Neocons at war, and at war with neocons

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday’s post about the mosque bombing and the general topic of making political decisions drew forth a host of interesting comments. I gave a very brief response here, but I think a few more words are in order because the issues raised are quite important and the answers are not intuitively obvious.

First, let me say that anyone who wonders what “neocon” actually means, and why I had the temerity (or the stupidity) to name my blog thusly, should look here for a brief discussion and a good link to further information. It has become clear to me that the name “neocon” functions at times as a sort of red flag waving in front of the bulls who’ve decided–for whatever reasons–that neocons are the scourge of the world. As I put it in that linked “Why neo-neocon?” post:

Neocon” is used by critics as a code word for a lot of things, among them: imperialist, unrealistic dreamer, and scheming puppeteer (along with its subset, scheming evil Jewish puppeteer).

The comments on the thread about the mosque bombing display the three charges to a greater or lesser extent. I think, however, that the accent there was on the “unrealistic naive and stupid dreamer” part.

The question raised in the comments that especially interested me (and the one that I plan to try to answer in this post) is this:

Purely as an exercise. If 9/11 was the trigger event to “make you a neo-con”. What kind of event would make you give up this credo?

Is there an outcome in Iraq that would suffice for this event?

The questioner is probably a new reader here, and therefore may have missed my previous statements about how 9/11 was the trigger for my change only in the sense of starting a process that took several years to complete. I tried to make that clear in my “About me” section, and I took several thousand words to explain it, here. Please read them.

But suffice to say it actually wasn’t a single event that changed anything for me. And I doubt a single event would change me back.

What would? The brief and quick answer I offered last night was this one:

What would it take for me to stop believing that, as Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”? Perhaps nothing, short of seeing another form of government that is superior, in action. I have yet to see that. What would it take to get me to believe that someone like Saddam shouldn’t have been overthrown? Perhaps nothing, short of a demonstration that leaving him in would have been better (and I can’t quite imagine how that would be demonstrated).

If the neocon agenda were to guide foreign policy for the next couple of decades (highly unlikely, by the way), and if in that time the world erupts in an enormous conflagration of some sort, it will be clear that the neocon agenda did not prevent very very bad things from happening. I always knew that was a distinct possibility. But if I managed to survive such a conflagration, I still would never know what the alternatives might have brought–the same, worse, or better?

All I can do–all anyone can ever do–is evaluate the situation on the basis of my reading, my thoughts, and my observations. I do quite a bit of all three, and I have seen no other policy that seems as though it would have been a better way to have handled the world we have faced during the last four and a half years. I’m not talking about the details–clearly, there’s room for improvement there–but about the big picture.

I’d like to expand a bit on that answer of mine. To do so, I want to refer to another comment from the previous thread (boy, that thread is the gift that keeps on giving). This comment contains the heart of one of the main serious criticisms of the Iraq war and the hand that the neocons had in it: the writer calls the war an “elective military adventure” that “aggravat[ed]…existing problems.”

I think that the quoted commenter, and many others who would state something similar, are quite sincere in their belief that the Iraq war was elective. Part of that belief system is based on the “no WMD” argument, the one that’s been repeated ad infinitum and ad nauseum on this and other blogs, so I’m not going to rehash that part of it.

The idea that this war was elective has some possible corollaries. The first is that it was waged for dark and nefarious purposes by an evil administration (oil, racism, love of slaughter). I think these arguments have been disposed of so many times that I’m not going to address them further here; those who believe them at this point are beyond the reach of any argument I could muster. The second is the “neocons are naive fools” contention, which is the one that’s relevant to today’s topic. The idea behind this assertion is that those who started us on this “adventure” (note the word choice: they are silly boys who had no idea that war is not a scouting trip) were stupid and shortsighted, having no notion and taking no thought of possible and/or probable consequences before they blundered in to break a lot of eggs.

So, in summary, the criticism goes as follows: neocons naively and stupidly, and for no good reason, electively embarked on a war they saw as an easy (“slam dunk”) adventure. Now we all reap the consequences, including the long-suffering people of Iraq.

I’ve previously written a post that deals with the issue of whether neocons, or Bush, or Rumsfeld, actually thought the postwar reconstruction would be a “cakewalk”, here.
The short answer: they did not. The longer answer: they underestimated the problem of the aftermath, and made some mistakes in going about the reconstruction.

But this in no way invalidates the decision, in my opinion. And this is not a simple failure to admit error on my part–I think this entire blog has proven that I can admit making mistakes, and that I can change my mind. But I’ve seen no reason to do so in this case. Why? One reason is that I did not consider (and still do not consider) this war to have been elective.

