gaulle and wise Nehru, the short Nikita Khrushchev couldn’t help looking a wag.

Instead of trying to act and speak according to traditional diplomacy, he broke the ritual and created his own manner. The manner, which suited his goal, was to be different from the hypocrites of the west, with their appropriate words but calculated deeds. He would do it the other way – say more than he meant. A tragi-comic act of shoe banging was intended to separate two superpowers not only in terms of their politics, but also in their diplomatic methods.]

My surrender to crass commercialism: PJ ads

The New Neo Posted on by

A couple of days ago I glanced at my sitemeter and noticed a dribble of hits coming from Instapundit. If this was an Instanlanche, it was the smallest one on the face of the earth, which seemed impossible–any mention by Glenn, however modest, would ordinarily glean far more traffic than a grand total of about ten hits an hour. I went to Instapundit to see what was what, but could find neither hide nor hair of myself.

But still the hits kept coming, and then a few more, randomly, from other blogs that hadn’t linked me either. A puzzlement. The mystery was solved when I noticed I’d been featured in a PJ Media ad that was circulating around the various member blogs.

Including my own. Apparently I was advertising myself on my blog, too, via PJ Media ads—a rather circular phenomenon, like the symbol for infinity, the snake devouring its own tail.

And, although I was initially wary, it turns out I actually rather like the PJ ads. I think they’re visually attractive, as ads go, and I enjoy the way they switch around unpredictably (do I hear you saying, “Neo, please get a life?”), sort of like the horse of a different color in “The Wizard of Oz.”

So, what do you think of them?

Ah, but Bush lied! Lied, I tell you!

The New Neo Posted on by

Appearing in the upcoming May/June 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs will be this article, entitled “Saddam’s Delusions: The View from the Inside.”

It presents excerpts from the recently declassified book-length report of the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project. Author Kevin Woods is a defense analyst in Washington, D.C., author James Lacey a military analyst for the U.S. Joint Forces Command, and author Williamson Murray a Distinguished Visiting Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy. Along with Mark Stout and Michael Pease, they were the principal participants in the USJFCOM Iraqi Perspectives Project.

The article is quite a read. Here is one of many tidbits if offers:

When it came to weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Saddam attempted to convince one audience that they were gone while simultaneously convincing another that Iraq still had them. Coming clean about WMD and using full compliance with inspections to escape from sanctions would have been his best course of action for the long run. Saddam, however, found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having WMD, especially since it played so well in the Arab world.

Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his use of chemical weapons on Kurdish civilians in 1987, was convinced Iraq no longer possessed WMD but claims that many within Iraq’s ruling circle never stopped believing that the weapons still existed. Even at the highest echelons of the regime, when it came to WMD there was always some element of doubt about the truth. According to Chemical Ali, Saddam was asked about the weapons during a meeting with members of the Revolutionary Command Council. He replied that Iraq did not have WMD but flatly rejected a suggestion that the regime remove all doubts to the contrary, going on to explain that such a declaration might encourage the Israelis to attack.

Saddam believed he would win the war and stay in power, almost to the end (narcissists and megalomaniacs are like that). In his regime, there was no way of detecting the truth, even for insiders –and, in some cases, even for Saddam:

Ironically, it now appears that some of the actions resulting from Saddam’s new policy of cooperation actually helped solidify the coalition’s case for war. Over the years, Western intelligence services had obtained many internal Iraqi communications, among them a 1996 memorandum from the director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service directing all subordinates to “insure that there is no equipment, materials, research, studies, or books related to manufacturing of the prohibited weapons (chemical, biological, nuclear, and missiles) in your site.” And when UN inspectors went to these research and storage locations, they inevitably discovered lingering evidence of WMD-related programs.

In 2002, therefore, when the United States intercepted a message between two Iraqi Republican Guard Corps commanders discussing the removal of the words “nerve agents” from “the wireless instructions,” or learned of instructions to “search the area surrounding the headquarters camp and [the unit] for any chemical agents, make sure the area is free of chemical containers, and write a report on it,” U.S. analysts viewed this information through the prism of a decade of prior deceit. They had no way of knowing that this time the information reflected the regime’s attempt to ensure it was in compliance with UN resolutions.

