The British sailors and the UN: international law and the enforcement problem

The New Neo Posted on by

Many years ago I took a course to be certified as a volunteer divorce mediator in the state in which I lived. The profession was then in its infancy, and it sounded like such a good idea: the adversarial nature of the legal system probably escalated the difficulties involved in divorces, so why not try to take some of the destructive bitterness out of the process by going a different route?

I got the answer quickly enough when I observed couples actually trying mediation. My conclusion was that, except in rare cases, mediation tended to work for those who didn’t need it and to fail abysmally for those who did. It was especially inadequate when there was a great deal of rage and/or where the power differential between the spouses was too great—and those two situations covered an awful lot of couples. No, divorce was just a sorry and nasty business in most cases, and there was no use pretending otherwise.

Why bring this up now? I’ve been ruminating about international law lately in connection with the taking of the fifteen British sailors, and there are some similarities in the problems found in divorce mediation and in international law.

Today Britain “takes case against Iran to UN” and asks that the Security Council “support a statement that would ‘deplore’ Tehran’s action and demand their immediate release.”

This sort of thing would be almost risible if the issues weren’t so serious. And yet even that small and rather toothless step, “deplore” and “demand,” is running into trouble in the UN from Iran’s buddy Russia, which doesn’t like the language in the resolution stating that the sailors were in Iraqi waters when captured. Or at least, that’s the excuse Russia gives; my guess is that they just don’t want to anger their client Iran.

What is international law, anyway? A set of agreements between nations on a host of things. The “easy” parts of international law are those governing transactions such as trade, or deciding which country’s law should be applied in cases where several countries might have jurisdiction. That sort of thing is mildly analogous to what we call civil law in this country.

These areas of human endeavor are commonly less emotional than the criminal arena, and although there are certainly heated disputes on these issues they don’t tend to be resolved by violence. Countries involved in these types of dispute are usually somewhat like the couple who really doesn’t need mediation; they’re in some sort of basic agreement to abide by the court’s decision, and so no real enforcement is even needed.

And then there’s the law of war, another part of what’s known as international law. This is more like our criminal code, or like the couple who are so at each other’s throats that mediation isn’t going to lead to an agreement—or, if it does, it’s going to lead to an unfair result.

Both civil and criminal cases under our laws in the US and other countries have means of enforcement, but enforcement usually doesn’t have to be employed because most people are in voluntary compliance. This is so for several reasons. The first is that many people (especially in civil cases) are interested in following the law rather than in defying it, because they are basically law-abiding. It’s part of the societal contract many of us make as citizens of the nation. The second is that there is an implied threat for any noncompliance, enforceable relatively easily because the state/nation can find the offender and increase the fine or even imprison the scofflaw. Setting bail is another way (often successful) to attempt to enforce compliance by making the penalty for fleeing higher than the offender can afford. People can be made to comply with the law because they reside under the court’s jurisdiction, whereas fleeing (for example, to another country) would make it much more difficult to enforce the law.

In contrast, there is something almost oxymoronic about the phrase “the international law of war.” War is, almost by definition, a situation in which ordinary law has broken down. Also, wars are traditionally between nations, and no sovereign state has jurisdiction over any other, except by consent, and in a very limited way (treaties, for example–but these are between allies).

So how is international law to be enforced, then? Some nations are like those law-abiding citizens who simply comply with the law, and only look to the courts to settle simple disputes involving trade and other civil matters. These nations sign treaties that govern their behavior in war because they think it’s right (well, for a few), and because they want to create a community of nations that mutually respect each other and those laws. It’s in everyone’s mutual interest that this be so, at least theoretically.

Such a community exists. Once again, those who adhere to it and its rules are something like the couple who can mediate their own divorce with just a little legal help to look over the agreement. But there are many nations, and many rulers, who are outside that community and find the thought of abiding by its rules laughable. They are analogous to the couple who cannot mediate; some other method must be used to deal with them.

The signatories to the Geneva Conventions are not bound by those conventions in the sense we usually mean by the term “bound,” because there is no way of compelling them to follow the rules. “Enforcement” in such cases starts with a combination of the honor system and the fear of losing face among other nations. The real “teeth” in the conventions consist of the fact that, if a war occurs between signatories, each country will treat the other’s fighters well because it wants its own fighters to be treated well. A trial for violations of the Conventions could occur before or during a war, but it would be a joke, with no means of enforcement other than sanctions against the country involved (which are available even without a trial). A true trial with consequences and jurisdiction could only happen after a war, at which time those responsible for the violations involved would finally come under the jurisdiction of the world court (for what that’s worth), or the leaders’ former subjects (such as what happened with Saddam in Iraq).