Oh, it was elective in the sense that the land mass of the continental US hadn’t been invaded by an enemy force of millions of soldiers bent on our destruction. It was elective in that no country had vaporized our cities with nuclear weapons, or the like. But it was not elective in the following ways:

The evidence or lack thereof of actual WMDs aside, there was (and still is) strong and incontrovertible evidence that Saddam was planning to reconstitute his WMD program as soon as possible. And, combined with the postwar evidence of French and Russian collaboration with Saddam to lift sanctions, that “as soon as possible” would have come sooner rather than later. Nothing would have stopped it short of war, and the UN was complicit in the whole thing. Saddams’s defiance of the UN and weapons inspectors set a terrible precedent that had to be stopped, and the UN was completely uninterested in doing so.

This is not just neocon rhetoric. It is the conclusion of the Duelfer report (not a neocon document). The new Saddam tapes only solidify the idea, and the Oil for Food scandal is part of the picture. The humanitarian plusses in deposing Saddam are also clear; and, although these benefits were most assuredly not the main reason the war was waged, they are a strong side benefit.

And what of the negatives, which are very real and quite serious? The fact that this endeavor was not perfectly executed–well, that was simply inevitable, I’m afraid. I take issue with some of the decisions that were made, but that does not mean I think the whole thing should not have been attempted.

How is it that I can still say this? Well, for one thing, we have no idea whether civil war will actually occur or not; the jury is still out on that. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say it does. What then?

My answer is that it was always a possibility, a risk inherent in the toppling of Saddam. If you remove one threat it does not mean another less-than-desirable outcome will not take its place, not in the real world vs. the world of wishful thinking. And those who accuse the neocons of the latter are guilty of it themselves, I’m afraid, if they ignore the dangers inherent in all the possible choices we faced, including that of inaction.

Because the truth is that the forces leading to unrest in the Middle East are not necessarily stoppable, but the creation of a functioning democracy, if successful, would constitute a counterforce of some magnitude.

If the democracy/human rights experiment in Iraq falls into civil war and chaos, does that mean that doing nothing would have been better? Allowing Saddam to laugh at the sanctions and the UN inspections, and later to rearm himself with WMDs? Would this have been a good outcome? I don’t think so; just a different bad one.

The forces of hatred and destruction have been building up all over the Middle East and Iran for quite some time now. It is very possible they cannot be stopped; that is Wretchard’s Three Conjectures, required reading for all who might desire to understand some of the deeper reasons behind the launching of the Iraq war, and what it hoped to possibly avert.

In fact, civil war in Iraq is not an artifact of American intervention via the invasion of Iraq. It is a manifestation of forces that have been brewing for centuries and especially since the division of the Ottomon Empire after WWI. Saddam controlled and manipulated these forces in his own way, which was to orchestrate his own Sunni-dominated war against the Shi’ites, a type of civil war waged by dictator. Taking Saddam away does not create the problem; it simply changes it in a way that at least gives the Iraqi people a chance of ending up with a better result.

Because the truth is that Moslem-on-Moslem violence is hardly a new thing, or a small thing, or a US-generated thing, much as the anti-neocon faction would like to pretend it is. As Wretchard writes in Three Conjectures:

Revenge bombings between rival groups and wars between different Islamic factions are the recurring theme of history. Long before 3,000 New Yorkers died on September 11, Iraq and Iran killed 500,000 Muslims between them. The greatest threat to Muslims is radical Islam; and the greatest threat of all is a radical Islam armed with weapons of mass destruction.

And Saddam, who did not directly represent radical Islam, was more than willing to arm himself with WMDs and to use them against his own enemies, and/or to support factions of radical Islam with WMDs and use them to revenge himself against his enemies. Does anyone honestly doubt that, had Saddam re-developed his weapons program as he planned, he would have hesitated to use nuclear-armed terrorists to get back at his arch-enemy the US, or his other enemies, both internal and external?

The Iraq war always was a gamble, and it still is. But doing nothing (as well as all the other proposed alternatives) was at least as great a gamble. Perhaps greater. And I believe that those who fail to see that are the naive ones.

The mosque bombing and its aftermath: civil war about civil war; pundits and predictions

The New Neo Posted on by

See an excellent roundup of differing views on the current post-mosque bombing crisis in Iraq, here.

And the latest from Iraq the Model, who’s on the scene in Baghdad.