This constant stream of false reporting undoubtedly accounts for why many of Saddam’s calculations on operational, strategic, and political issues made perfect sense to him. According to Aziz, “The people in the Military Industrial Commission were liars. They lied to you, and they lied to Saddam. They were always saying that they were producing or procuring special weapons so that they could get favors out of Saddam — money, cars, everything — but they were liars. If they did all of this business and brought in all of these secret weapons, why didn’t [the weapons] work?”

Members of the Military Industrial Commission were not the only liars. Bending the truth was particularly common among the most trusted members of Saddam’s inner circle — especially when negative news might reflect poorly on the teller’s abilities or reputation. According to one former high-ranking Baath Party official, “Saddam had an idea about Iraq’s conventional and potential unconventional capabilities, but never an accurate one because of the extensive lying occurring in that area. Many reports were falsified. The ministers attempted to convey a positive perspective with reports, which were forwarded to Saddam’s secretary, who in turn passed them up to Saddam.” In the years before Operation Iraqi Freedom, everyone around Saddam understood that his need to hear only good news was constantly growing and that it was in their best interest to feed that hunger.

For many months after the fall of Baghdad, a number of senior Iraqi officials in coalition custody continued to believe it possible that Iraq still possessed a WMD capability hidden away somewhere (although they adamantly insisted that they had no direct knowledge of WMD programs). Coalition interviewers discovered that this belief was based on the fact that Iraq had possessed and used WMD in the past and might need them again; on the plausibility of secret, compartmentalized WMD programs existing given how the Iraqi regime worked; and on the fact that so many Western governments believed such programs existed.

I’ve written about WMDs before, and discussed why their actual existence or non-existence was not–in my opinion and that of many others–the make-or-break justification for the war. I don’t want to beat this particular horse again, as it seems to lead nowhere and convince no one (although that may not stop the arguments from going on ad nauseum).

But I thought the material from this particular article fascinating in and of itself, presenting a chilling picture–almost a caricature–of what happens in a tyrannical dictatorship in which every person is afraid that, if he gives the Leader bad news, the answer will be “Off with his head!” (and, in the interests of gender neutrality, I suppose it could sometimes be “Off with her head!”)

Dictators such as Saddam may start out relatively sane, or they may not. But there tends to be a trajectory towards greater and greater lack of connection to reality. It certainly happened to Hitler in his last years, although some of his problems may have stemmed from various diseases he is speculated to have had.

This increasing paranoia/irrationality and its effects–the fact that no one can tell the tyrant the truth–has its good points and its bad. The good is that it tends to lower the leader’s effectiveness in the decision-making process, and may cause major lapses of judgment that can be fatal to his cause. The bad news is that no one can count on that, and in the meantime the tyrant spirals more and more out of control and can do even more damage, both domestically and internationally.

[ADDENDUM: Prediction: someone in the comments section will say this article actually describes Bushhitler.]

When light pierced the darkness: Moslem rescuers during the Holocaust

The New Neo Posted on by

Sigmund Carl & Alfred has written a post that tells a story I’d not heard before, of “The Mosque that Sheltered Jews.”

The rescue occurred in France during the German occupation of WWII. Here are some details:

The mosque-based resistance network consisted of people from Algeria’s mountainous Kabylia regions. Kabyls are one of several North-African groups who have preserved their Berber language and culture; the Berbers inhabited North Africa before the Arabs invaded and introduced Islam in the 7th century. At least 95 percent of Algerian immigrants to France came from Kabylia. The network’s Kabyls communicated in their Berber dialect, Tamazight, making infiltration almost impossible.

The soul of the network was the mosque’s rector, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, a man with three nationalities – Algerian, Moroccan, and French – who moved with ease in all three worlds, and whose Islam was tolerant and inclusive.

More than 1,700 people are thought to have found short-term shelter in apartments on or near the grounds of the mosque. Benghabrit set up an alert system that allowed fugitives to disappear swiftly in case of a raid – if necessary to the prayer room’s women’s section, where men were normally not admitted. He wrote numerous false birth certificates making Jewish children into Muslims….

My friend Mathis Szykowski, also a Holocaust survivor and a hidden child, testifies to this: “It must be said and repeated that in any account of survival, there are many people who will help, at great risk to themselves, people who appear almost mysteriously, whom you trust instinctively. No one can survive such circumstances by themselves. So it becomes obvious that in life as in death, we are all interdependent.” A human being whose mind has not been distorted by ideology will instinctively help another in danger, especially a child.