In a case such as the present one concerning Iran, the nations of the world don’t quite know what to do—or aren’t willing to agree to do it—and Iran knows that. International law suggests that sanctions are the next step, and in fact right before the current incident the UN had just unanimously voted to apply sanctions to Iran for its nuclear defiance. Sanctions do in fact have some force if applied properly and drastically, but they rarely are (see: Oil for Food Program).

Iran has taken a financial hit recently from banking sanctions that actually do seem to have had some effectiveness (see this for a fuller explanation). But these sanctions were not the result of international law; they were the fruit of successful efforts by the US itself to enlist other world countries in the endeavor to stymie Iran financially (here is another good discussion of the intricacies of financial sanctions).

So, sanctions have their place, but they have their limits when dealing with a country bent on causing trouble, and one not all that concerned with the welfare of its people. They also have the drawback of having loopholes—there will probably always be countries (or individuals or groups) willing to get around them and trade with the shunned nation.

That brings us to alternative means of enforcement. Which brings us once again to that much-maligned (including by me) institution—the UN, and in particular its Security Council. Here is the relevant law:

Under the provisions of [Chapter VII of the UN Charter], the Security Council may determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, and may impose mandatory sanctions to try to rectify the situation. The sanctions may be economic (such as a trade embargo against a country threatening the peace), diplomatic (such as severance of diplomatic relations) or military (the use of armed force to maintain or restore international peace and security)….

Military? Military? Well, not exactly:

Security Council sanctions involving armed force have never been used in quite the form contemplated by the UN Charter. As drafted in 1945, it set out a system by which member states would agree to hold armed forces and facilities ready to respond to the call of the Security Council. If the Council decided to use armed force, it would call on those forces in accordance with the agreements. No such agreements have ever been entered into. Thus, when the Security Council has authorized the use of armed force to counter an act of aggression-as in Korea and the Persian Gulf-it has simply authorized member states to “use all necessary means to restore international peace and security.”

And there you have it: ultimately, no real teeth except the teeth provided by member nations, which is the way it used to be before the UN was formed. The UN acts something like a cheering squad in these cases. “Go get ’em!” it says to the member nations–which, somehow, often ends up being one member nation: that much-maligned country the USA, and to a lesser extent its ally Britain.

It’s “parading for the cameras” time

The New Neo Posted on by

No surprise, really; those British hostages are being shown on Iranian TV apologizing for straying into Iranian waters.

There’s nothing like the propaganda value of a few show confessions in an effort (vain, I hope) to shore up sagging support for the Iranian regime and its chest-thumping. I wonder whether the mullahs feel the least bit threatened by Blair’s response:

It is now time to ratchet up the diplomatic and international pressure in order to make sure the Iranian government understands its total isolation on this issue.

What’s going on behind the scenes must be—interesting.

Those British sailors and marines, by the way, were apparently not considered to be high-risk for Iranian abduction, and were not given any briefings on how to behave in the event of such an occurrence. In this interview with British Admiral Alan West, he states the rules, for what they’re worth:

These particular people would not be trained in counter-interrogation techniques because they are not expected to be captured. But I think our guidance to anyone in that position would be to say what they want you to say, let’s not be silly about it. Don’t tell them secrets, clearly, but if they tell you: ‘Say this’, well if that’s going to get you out, then do it. It means absolutely nothing, what they say, to be honest.

I’m not sure it means nothing to the folks watching on Iranian TV. But perhaps most of them are fully aware of the nature of their own regime, enough to discount any remarks made by the sailors in the course of captivity.

But please, Britain, in the future, change those rules of engagement, and allow these people better protection against any repetition of such an event. And you might want to look into that interrogation resistance training, as well.

Isn’t technology wonderful? Well, sorta…

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes indeed, it is.

Yesterday I flew from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Despite the fact that it was a very windy day, the ride was smooth, and took less than an hour in the air.

I’ve done that LA-SF car trip many times, and I know how long it can seem–even the “quick” route, the one starting with the passage through Tehachapi, abruptly canceling any thought of the glittery metropolis of Los Angeles just left as the driver overlooks the beginning of the San Joaquin Valley’s enormous flatness. The Valley is then followed for the (lengthy, monotonous, usually very hot in summer) duration of the drive.

And I’ve done it the “long” route as well, the exceptionally stunning Big Sur cliffs and mysterious mists that make you feel as though there should be New Age-y music playing in the background, and the road that makes the hair on your arms stand up with equal measures of fear and delight as you negotiate its twistings and turnings and can’t keep yourself from glancing down at the sheer drops to the ocean below.

I was on the left side of the airplane yesterday, the ocean side. All I could see were the puffiest of clouds for almost the entire trip. On the right it was completely clear, with the valley below. The airplane seemed to be passing through the line of demarcation between the two as though it were determined to negotiate the narrow cleavage that separated them.

Today is one of those clear blue San Francisco days, a bit crisp but not at all cold, at least not to this New Englander.