Belmont Club writes:

The good news is that there are enough cools heads on both sides to try to keep the lid on. That fact alone attests to the accomplishment of those who have tried to build a unitary Iraq. The bad news is that the pressures — stoked by parties unknown, though Iraq the Model suggests they are “foreign terror groups” — may be too much to handle.

Bottom line–no one really has a clue, or too much more than a clue.

The doom-and-gloomers who cried “civil war” at the very outset of any discord in Iraq are now practically salivating with glee (I’m sorry, but that’s how I see it) at being able to say–like the hypochondriac who wrote “I told you so!” on his tombstone–“See, civil war! Here it is, at last!”

As for me, I cannot see the future. But my experience of the past tells me that neither extreme pessimism nor extreme optimism is warranted right now. I know that the goal of those who have done this is to spark a civil war, and I know that the goal of those who hate President Bush and the entire Iraqi war is to have it sparked, and to be able to say “We told you so.”

Is my motivation for wanting things to turn out well to be able to say, myself, “I told you so?” I certainly don’t think it is. I want things to turn out well for the sake of–well, for the sake of things turning out well for the Iraqi people, the US, and the world.

But I never was naive enough to believe this would be at all easy, or that it was necessarily going to turn out well, or that it was a “slam dunk.” And the kneejerk characterization of the neocon endeavor as being composed of people who think that way–that bringing democracy plus human rights to the Arab world, or any part of the world that doesn’t already have that tradition–will be easy is, I think, mischaracterizing the movement.

I’ve already written a long post on the whole meme that neocons thought the Iraq war would be a “cakewalk,” which I think is a misrepresentation of the basic neocon position. The
post is here for anyone who wants to review it; I see no need for me to rewrite it.

I would summarize my position as follows: all alternatives in these situations (prewar Iraq, for example) are fraught with danger and possible chaos. But we must nevertheless choose the course that looks best given all the knowledge we have at the time, knowing that it might lead to failure. That’s the risk one must take.

In fact, it’s impossible not to take a risk. Because don’t think you can avoid making a decision by simply choosing to do nothing. That has consequences, too, although they are easier to deny. And, since we don’t have a variety of worlds in which we can try out all the different actions as a sort of scientific experiment, we have to make all decisions with very imperfect knowledge, making it up as we go along, never quite knowing whether we were correct or not–even ex post facto.

That’s history (and life) as it’s lived, I’m afraid. Which is not to say that we shouldn’t try to evaluate decisions, of course. We must, in order to try to learn to make better ones. I think we can now safely say, for example, that securing the Iraqi borders very early on would have been a very good thing to do–if indeed a way could have been found to do so. But I certainly don’t think we can rightly say that the war itself was an error, looking at the situation as a whole so far–although, of course, some say it, will say it, and have been saying it from the moment the very first difficulties began.

I wrote a previous post on this subject of evaluating decisions that affect history. It was based on the writing of one of my favorite authors, Milan Kundera. I’ll repeat some of his words here:

Several days later, [Tomas] was struck by another thought, which I record here as an addendum to the preceding chapter: Somewhere out in space there was a planet where all people would be born again. They would be fully aware of the life they had spent on earth and of all the experience they had amassed here.

And perhaps there was still another planet, where we would all be born a third time with the experience of our first two lives,

And perhaps there were yet more and more planets, where mankind would be born one degree (one life) more mature.

That was Tomas’s version of eternal return.

Of course we are here on earth (planet number one, the planet of inexperience) can only fabricate vague fantasies of what will happen to man on those other planets. Will he be wiser? Is maturity within man’s power? Can he attain it through repetition?

Only from the perspective of such a utopia is it possible to use the concepts of pessimism and optimism with full justification: an optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.

And this is what Kundera (a Czech) wrote about the history of his people:

There is only one history of the Czechs. One day it will come to an end, as surely as Tomas’s life, never to be repeated.

In 1618, the Czech estates took courage and vented their ire on the emperor reigning in Vienna by pitching two of his high officials out of a window in the Prague Castle. Their defiance led to the Thirty Years War, which in turn led to the almost complete destruction of the Czech nation. Should the Czechs have shown more caution than courage? The answer may seem simple; it is not.

Three hundred and twenty years later, after the Munich Conference of 1938, the entire world decided to sacrifice the Czech’s country to Hitler. Should the Czechs have tried to stand up to a power eight times their size? In contrast to 1618, they opted for caution. Their capitulation led to the Second World War, which in turn led to the forfeit of their nation’s freedom for many decades or even centuries. What should they have done?