This harks back to my own post on Dr. Wafa Sultan, and the idea that there are some people who will help others even at risk to their own lives, because their humanity and integrity dictates that they cannot do otherwise.

For millennia there had been many Jews living in Arab lands, and the history of the two peoples, although complex, was at least one of familiarity and not strangeness. Jews at that time were not totally “other,” as they are today to most Arabs.

The blog “Point of No Return” is dedicated to telling the story of these Jews from Arab lands. Here is a brief history of what has happened, and why most of the Arab world is now virtually Judenfrei.

Take a look around the blog; it contains much fascinating and little-known history. Here is a post entitled “In search of righteous Arabs,” which contains the heretofore unknown (at least, to me) story of how Hitler tried to extend the Holocaust into Arab and North African lands, and how some inhabitants cooperated fully whereas some were rescuers much like those in the Paris mosque:

Taken together, this history is rarely told, and the heroes, in particular, have never been recognized. Of the more than 19,000 “righteous Gentiles” honored by Israel’s Yad Vashem for rescuing Jews from death during the Holocaust, not a single one is an Arab (though there are a number of Muslims, including Turks, Bosnians, and Albanians). In my view, the reason for this lacuna is dual: few have ever looked for “Arab righteous,”and fewer still have had an incentive to be found. For Arabs, the legacy of World War II was soon overshadowed by two other developments: the conflict with Zionism over the fate of Palestine and the struggle for independence against European colonialism. By the late 1940’s””and certainly by the time of the Suez crisis in 1956””the blurring of the state of Israel with “the Jews” was already a deeply embedded theme of Middle Eastern politics. For an Arab, there was little to be gained (and much to be lost) by being identified with the defense of Jews or of Jewish interests.

…[This was] my reception by the children of one of my prime candidates for recognition as a “righteous Arab”: Tunisia’s wartime prime minister, Muhammad Chenik. Walking a dangerous line between the Germans and his longtime personal friendships with Jews, this Arab notable, according to various interviewees, had used his connections to warn Jewish leaders of impending arrests and had secured dispensations from forced labor for the sons of Jews he knew from his business days. He very likely saved Jewish lives, perhaps at risk to his own.

Whatever the motive behind these deeds””personal friendship, old business obligations, simple kindness””they were truly noble. Since I was intending to resurrect the story of this long-forgotten statesman, and bring honor to his name, I had expected his family to embrace the revelations I was offering them, or at the very least to thank me for my efforts. And indeed, the family members who gathered in their comfortable seaside villa to hear my tale were polite, generous, and welcoming,plying me with tray after tray of delicious sweets and several rounds of coffee and tea. But through the smiles and handshakes, it rapidly became clear that they wanted nothing to do with my story of their father’s exploits. We have never heard about any of this, they insisted, and even if what you say is true, it does not amount to anything significant. Although they urged me to return with irrefutable proof, they offered no help, and it was obvious they hoped never to hear from me again. Perhaps the hardest blow has been the silence that has greeted most of my entreaties to moderate, forward-thinking Arabs to assist in shedding light on this chapter of their history. For every positive response to a phone call or a posting on an Internet message board, there have been a dozen cold shoulders, unanswered faxes, or unfilled promises…the taboo against recognizing any Arab connection to the Holocaust, even in order to celebrate the deeds of a heroic Arab rescuer, is evidently too strong.

In Semites and Anti-Semites, Bernard Lewis traces the origins of anti-Semitism in the Arab world. His book, which I encourage you to read, advances much evidence for the thesis that virulent anti-Semitism (as opposed to the milder, garden-variety type) in that area is neither inherent in Islam, nor does it have a lengthy history, nor does its genesis lie in the establishment of Israel. Lewis makes a strong case (and this is why I used the word “Judenfrei” earlier in this post) that the vicious anti-Semitism present in the Arab world has its true origins in the nineteen-thirties, and was a direct result of Nazi influence and propaganda taking root there at that time.