I spent the morning, however, wrestling with another type of technology: computers. I am sad to say that this week’s Sanity Squad podcast will not appear (and, of course, it was the best ever!), thanks to the fact that Hot Recorder and Skype have decided to take some sort of revenge on us by sneaking into the audio the sound of a dreadful whip cracking with great regularity, as though a bunch of galley slaves were being flagellated in the background. And although this might be a nice sound effect for something else (“Ben Hur” comes to mind), it didn’t make the grade for PJ.

This will be fixed, and soon; so expect next week’s podcast as usual. But the fixing will take some doing. And this morning I was also engaged in trying to get a dialup connection where I’m staying, and although everything was nicely set up to do just that, the connection wasn’t happening because my perfectly fine password was not being recognized. Even the folks at the national center in the sky for dialups could not fix this (after about an hour and a half of trying), and referred me back to the dread Gateway or (gasp!) even dreader Microsoft helpline.

Right now I’m on the PC belonging to my hosts, rather than my laptop. And I’m not calling Gateway or Microsoft, not today. Today I’m going out!

It may be time for a new laptop, I know. That’s a shame, because my old one was purchased last April, not so very long ago in human years (or even dog years) but apparently aeons in computer years.

I make no secret of the fact that I’m no technology wizard. But I do have a certain amount of intelligence, and I do know my way around a computer, if only because I have come to use them so much. Same for my cell phone–and I’m even starting to have some rudimentary knowledge of my ipod.

And I’m convinced that technology has become so wonderful and so complex that it’s driving most of us somewhat crazy. It promises so much, and delivers so often. But it’s a touchy little high maintenance beast that must be soothed and placated and stroked and palpated and understood and listened to, and even then it has a willful and obstructionist mind of its own.

How many of us have cars with warning signals that light up so often that we’ve learned to totally ignore them? Just a glitch, we say. For two years my passenger air bag warning light has come on whenever it happens to feel a trifle grumpy, and it can stay that way for months at a time. The mechanics say they cannot fix it (or, alternately, that to fix it would cost something like the price of a new car). So, why bother?

Some of you may read this and say “Get a Mac!” (or, get a new car). And I think about it, believe me, I think about it; despite the cost, it might be worth it (the Mac, that is, not the car). And the prospect has a certain metaphoric resonance (apple/Apple), as well.

Any suggestions out there from my uniformly well-informed and tech-savvy readers? Or if you like, any of you can share your tales of technological woe–or joy, if you’ve got any.

Traveling day

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m still in LA, and the weather’s been utterly spectacular. Today is a travel day to northern California, so I’ll make this very brief.

The friends with whom I’m staying get the LA Times. It’s been a while since I’ve actually held a newspaper in my hand; six or seven years ago I transitioned to reading all my newpapers and periodicals online, and I only encounter the rare hard copy in airports or visiting friends, as I’m doing now.

There’s something I like about the actual newspaper, though; the ability to leisurely browse and look at each page, noticing smaller articles I otherwise would have missed.

Like today. On page A5 there’s an odd little item that caught my eye, a nearly-comic reversal of the far more ominous phenomenon of would-be suicide bombers caught and apprehended at the border because of bulges in their clothing:

A Palestinian woman wearing a strangely bulging robe was caught at the Gaza Strip-Egypt border trying to smuggle three baby crocodiles strapped to her waist, a border official said. The reptiles, their jaws tied shut, were apparently bound for a Gaza zoo, said Maria Telleria, a spokeswoman…”She looked strangely fat…”

The most I ever tried to smuggle across a border was some fruit from Arizona to California. And even then—decades ago—I felt so guilty I never tried again.

Iran: the proud hostage-taking tradition and the rules of engagement

The New Neo Posted on by

In taking fifteen British sailors prisoner, the Iranian government is merely following its tradition of win-win hostage-taking. When in trouble (and there is some evidence the mullahs are in a certain amount of internal political difficulty in Iran), the best course is to go with the tried and true.

The precedent is a strong one. In fact, the Iranian revolution cut its teeth on hostage-taking in 1979, initiating the famous embassy hostage crisis (approvingly called the “second revolution” by Khomeini) that lasted a photogenic 444 days and revealed the softness of the Western response to such bullying.

Initially, Ayatollah Khomeini thought it possible that the American reaction would be violent. But Jimmy Carter had no such intentions. Even a later attempt at military rescue was so poorly planned as to be ludicrous if it weren’t so tragic. The hostage crisis was milked by the mullahs for its public relations advantages, especially its internal ones in Iran, which may indeed have been the main goal of the operation:

As Ayatollah Khomeini told Iran’s president, “This action has many benefits. … This has united our people. Our opponents do not dare act against us. We can put the constitution to the people’s vote without difficulty, and carry out presidential and parliamentary elections.”