If Czech history could be repeated, we should of course find it desirable to check the other possibility each time and compare the results. Without such an experiment, all considerations of this kind remain a game of hypotheses…

The history of the Czechs will not be repeated, nor will the history of all of Europe. The history of the Czechs and of Europe are a pair of sketches from the pen of mankind’s fateful inexperience.

“Mankind’s fateful inexperience” is always operating on this, the planet of inexperience.

And so the inexperienced pundits pronounce, predict, and pontificate–while the caravan moves on.

Geography genius–not!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I’m not sure why this post has so much blank space in it. It has something to do with the text I copied to display the results. I can’t seem to fix it, so just scroll down a bit.]

I got this from Callimachus. I’m not usually all that great on geography, but maybe blogging and reading so much in order to blog has helped (or maybe the test isn’t that all-fired difficult after all).

At any rate, I’m not as good as Mr.-Done-With-Mirrors-Smarty-Pants. But I did pretty well.

Geography Genius

You scored 91% knowledge, and 0% confusion

Excellent! This is the highest score. You are very knowledgeable about the world. You didn’t answer any (or many) of the questions with seriously incorrect answers. Great work. You are now ready to write your own Geography Knowledge test. Don’t forget to vote on this test!

Test is found here.

My Mommy is a Democrat; your Momma wears combat boots

The New Neo Posted on by


Gerard Van der Leun has called our attention to a children’s book that has to be seen to be believed. Actually, scratch that; this book cannot be believed, even after being seen.

Take a look. Take a long look. Then come back and agree with me that Why Mommy Is a Democrat simply must be parody; it is so perfectly simpleminded that it could be nothing else. Spawn of the Onion, perhaps, or Mad magazine–something, anything but an actual serious effort at writing a children’s book.

After giving the post at American Digest some serious in-depth study, and Googling around (including a visit to the book’s website), I can only conclude that Why Mommy Is a Democrat is on the up and up after all, as serious as serious can be.

In the book, the words “Democrat” and “good person” seem to be used synonymously and interchangeably, and the illustrations–oh! the illustrations!–featuring what I can only conclude are meant to be squirrels (although they look more like antennaed aliens to me)–are quite stupendously hideous in a sentimental and strangely retro Dick-and-Jane-y way.

I can’t quite fathom having the concept of writing such a book in the first place, the need to explain the ordinary everyday political affiliation of a parent to a very young child. I just don’t think it’s an issue that’s uppermost in a child’s mind, or even something about which a child would care at all. But I suppose that, even though this is a children’s book, it’s really wasn’t written with the child in mind.

And it turns out the book is not alone. Research is my thing, and careful research has turned up a host of similar items, children’s books about Mommy and politics. So I now present them for your edification (by the way, all these books are quite real, although my interpretations of them might be just a tad suspect):

Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry: this one’s easy; Mommy must be an evil Republican.

Mommy Hugs: here Mommy’s clearly a loving Democrat–although that elephant illustration on the cover must be in error; the characters should be donkeys.

Mommy CEO: 5 Golden Rules: obviously a Republican again, and a dirty capitalist to boot.

Mommy Diagnostics: The Naturally Healthy Family’s Guide to Herbs and Whole Foods for Health: a Democrat, what else? Lives in northern California, perhaps Marin county.

Mommy Knows Worst: Highlights from the Golden Age of Bad Parenting Advice: not only Republican all the way, but note the nefarious author: blogger James Lileks! Need I say more?

Mommy and Daddy Are Fighting: we obviously have a mixed marriage here: a Democrat has married a Republican (was this book by any chance written by the offspring of James Carville and Mary Matalin?)

Mommy is Missing: apolitical and unaffiliated, Mommy probably doesn’t even bother to vote; she’s a shirker

I Saw Mommy Kicking Santa Claus : The Ultimate Holiday Survival Guide: Mommy is a liberal/leftist secular Democrat who is gamely fighting all the trappings of Christmas

Mommy You’re My Hero: a military Mommy, more likely than not a Republican, although she certainly could be a Democrat instead

Mommy Poisoned Our House Guest: can there be any doubt? Mommy’s a Republican all the way.

The DIY Guide to Mommy Sanity: clearly, this is about our very own Republican Dr. Sanity

Mommy Under Cover: CIA Mommy.

Dear Mommy and Daddy When I Grow Up I Don’t Want To Be BROKE: written by the budding Republican child of Democrat parents, an ungrateful turncoat

Mommy And The Policeman Next Door: don’t ask, don’t tell; you don’t want to know

And, by the way, my mommy really was a Democrat. Still is, actually.