The establishment of Israel certainly made the situation worse. But the change had occurred prior to that event, and was exploited by many in the Arab world to incite people further against Israel and against Jews in general. The Arab world (including Egypt, which is not strictly Arab but is part of the area and has a similar history), as well as Iran, is today the home not just of “anti-Zionism,” but of Nazi-type hatred of Jews and widespread belief in the truth of such old lies as the Protocols and the blood libel.

The current absence of Jews in Arab countries has paradoxically made them easier to hate, since few Arabs now have personal knowledge of Jews as neighbors or friends. It has come to such a sad and sorry state that even mention of the brave, selfless, and humane acts of Arabs towards Jews is hush-hush, a source of shame rather than of pride.

Light pierced the darkness in Arab lands, too. But this is a very dark time–and it’s getting darker, I fear.

Beware the Ides of March

The New Neo Posted on by

No, I’m not Caesar. But I should have listened anyway.

This was going to be a 2-post day. Actually, it is a 2-post day, since I’m writing this one. But it was going to be a different 2-post day.

I had just finished writing a rather lengthy post expanding on some further points about the fathers’ rights issue, when the entire thing disappeared down the cyberhole due to some unintentional slippery fingers on my part. Disappeared, never to return, unless I laboriously try to recreate it later today. Which I may do; but right now I have other obligations to tend to.

I’ve told myself time and again to save posts as I write, and often I do. But periodically I forget, and this time I paid the price. And I can’t even blame that always-appealing target, Blogger. I have no one to blame but myself. Drat.

The civil civil war on the left

The New Neo Posted on by

I was reading Marc Cooper’s post entitled “Slobbering Over Slobo,” in which Cooper expresses sympathy neither with Milosevic nor with those who apologize for him. Cooper, who is what Norm Geras might refer to as a “principled leftist,” also takes on the “blame America first, often, and always” crowd:

Believe it or not there are those who continue to make out the Butcher of the Balkans as some sort of victim. The U.S. ”” it turns out”“ was the true source of evil in the decade-long series of wars that took hundreds of thousands of lives. Poor old Slobo, you see, was just a “piker” compared to the real fascists (i.e. whoever the U.S. supported).

Commenter J Cummings responds, here:

More serious is M Cooper’s subtle orwellianism. He claims that there is no distinction between Ramsey Clark and friends on one hand, and those of us, on the other hand, who put Milosevic AND Bush in the same war criminal category – and point out that in terms of raw numbers, Bush has killed more people.

Although this is an aside, one of the things that continues to amaze me is the protean use to which the adjective “Orwellian” can be put. It always strikes me as ironic that Orwell himself–Eric Blair–probably wouldn’t have been any too happy about his name being immortalized as a synonym for distorting and reversing the truth in clever and devious ways, since this is what he was warning us against. But no matter; the greater irony is that those who cry “Orwellian!” are all too often guilty of the charge themselves.

Positing this simple fact of dead=dead is a strange sort of moral equivalence. In a way, it’s actually an amoral equivalence, since taking no account of the context in which a death occurs is doing away with some basic considerations that are necessary for any sort of moral evaluation of that death.

I’ve noticed this process again and again on the left, and I’ve wondered about its origins. Is it sheer sophistry, something even the writer doesn’t believe but which he/she considers an effective rhetorical ploy? That may be true in some cases, but I tend to doubt it accounts for many.

Is it a lack of ability to make such distinctions, a failure of logic? Perhaps, at times. But again, I don’t think that’s what’s operating in most cases.

I believe its origins lie in a process I’ve discussed previously in this post: the need some people have to preserve their own moral superiority in an absolutist sense, the desire to keep their own hands clean. Of course, this can only be done if others are willing to get their hands dirty (bloodstained, that is) in order to protect these people’s right to keep theirs pristine and unstained. But in this country, fortunately, that’s still possible.

Belmont Club touched on this theme in his post on the dreadful murder of pacifist Tom Fox in Iraq. And it’s also implicit and explicit in my pacifism series, which describes some of the potential dreadful consequences of absolute pacifism.

In that series, I’ve also described the deep divisions within the Quaker community on just how far pacifism goes, or should go. I was surprised by the fact that even among Quakers, renowned for the depth of their devotion to that cause, there are many who argue for a pacifism that is more–well, more “nuanced.” The views of one of the founders of the Quaker religion, George Fox, were as follows:

Fox was not a pacifist in the modern sense that he utterly rejected participating in all wars and violent conflicts. He couldn’t imagine himself bearing the sword, at least under {his} present circumstances… but he also recognized that someone must wield the sword against evil-doers.”