So the hostage-taking was not only an embarrassment to the Great Satan (otherwise known as the US), it afforded the nascent Khomeini regime a cover under which to consolidate power and get approval for an Islamic theocratic constitution. It also made the Iranian Left (whom one might have thought would have been against the establishment of a theocracy) very happy—yeah, let’s stick it to those US imperialist dogs!

The bracing and unifying internal effect of a good hostage-taking has thus been clearly established by precedent, and could be much needed today. Also established are the self-imposed impotence of the US and the British in such situations; is there any chance Ahmadinejad and his overseers, the mullahs, would even consider—as Khomeini did with Carter, at least momentarily—that there will be a strong military reaction by the Blair government to the current crisis?

No. Then as now, it appears that, in Khomeini’s lovely phrase, “America [read: Britain] cannot do a damn thing.”

Here’s some historical perspective:

At the time [of the 1979 hostage crisis] many in the ayatollah’s entourage believed that he was being unnecessarily provocative. Khomeini, however, was dismissive. “America, “he told his secretary, a mullah called Ansari Kermani, “may have a lot of power but lacks the courage to use it.”

According to Kermani, who wrote a hagiographical account of Khomeini’s life in 1983, the ayatollah “always counted on America’s internal divisions” to prevent the formulation and application of any serious policy on any major issue. The ayatollah believed that the American political system was clear proof of the saying attributed to Jaafar al-Sadiq, the Sixth Imam, that “God keeps the enemies of Islam fighting among themselves!”

Just so. Whether it has anything to do with the deity or not, we are certainly still fighting amongst ourselves, and they are most assuredly still counting on it.

And President Ahmadinejad doesn’t have to read history to remember, either; he himself is alleged to have played a major role in the hostage-taking (see photos, then and now):

Here’s Ahmadinejad’s bio, which makes for pleasant reading indeed. Whether or not he was one of the actual hostage-takers, there’s little doubt he was intimately involved in the event, and was actively engaged in the internal terror and executions that followed as the glorious revolution locked itself into power, a position it holds to this day.

Contrast this to the peaceful outfit the British Navy appears to have become. In this interview with British Admiral Sir Alan West (hat tip, Belmont Club) we learn that current British policy left the sailors vulnerable to being taken and used as pawns by the Iranians. The Brits—who were on small boats, away from the mother ship—were inadequately armed for defense, partly because of the way their mission has been conceptualized.

Here is Admiral West on the current rules of engagement. His statements spotlight the dual aims of the military in the area, and how those conflicting goals can lead to a situation that can be easily exploited by an Iranian government bent on thwarting them [emphasis mine]:

The rules are very much de-escalatory, because we don’t want wars starting. The reason we are there is to be a force for good.

A laudable goal, no doubt. But the military are not social workers, and pretending they are merely makes them vulnerable to this sort of attack, which ultimately benefits no one but the enemy.

Back in April of 1980, when Carter had finally gotten fed up with futile negotiations for the hostages’ release, and realized the entire episode was humiliating for his Presidency and for the US as a whole, he nevertheless tied the hands of those on the planned hostage rescue mission in advance by insisting on the following rules of engagement:

Another presidential directive concerned the use of nonlethal riot-control agents. Given that the shah’s occasionally violent riot control during the revolution was now Exhibit A in Iran’s human-rights case against the former regime and America, Carter wanted to avoid killing Iranians, so he had insisted that if a hostile crowd formed during the raid, Delta should attempt to control it without shooting people. [The mission’s leader] considered this ridiculous. He and his men were going to assault a guarded compound in the middle of a city of more than 5 million people, most of them presumed to be aggressively hostile. It was unbelievably risky; everyone on the mission knew there was a very good chance they would not get home alive. Wade Ishmoto, a Delta captain who worked with the unit’s intelligence division, had joked, “The only difference between this and the Alamo is that Davy Crockett didn’t have to fight his way in.”

It never came to that, as it turns out; the mission foundered before getting to Tehran.

But the dilemma remains: how to fight a military action, or an entire war, in which part of the goal is to win the hearts and minds of a population that—in rhetorically simpler times—used to be known as “the enemy?” Until Vietnam we dealt with this problem by compartmentalizing it: the gloves were off during the actual war, and afterwards was the time for the social work and reconstruction.

Since Vietnam the situation is murkier because many conflicts (such as the present one) are not wars at all, although in earlier times such acts as that of Iran’s seizing of the sailors would be considered a casus belli. Now, as Admiral West says, we are reluctant to “escalate” to military action for fear of causing a larger war—and our opponents are not reluctant to provoke us because they know that. Paradoxically, our respect for civilian life is being used against us by an enemy that does not share it.

Tony Blair, the West, and the big “easy”

The New Neo Posted on by

If you’ve ever had a bad back you know the drill: the doctor places your legs and feet in various positions, takes his hands and pushes in various ways, and asks you to push back each time.