All kidding aside, children are nearly always indoctrinated by their parents in their initial political affiliation, and most of the time this affiliation lasts for life. In fact, one of the very first posts in my “A mind is a difficult thing to change” series talks about that at great length, here. But Why Mommy Is a Democrat is an unusually overt–not to say heavy-handed and preposterous–example of politicizing directed towards children.

Somehow, it reminds me ever so slightly of this:

“Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let’s have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet.”

At the end of the room a loud speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.

“”¦ all wear green,” said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, “and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I’m so glad I’m a Beta.”

There was a pause; then the voice began again.

“Alpha children wear grey They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfuly glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don’t want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They’re too stupid to be able ”¦”

The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows.

We didn’t start the fire: should Holocaust Denial be criminalized?

The New Neo Posted on by

The controversy over yesterday’s David Irving conviction, and the more general question of whether Holocaust denial should be a criminal offense, seem on the surface to be no-brainers, easily resolvable by saying that the principle of free speech dictates that Irving should be given a get out of jail free card, and that the crime itself be wiped off the books.

That’s my knee-jerk answer, and the answer of most of those who wrote in the comments section here.

But, as with almost everything on earth, the actual situation is a bit more complicated than that. First, a little background.

When I started doing the research for this post, I was surprised to find that Holocaust Denial is not a crime in just Germany and Austria, as I’d previously thought. Ten European countries, plus Israel, have established criminal penalties for it:

There are laws against public espousal of Holocaust denial in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland.

The first thing I noticed is that Holocaust Denial itself is not a crime; it’s the public pronouncement of it that is penalized. The speech itself is allowed; what is not allowed is to say it publicly in front of groups–that is, to preach it. It may seem a small distinction, but it’s an interesting one.

The second thing I noticed was that, with the exception of Switzerland (and of course Israel, which represents an obvious special case), the countries involved have characteristics that Great Britain, the US, and Canada do not share: their experience of Nazism or of Nazi occupation in WWII.

To Germans and Austrians the danger of public promulgation of Holocaust denial may indeed (especially when the laws were first passed) have seemed like the danger of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Likewise–although to a lesser extant–to countries such as Poland, who have reason to know the Holocaust in a way that countries such as Britain and the US never can, Holocaust denial may seem a particular affront and a special danger. “He jests at scars that never felt a wound;” and so it is much easier for countries who have not experienced such a cataclysmic upheaval to be absolutist about protecting freedom of speech.

Author D.D. Guttenplan has some insight on these points, as well as a discussion of the differing legal history of the Anglosphere vs. the continent:

In Britain and the United States we regard Free Speech as sacred. Americans venerate the First Amendment, while Britons cite Milton, who in Areopagitica said true Liberty only exists “when free born men / Having to advise the public may speak free”. Holocaust denial is currently a crime in Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Belgium, Poland, Lithuania and Switzerland. Do the citizens of those countries value freedom less than we do? Or might other factors be involved?

Robert Kahn, author of Holocaust Denial and the Law, points to a ”˜fault time’ separating the ”˜common law countries’ of the US, Britain, and former British colonies from the ”˜civil law countries of continental Europe’. In civil law countries the law is generally more prescriptive. Also under the civil law regime the judge acts more as an inquisitor, gathering and presenting evidence as well as interpreting it.

Unlike the Anglo-American adversarial system, where fairness is the primary attribute of justice, and the judge functions as a referee, trials under the continental system aim at arriving at the truth…

Ultimately, though, it is the difference in historical experience that ought to constrain our attitude to other countries. In Germany and Austria Holocaust denial is not ”˜mere’ Jew-baiting but also a channel for Nazi resurgence much like the Hitler salute and the display of the swastika, which are also banned.

The case for a ban in Israel should also be obvious, if not beyond argument. Similarly, countries where the experience of occupation and the shame of collaboration still rankle ought to be able to make their own decisions…

Guttenplan believes, in the end, that countries such as Britain, with its combination of the adversarial legal system and a history free of the Holocaust collaboration shared by much of continental Europe, should never outlaw Holocaust denial, because the danger it represents here is very small compared to the larger negatives of restricting freedom of speech. But he refuses to say the same for countries such as Germany.

Professor Hajo Funke, a German historian, agrees:

“In Germany and in Austria there is a moral obligation to fight the kind of propaganda peddled by Irving. We can’t afford the luxury of the Anglo-Saxon freedom of speech argument in this regard,” he says.