Ingle goes on to say, “Fox would not condone violence except ‘in the cause of justice’… ‘in a war with the devil and his works’… ‘for a righteous cause’… or for ‘keeping the peace and protecting people’s estates’ (i.e. not their property but their condition), and Ingle continues that Fox would ‘never deny the right of a nation’s rulers to wield weapons in defense of a just cause. The problem was in defining such a cause.’ Thus the dilemma.

For those pacifists (and leftists or liberals) who do accept that someone must wield the sword against evil-doers, the dilemma becomes how to define an evildoer. And if the government of the US (especially any Republican government) is reflexively defined by some as “evildoers,” why then, those particular pacifists and/or leftists cannot support its wielding the sword, and the distinction between war and war crimes becomes obliterated: war by the US is defined as a crime, unless it is in response to something as unequivocal as a wholesale invasion by an enemy military force (something unlikely to happen).

The civil war (and it is a rather civil one) among pacifists is mirrored by this civil war among leftists. Marc Cooper and Norm Geras are among those who hold up one end; commenter J Cummings represents another. Here‘s a portion of Marc’s response to Cummings:

[Bush’s] ill-fated war in Iraq was ”” whether we like it or not”“ waged with overwhelming congressional approval. Sad but true. Thousands have died in Iraq”¦ I would say for the most part with not much of a good reason. It’s the sort of war that should cost a sitting president’s party their hold on the White House and should be a teaching moment about the limits and pretensions of imperial power. Iraq, however, is not a genocide and it as much or not a war crime as most any war is.

Milosevic was but a thinly disguised Nazi; he blatantly expoited ethnic and religious differences to whip up a murderous nationalism. His militias, death squads and soldiers had a policy of blatant massacre. The butchery at Sbrenjica and the Siege of Sarajevo are horrific, blood curdling crimes.

What’s amazing is the self-hatred that you display as an American. If U.S. military policy were the same as Milosevic’s then you would be committing a war crime by not taking up arms against the Bush regime. You have rendered yourself incapable of distinguishing among liberals, conservatives and beligerant fascists.

Clearly Cooper doesn’t agree with those of us who supported the Iraq war, either on whether it should have been started in the first place, or whether it’s time to declare it failed. But he expresses himself well, and the last paragraph, in particular, rings with a sort of righteous rage at how the left has been co-opted by voices such as Cummings’s instead of those such as Cooper’s own. The former have come close to drowning out the latter, which is a sad and troubling development. Cooper and Geras have been fighting this fight for some time, and though they seem to be losing the battle at the moment (at least, to my eyes), I hope they win the war.

Here is Cooper approximately a month after 9/11, in an article of his that appeared in the LA Times:

The end result of this psycho-political micro-climate are two generations of American leftists who lack the political sensibility and even the simple emotional language that would allow them to see their own fellow citizens, even transitorily, as victims rather than victimizers, that would allow them to distinguish between a CIA coup abroad and the butchering of thousands of innocent American civilians at home…

It’s one thing to argue that Americans are naive and perhaps arrogant to have believed in a historic exceptionalism that could immunize them against pain and bloodshed on their own soil. It’s quite another to suggest, as I repeatedly heard during that peace rally, that America somehow invited last month’s massacre. Morally repugnant and politically unviable, this sort of demagogy can only render the left irrelevant….

These difficult times require the active and effective presence of a clearer-thinking left, one that can offer unique and salutary perspectives to counter a war-empowered, conservative Bush administration.

It must begin with an unequivocal acknowledgement that the perpetrators of Sept. 11 are in no way the avengers of some oppressed constituency. They were atavistic, religious fascists whose world view is diametrically opposed to all humanitarian and progressive morality.

And the left must recognize that these forces cannot be neutralized by nonviolent moral suasion or international law alone.

Cooper goes on to advocate some positions with which I disagree. But that’s not the point. The point is that the left is not unitary, nor are pacifists, and both have some voices of reason who can make important moral distinctions. But their voices seem increasingly to be lost in the din of shriller voices, screaming in a sort of Orwellian–yes, Orwellian–rage that the US is the font of most of the evil in this world.