What’s he doing? It’s a crude measurement of strength, because back problems can cause nerve injuries that not only can cause pain but can damage motor neurons. The best and easiest way to test motor strength is to push and see whether the patient can push back, and, if so, how forcibly.

Testing our strength isn’t all Iran is doing right now in its capture of fifteen British sailors, who are seemingly about to be used as bargaining chips in a game of “free the prisoners.” But it certainly seem to be a big part of it.

Just as Hitler was testing the waters of Allied determination in Munich and finding them surprisingly warm and pleasant, Iran has been testing the waters of the West since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, and swimming quite comfortably there. In fact, one of the earliest acts under Khomeini’s regime was to precipitate the extraordinarily lengthy embassy hostage crisis, which gave the mullahs the idea that the West lacked a certain vigor in its response and its will to win.

In the present situation, Prime Minister Tony Blair says that the captured sailors and marines were not in Iranian territorial waters when seized. No surprise there. He also says that Britain considers their fate a “fundamental” issue. Good.

However, in the same sentence, Blair adds, “I want to get it resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way as possible.”

Of course diplomacy has to be tried here. So I don’t really have a quarrel with Blair mentioning it. It’s the word “easy” that sends just the wrong note of weakness to the Iranians, revealing what I’ve come to think is the true mindset of much of the West, and certainly of Europe: we’re psychologically unready for this fight.

Is there any sane person who thought that dealing with Iran was going to be “easy?” Is there anyone who thinks it wise to convey to the Iranians that we even want it to be “easy?”

Blair, of course, is speaking here at least partly to his own people, reassuring them that the result of this particular hostage-taking is not going to be another highly unpopular war like that in Iraq. In so doing, he reassures Iran that he’s not going to push all that hard against their own push.

When we study the events of Munich in September of 1938, it’s easy to forget one important aspect: Chamberlain’s actions were highly popular with British subjects. When he returned waving that piece of paper and speaking of “Peace for our time,” their reaction is described as having been “ecstatic.”

One can hardly blame the British of the time. It was only twenty years after the end of World War I, fought against the same country, Germany, and causing such widespread loss of life that an entire generation of England’s best and brightest had been literally decimated.

And I mean the word “literally”–well, literally. Take a look. Of about 5,400,000 mobilized, 703,000 were killed and over a million and a half wounded. The death rate therefore was around thirteen percent, well over the ten percent that constitutes the definition of the word “decimate.” And the casualty rate of the British in that war was forty-four percent. One can forgive them for being war weary, after what they’d been through.

When criticizing Chamberlain, it’s also easy to forget that he wised up pretty quickly, although it was tragically too late. In the spring of 1939, less than six months after Munich, Hitler broke the pact and invaded Czechoslovakia. To his credit, Chamberlain realized that this constituted a betrayal, and started to mobilize Britain for the inevitable war to follow.

When Hitler invaded Poland a few months later, Chamberlain had this to say:

The time has come when action rather than speech is required…No man can say that the Government could have done more to try to keep open the way for an honorable and equitable settlement of the dispute between Germany and Poland. Nor have we neglected any means of making it crystal clear to the German Government that if they insisted on using force again in the manner in which they had used it in the past we were resolved to oppose them by force.

So, at least Chamberlain felt that he had previously conveyed to Hitler that, if Hitler went too far, Britain would go to war. My guess is that Chamberlain may have mouthed some words to that effect, but Hitler took the measure of the man and didn’t quite believe them. Or perhaps he did, and didn’t much care; Hitler may have been playing for more time, trying to get what he could “easily,” without fighting for it. In this, the Chamberlain government initially cooperated.

Hitler apparently had contempt for Chamberlain after Munich, in the way that bullies often size up their opponents and seize on those they perceive as weak. “If ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers” Hitler is quoted as having said.

One wonders what Ahmadinejad and his superiors, the mullahs, are saying about Tony Blair right now. One wonders what they (and their predecessors) said about Jimmy Carter way back when.

It appears at this moment that Western muscles have become rather flaccid, even though the tools they could manipulate with those weakened muscles are highly powerful. The Iranians, of course, seek control of some of those fancy tools themselves. When they obtain them, perhaps they won’t lack the muscle–both mental and physical–to use them.

Churchill, Chamberlain’s successor, never talked about what was easy. He may have hoped that it would be easy or prayed that it would be easy, but to the British people (and to the listening enemy) he conveyed a very different idea.

On first taking office in May of 1940, many Conservatives still wanted Chamberlain. Churchill himself knew he had a tough message; he confided in a general, “Poor people, poor people. They trust me, and I can give them nothing but disaster for quite a long time.”