“It’s not that I don’t understand it, it’s just not for us. Not yet. Not for a long time.”

It was about sixty years ago that WWII ended. To those who are young, it may seem to be ancient history. But it really was not so long ago. Countries that know, through bitter and personal experience, the dangers to which anti-Semitism led a mere sixty years ago do consider it (and other hate speech) to be the equivalent of yelling “Fire!” in that proverbial crowded theater.

I can’t find the quote right now, but I remember reading (I believe it was in Primo Levi’s fine and highly recommended Survival in Auschwitz) that one of the ways in which the guards taunted prisoners in the concentration camps–those prisoners who were “lucky” enough to have escaped the ovens, at least for a little while–was by saying to them that they would never live to tell their tale, and that the world would never know or care what they had suffered. What’s more, the guards said, if by some slim chance some of them did somehow survive and report to the world what had happened, the world would never believe them. And in fact the Nazis worked hard to cover their traces, in hopes that the evidence would remain hidden.

Holocaust denial, seen in this light, is a continuation of Nazi thought, and was in fact part of the Nazi plan–and, if allowed to grow and spread, might represent their final triumph. And so (to continue to use the fire metaphor) the who espouse criminalizing it want to snuff it out while it’s still a harmless little brush fire. Because they know that brush fires can grow into–well, into Holocausts.

The Anglosphere has no direct experience of that, fortunately for us. And it has a stronger tradition of freedom of speech.

My personal opinion on Holocaust denial is aligned with that tradition: I believe that it should not be criminalized. I believe it shouldn’t be a crime in the Anglosphere, nor should it (at this late date) be one in Europe.

But I also see Guttenplan’s point about why Europeans are particularly sensitive to this issue, and why they come down harder on Holocaust deniers: these European countries (and Israel) are the ones who’ve been burned.

As for David Irving (remember him?), the Wikipedia article has some interesting background information:

The Holocaust denial movement grew into full strength in the 1970s with the publication of Arthur Butz’ The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry in 1976 and David Irving’s Hitler’s War in 1977. These books, seen as the basis of much of the deniers’ arguments, brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold.

So, far from being a peripheral figure in the movement, Irving has been instrumental in fanning the flames for quite some time.

In addition, the Austrian government has a special reason for wanting him in jail–and that is that he has openly defied its warnings. Austria issued the warrant against him in 1989, and informed him that if he returned he’d be arrested. And so he did, and so he was:

He was arrested in Austria on 11 November last year when he arrived to give a lecture. He was detained on a warrant issued in 1989 under Austrian laws that make Holocaust denial a crime.

During the trial the judge, Peter Liebtreu, compared him to a “prostitute who has not changed her ways for decades”.

Mr Liebtreu told the court: “He showed no signs that he attempted to change his views after the arrest warrant was issued 16 years ago in Austria. Although he tried to persuade the court, he failed.

“He is not just someone who sold Hitler statues or who made people do Hitler salutes. He served as an example for the right wing for decades.”

So, what about the argument that arresting Irving only gives him publicity, and sympathy for his new status as a free speech martyr? A good point, in my opinion. But here’s a differing one that broadens the geographic context of Irving’s influence:

The fact is, however, that Irving and his ilk have become dangerous. The interests of the European and North American Holocaust deniers – from Ernst Zundel (on trial in Germany) to the French “scholar” Robert Faurisson – are merging with those of the anti-Semitic ideologists of Arab nationalism and Iranian theocratic rule. If Irving walks free from the Wien-Josefstadt Prison next week he will soon be packing his suitcase for the Holocaust conference in Tehran.

The German authorities have already sensibly confiscated the passport of Horst Mahler – a neo-Nazi who has been advising Zundel on his courtroom defence – to prevent him travelling to Iran. Will we do the same for Irving? Of course not. Suspected English football hooligans will be under virtual house arrest during the World Cup, but Irving, as usual, will be free to travel anywhere. You know: freedom of speech.

The Irving-is-a-chump school describes him as a “fringe academic addressing a group of loopy far-right radicals wearing silly hats in a basement in Vienna”. Jailing the man is supposed to award him an undeserved importance. This is a truly parochial view, given that the problem is not strange, skinheaded Austrians in lederhosen (though I worry a bit about them, too) but bearded men in turbans who have never made their peace with Israel. The European input has always been important to the development of anti-Semitism in the Middle East. The widespread Arab hatred of Jews does not derive from the Koran: it stems from the need of national liberation movements for hate figures.