In his first speech to Parliament, Churchill made this clear, saying the famous words, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Later in the speech he conveyed—to Britain, its allies, and to Hitler—what else he had to offer: resolve and hope.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

No, the situations are not parallel. The seizure of the sailors and marines by Iran is not tantamount to a declaration of war, and war is not a proper response at this time. My point, however, is that rhetoric is not irrelevant, nor is it empty. How can we convey actual resolve to the Iranians if we don’t even speak as though we have it?

Nature: red—and compassionate—in tooth and claw

The New Neo Posted on by

Animals living in groups, such as the very social homo sapiens and certain other primates such as chimpanzees, must find ways to get along. We all know that this “getting along” is a relatively flawed and halting proposition. But still,there must be some basic sense of cooperation within the group for such primates to have evolved and prospered at all.

Some intriguing research on primate behavior indicates that some of the roots of compassion for others are present in those animals. The New York Times reports on the work of primatologist Frans de Waal, whose controversial assertion is that animals share with humans some rudimentary ethical behaviors that may be hardwired.

Reading the article, it’s not clear to me that the behaviors described by de Waal are actually genetic; we know that primates have traditions and ways that are passed down through example and teaching. Nor does he assert that chimps actually have ethics itself. What he does say is that “human morality would be impossible without certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and monkey societies.”

De Waal’s descriptions of chimp behavior are touching. He noticed years ago that, after fights, other chimps would console the loser in the battle. This behavior wasn’t present in monkeys; it seemed to be an ape thing. But the emotion that could be described as compassion is even exhibited by some monkeys, it seems:

Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.

The latter observation made me think of the famous Milgram “obedience to authority” experiments, in which human subjects were surprisingly willing to be talked into giving what they thought were very painful electric shocks to a total stranger (turns out the stranger was actually an actor and confederate of the researcher, but the subjects didn’t know that). The Milgram experiments demonstrated that whatever natural compassion exists in people can all too often be overridden by an appeal from an authority figure who says it’s all okay.

Other primates, being nonverbal, are unlikely to be as amenable to such appeals. It is one of the triumphs of human civilization and one of its drawbacks that human beings can be reasoned into doing something against their natural instincts, both for better and for worse. A doctor cuts into a patient’s flesh in order to heal the sufferer. A soldier fires a weapon in order to defend against those who would destroy a society or cause greater harm to innocent people.

And a murderer kills for any number of reasons: power, money, rage. A terrorist believes he’s doing the work of God when he blows a bunch of women and children into a thousand pieces.

Research indicates that all primate societies have evolved the following characteristics in order to survive: empathy, the ability to learn and follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking. These elements are present at least within the small groups in which primates live, but in these groups all is not lightness and love. Far from it; there’s tough love as well:

Young rhesus monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or toe bitten off as punishment.

In human society that would be considered child abuse; to rhesus monkeys it’s apparently a “spare the finger and spoil the child” philosophy.

And that is by no means the worst of it. The work of Jane Goodall, who lived among chimpanzees and studied them for decades, shows that they exhibit a surprising and extraordinary amount of violence both within and without the group.

It used to be thought that humans were the only species that warred on itself. This is untrue. Chimp violence certainly hasn’t reached the levels of human violence, but that’s apparently only through lack of technological advances. The phenomenon of inter-chimp violence is relatively newly discovered and poorly understood, but chimps seem to defend territory aggressively:

It was hard for the researchers to reconcile these episodes [of violence] with the opposite but equally accurate observations of adult males sharing friendship and generosity and fun: lolling against each other on sleepy afternoons, laughing together in childish play, romping around a tree trunk while batting at each other’s feet, offering a handful of prized meat, making up after a squabble, grooming for long hours, staying with a sick friend. The new contrary episodes of violence bespoke huge emotions normally hidden, social attitudes that could switch with extraordinary and repulsive ease. We all found ourselves surprised, fascinated, and angry as the number of cases mounted. How could they kill their former friends like that?

Human morality is not simple, and the same appears to be true of the roots of that morality in primates. But human behavior is mediated by the ability to verbalize and to reason at a far higher level than that available to any other primate. This results in (among other things) the development of tools to extend both the healing power of compassion and the lethal power of war—although in most cases, of course, the tools are not the same.

These issues about human and animal behavior and morality cut across several disciplines: philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology. And you can bet that there’s a lot of disagreement among them over how it all works:

The impartial element of morality comes from a capacity to reason, writes Peter Singer, a moral philosopher at Princeton, in “Primates and Philosophers.” He says, “Reason is like an escalator ”” once we step on it, we cannot get off until we have gone where it takes us.”

That was the view of Immanuel Kant, Dr. Singer noted, who believed morality must be based on reason, whereas the Scottish philosopher David Hume, followed by Dr. de Waal, argued that moral judgments proceed from the emotions.

But biologists like Dr. de Waal believe reason is generally brought to bear only after a moral decision has been reached. They argue that morality evolved at a time when people lived in small foraging societies and often had to make instant life-or-death decisions, with no time for conscious evaluation of moral choices.

I’m not sure what good such “which came first, the chicken or the egg” discussions do, other than provide a living for academics. But I believe it makes sense that societies must have evolved some sort of altruism, if only in the group, in order to function successfully and to continue to exist. It also makes sense that this fact does not preclude violence, both in order to defend that group and for other less functional reasons as well.

Those who think that compassion can be extended to all peoples and all circumstances, and that violence can be eradicated from the human heart and mind, are seriously deluded. And they can become dangerous if they make decisions about the world based on those assumptions.

I once heard a story about the Jewish attitude toward what we are describing here, the element of human and animal nature known in Hebrew as the yetzer ra, or the “evil impulse.” It’s the source of violence and selfish drives, and in the legend the evil impulse is held captive by the people for three days. At the outset, the yetzer ra utters a foreboding warning:

Realize that if you kill me, the world is finished.

The world is finished? Whatever could this mean? The people found out soon enough. With the evil inclination out of commission, the hens stopped laying. It was discovered that the impulse was what gave the drive to life itself: desire, striving, commerce, sex, all sorts of things that are necessary for life to have any vitality at all.

It can’t be eradicated, nor should one wish to do so. It can only be tamed and harnessed at times in a more positive direction.

Here’s another parable about the paradox of good and evil in the world of living things, this one based on the story of Genesis:

And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good”¦vehinei tov zeh yetzer hatov, vehinei tov me’od zeh yetzer hara—“good” refers to the Good Inclination but “very good” refers to the Evil Inclination. Why? Because were it not for the Yetzer ha-Ra no one would build a house, take a wife, give birth, or engage in commerce.

I can think of no better way to close than with the poet Yeats’s “Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop, which comes at the same idea from another direction:”

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.’

‘Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart’s pride.

‘A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.’

The ivory tower: clean hands and leading by example

The New Neo Posted on by

I happened across the February 19th issue of Newsweek at the home of friends with whom I’m staying. Picking it up and thumbing through it (and how odd it seems to me nowadays to see a hard copy of a periodical anywhere outside of the doctor’s office) I saw a letter to the editors written in response to a review of Dinesh D’Souza’s new book The Enemy at Home.

I haven’t read D’Souza’s book, but apparently it has the singular distinction of having been panned by both left and right. So I’m not planning to discuss or defend it; what caught my eye was the text of the letter, which expresses quite well the abstractly idealistic point of view of many, if not most, of the liberals I know:

Taking a stand against torture, no matter the perpetrator; fighting for a belief in human rights and dignity for all, including women, homosexuals and others who are mistreated simply for how they were born; nurturing a hope that America will unswervingly uphold the principles of democracy and justice that it preaches to the rest of the world; tell Dinesh D’Souza I’m proud to belong to the “domestic insurgency” that holds these “decadent moral values.” Continue reading →

Crossing the country: night flight

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I flew on Jet Blue from Boston to Los Angeles.

For me this involves not enough sleep the night before as I pack and suddenly realize in the wee hours of the morning that I can’t take half of what I’d planned to, and that even the remaining half is way too much. It also involves a lengthy drive to Boston itself, and the need to be there an hour or two ahead of time to deal with security; a stop in New York to change planes; and then the cross-country flight to a place that is about as different from New England as you can get and still speak the same language and be part of the same country.

In my youth I often used to do the cross-country drive—with companion, of course. Many, many times. So I know what it’s like to drive through the plains, to traverse the mountains and the deserts, to go the northern route and the southern route and the in-between route, back when motels cost about twenty-five dollars and many of them were one-of-a-kind rather than chains.

I even remember traveling with my family before some of the major highways were built. With great regularity, our car’s progress was slowed by the need to pass through a town. Many of them had a main street called “Main Street,” which amazed me at the time; I’d never seen that in New York.

And even those meandering journeys were stupendously quick compared to the way it was back when the western part of the nation was first settled. Covered wagons and real danger. And, before that, there were Lewis and Clark and earlier explorers. And before that….

But back to Jet Blue. They’ve got a system whereby they don’t serve those little airplane meals on board. Instead, the airport waiting areas have been turned into food courts worthy of the most upscale malls. Organic? Kosher? Soba with seaweed? Imported chocolate bar? Wasabi peas? Or chicken sandwich with apples and brie, my somewhat more pedestrian selection? You can get it all at the counters at Kennedy Airport while you wait.

My plane left Kennedy about forty five minutes late. This was cause for concern because I had a car rental waiting for me in Burbank, and the counter was due to close only a few minutes after my flight was scheduled to arrive there.