European anti-Semites have fed them from the start. Palestinian nationalists aligned themselves with Nazi Germany, identifying Zionism as the enemy. As the state of Israel took shape, Arab writers (borrowing heavily from European deniers) presented the Nazi gas chambers as a flimsy myth designed to justify a land-grab.

An interesting point. But, in the end, an irrelevant one. Because the sad truth is that the damage has already been done. The horse is out of the barn, the cat is out of the bag, Humpty Dumpty has fallen off his wall and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men and all the jailers in Austria will not undo the influence of the European anti-Semitism that has been tainting the Arab world for much of this century.

So it seems to me that the only remedy is free speech in the theater of ideas. We must believe in the ability of truth to ultimately triumph, and in our ability to wage war against those who would preach hate and follow through on it with destruction. If Irving and his ilk have influenced Iran, the damage is long done, and the remedies lie elsewhere–unfortunately.

[ADDENDUM: Sigmund, Carl, & Alfred has related thoughts. In addition, thought-provoking posts on the subject are provided by fellow psychobloggers Shrinkwrapped and Dr. Sanity.]

David Irving sentenced

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I don’t have time to write a post about this now, but I plan to later: David Irving has pleaded guilty to Holocaust denial, and has been sentenced to three years in prison, which he will appeal.

See this, and also my previous post on Irving, here.

Dancer from the dance

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A while back, as I listened (or tried to listen) to the President’s State of the Union address, it struck me once again that I’m just not very good at listening to speeches. Unless it’s Winston Churchill, I much prefer to read them.

Even though I was always a good student, I rarely enjoyed classes. In retrospect, I think one big reason was the “sit in your seat and listen while we talk—and talk—and talk” format. In college, I was one of those people who sat at the very back of the room during lectures, swinging my leg restlessly, doodling and smoking.

Ah yes, kids: smoking. We used to be allowed to do that in classrooms. I was never much of a smoker—I really didn’t inhale—but I liked to light up, and to amuse myself by making perfect, long-lasting smoke rings, like the old Camel’s ad in Times Square (mine were much better than his).

The point of all this is that I’m most definitely not what is known as an auditory learner. A speaker has to be riveting—and, preferably, very, very funny—to catch my attention. I’ve been to several authors’ book and/or poetry readings, and despite my best intentions and resolve (and love of books and poetry), I find that I ordinarily drift off within five minutes or less of the moment the author opens his/her mouth, “coming to”—unaware of any lapse in time—only when the applause starts that signifies the reading has ended.

On the other hand, when I’m reading or writing, I concentrate hard. Time tends to pass very quickly, but my mind does not wander. I’ve been known to try to fix a problem with a single line of poetry for what I would estimate to be ten minutes–but then, when I look at my watch, two hours have somehow passed.

In the olden, pre-computer days, when I used to work at a word processor (and before that, an electric typewriter) in a room without a clock, I’ve been known to think it was about midnight and then to hear the birds chirping as a soft light slowly filled the room and I realized it was actually dawn. Now, with computers that have built-in clocks, that’s not going to happen. But I still experience the phenomenon of time passing extraordinarily quickly without my realizing it.

I used to experience the same sort of concentration back in my ballet dancing days. Classes usually involved an hour and a half of intense physical activity. But what isn’t commonly known is that dancing is a mental activity as well, although of an utterly different sort from that involved in writing or in listening to a lecture.

A ballet class consists of a series of graduated exercises that follow a certain strictly determined order, aimed at warming up all the major (and minor) body parts in a way that’s thought to be least likely to lead to injury. The first portion is boring but utterly necessary, the barre. It’s the equivalent of scales for the musician or singer, and it often used to go rather slowly, especially those long intervals of holding the leg up very high and still.

The only thing that got me through the barre was the music. Most of the time we had a live pianist playing classical music (most often Chopin), with the odd Scott Joplin rag thrown in to keep us on our toes (sorry, couldn’t resist). The music transformed the whole exercise into something other than an exercise; it became an art.

Next we took our positions away from the barre for what was known as “center work.” First, a port de bras; mostly arm movements and slowly changing body positions, nothing too difficult. Then, an adagio, or series of slow unfolding movements, ordinarily very very difficult, but lyrical. Then, turns in place. Then some faster movements in place, then small jumps in place. Then bigger jumps in place. And then what was the payoff, the raison d’etre for the whole thing: moving combinations, usually across a diagonal from corner to corner.

Big sweeping jumps that crossed an imaginary stage coupled with linking steps, a series of small ballets that the teacher would choreograph on the spot. Turns that covered space were incorporated into these combinations. Sometimes we’d revolve in a great big circle, faster and faster, until some of us had to stagger out of the group and rest on the sidelines.