Once on the plane, time flies as the plane flies, thanks to those little TVs Jet Blue has kindly provided. I settle in with “American Idol” (the first time I’d watched it this season; it seems the women are much stronger than the men). On another channel, Jet Blue has a screen whereby you can simply watch a map of the US, showing where the plane is at the moment, as well as its speed and altitude. This graphic demonstration of the way airplane travel has collapsed the extraordinary distances involved continues to astonish me; we have barely left Kennedy and we are looking at Philadelphia, and then halfway across Pennsylvania.

It’s nighttime and dark now. We fly over cities near where friends I hardly ever get to see anymore live—Cincinnati, Wichita—and I have to repress the urge to wave to them below. We fly over places I’ve never been—Hoover Dam, for example. We fly over places I have, both from the ground and the air—the Grand Canyon. It’s invisible, nothing like the spectacular view that was spread out under me once on a clear day from another airplane in another time, a view that showed the vast extent of that wondrous cleft in the world and actually brought tears to my eyes.

But now it’s pitch black; the Grand Canyon I pass over is a Canyon of imagination and memory only. But I know it’s there.

And soon—much sooner than expected—we are in Los Angeles. And, wonder of wonders (although not a wonder on the scale of the Grand Canyon), the pilot has made up all the time in the air and the Alamo rental counter is still open. I’m given the keys to a shiny new car and I drive off in a soft night rain, onto the well-lit freeways that only moments before had sparkled below me.

Cathy Seipp’s world

The New Neo Posted on by

I had heard that blogger Cathy Seipp had been illl and that the prognosis was poor, so this news shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

But it did. Someone so young and full of life shouldn’t be dying, we think, even though we know it happens far too frequently.

I didn’t know Cathy Seipp personally. I had met her so briefly at the PJ launch back in November of 2005 that we barely exchanged more than a “hello.” But there was no mistaking her syle, flair, wit, and penetrating intelligence, even in those few seconds.

And no one reading her articles or her blog could fail to notice that she had one of the most distinctive voices in journalism. Hard-hitting but never bombastic, with a tone that seemed casual and yet was extraordinarily clever, she made it clear she didn’t suffer fools gladly. And almost everything she wrote was laced with graceful humor.

She made it look easy. It’s not.

Cathy Seipp’s blog was (is) called “Cathy’s World.” Like most bloggers, she wrote about whatever she felt like writing about; that’s the special joy of a blog for a professional journalist like Cathy. As she said in her normblog profile back in Novermber of 2004:

For many years as a journalist who spent a lot of time interviewing people, I imagined writing a book or column called What About ME and MY Feelings?!?. But now that I have a blog, that’s handled.

Here are a few more quotes from the profile that might give you a small taste of the special flavor of Cathy’s wit and thought:

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > That just because nice people believe something doesn’t mean it’s true….

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > More funding and support for the military. Those ‘Support Our Troops – Bring Them Home’ protest signs from the left don’t count as support. That’s like demonstrating outside a burning building, screaming at the firemen running in that for God’s sake they should turn around and run back out.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > I’ve always been a big believer in the importance of kicking your own ass. That is, forcing yourself to do what you don’t necessarily feel like doing at the time.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > A certain large-mindedness, or generosity of spirit – because this encompasses not only extending yourself for others, but other qualities like courage, and having friends who disagree with you politically, and not constantly worrying about what other people think. …

What is your most treasured possession? > My house, which I bought when the LA real estate market bottomed out 10 years ago. I wouldn’t want a different house even if I had a zillion dollars – which, come to think of it, is practically what it’s worth now.

If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to? > Now that’s a sore subject, because when I was a teenager I really hated my boring name. I would doodle idiotic alternatives like Olwyn Sayre or Chelseureka Paprika in my school notebooks, and regularly pestered my mother to tell me other names she’d considered, but the only one she ever came up with was Nancy, which obviously is just as plain. How could she have been so unimaginative?! So then I’d ask about my younger sister, who got the slightly more exotic name of Michele. Didn’t she at least consider another name when she was pregnant that time? ‘Well, I always liked Nancy…’ Hopeless. I still don’t think Cathy is a particularly fine name, but by now I’m used to it.

There’s an ancient Talmudic saying that when anyone saves a single life it is as though he saves a world. The reverse seems true as well: that whenever anyone departs from this life, it is as though we lose a world.

And now, sadly and way too soon, we are about to lose the funny, wise, idiosyncratic, never-to-be-duplicated world of Cathy Seipp.

Please send your hopes and prayers to Cathy Seipp and her family and friends.

Escaping the mud

The New Neo Posted on by

Right now even though it’s almost April, and technically the last day of winter, there are huge mounds of snow here, as well as the occasional sidewalk of ice. Soon that will be followed by what’s known as mud season. It looks exactly like it sounds; brown and mushy, no green leaves or new grass in sight.

But today’s a travel day. I’m on a trip to warmer climes to see family and friends: Los Angeles, for starters. I’ve got my laptop and my headset, and my plan is that the blog posts and podcasts continue relatively uninterrupted.