The combinations were difficult, and they had to be memorized on the spot, one after the other. The teacher would tell us the steps, then we would “mark” them (do them in a sort of shorthand movement, not full blast). Then the music would start, and off we’d go. And it wasn’t just steps that we had to memorize; it was steps coordinated with arm movements, head movements, body positions, all set down for us in a few moments and then integrated into the body memory and performed full out.

Then, the same thing to the other side. Where the right leg had led before, now it was the left. Where the left arm had been raised during a certain leap, now it was the right. These changes had to be accomplished instantaneously and automatically, almost without thinking.

One of my favorite parts of all was when the teacher would say “reverse the combination.” This was not everyone’s favorite part, to be sure. It was like a tongue twister; the best way to describe it would be that we were required to turn the steps inside out. It was fiendishly difficult; if a jump had featured the back foot leading and ending in front, now the front foot led and ended up in back. If a one-legged turn had been an “inside” turn (that is, turning in the direction of the supporting leg), now it had to be an “outside” turn (turning away from the supporting leg).

We would usually end the big combinations with the largest of leaps on the diagonal, across the room. It was a totally ordered and controlled set of movements; every angle of each part of the body was dictated by tradition. But, within that structure, the utter sense of freedom and expansion—of soaring and flying and oneness with the music—was phenomenal. And, at the end, it was amazing that an hour and a half had passed with my hardly being aware of time at all.

There is nothing like it on earth. I miss it still.

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance
How can we know the dancer from the dance?

[ADDENDUM: To end this piece, I want to describe how a ballet class always ends, with something called a reverence (it’s French, which is the language of ballet). A reverence is a stylized bow, very courtly in nature–which is only fitting, since the origin of ballet lies in court spectacles.

But the reverence that ends a class is very simple. After all the frenetic activity of the minutes before, the students assume their places in the center again. They may be huffing and puffing, they are almost certainly soaked in sweat and exhausted, but all calms down as the music changes to slow and lyrical. To its strains, the students bow in a prescribed manner: first to one corner, then swivel and bow to the other (the corner where the pianist is sitting, ordinarily). Then bow to the center, where the teacher stands, who bows back in return. Each bow is a thank you, and also a grounding.

Sometimes I would experience a feeling of relief as the strains of the reverence music began, relief that a very difficult class was over. Sometimes I’d feel regret, because the class had been so much fun it seemed to end all too soon.

But always, a feeling of gratitude would come to me in synchrony with the body language of the bow. And once in a while, tears would even spring to my eyes at the beautiful coming together of all these things: the movement, the feeling, the music, and the people gathered around me and dedicated to the pursuit of excellence and transcendence in this particular form.]

Those calcium pills–Emily Litella again?

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First it was low fat diets. Now it’s calcium supplements that have been tested and found somewhat wanting, according to the Washington Post and many other newspapers reporting on a recent study. What’s a woman to do?

First, a personal note. I’ve been taking those things for at least twenty years. And, you know what? I’ll continue to take them.

I’ve always detested milk, and couldn’t even drink it while pregnant, relying instead on those horse-pill-sized supplements. I’ve never had a kidney stone (the study reports that supplements slightly increase the risk of one); and, although there’s always a first time, I’ll take my chances on one. I try to eat other foods high in calcium, but there’s just no substitute for milk products in that respect. I’m part of a subgroup of women who probably get less calcium in the diet than is the norm.

And so far (although I don’t have a clone and therefore there’s no control subject in my own little study) those calcium pills appear to have done right by me. Or at least, something has. A year or two ago I had my first bone density test. Given my history with milk, I wasn’t looking forward to getting the results. So I was stunned when I was told the test showed that I had the bones of a healthy eighteen-year-old.

Now, that may just be the first time since–well, since about twenty-two–that I’ve been told I had the anything of a healthy eighteen-year old. Granted, there might be a few characteristics that would be higher on my list of coveted eighteen-year-old traits than bone density–but I’ll take it, I’ll take it.

However, I strongly suspect that I have the something else of an eighteen-year-old–namely, her bone density test results, which I suspect accidentally got switched with mine. Somewhere in my town there may be a terrified eighteen-year-old taking tons of (worthless?) calcium supplements because she’s been told she’s sporting the bones of a creaky fifty-something-year-old.

But I digress; back to that research. It was undertaken by the federally-funded Women’s Health Initiative, which found indications in the seven-year study of about 36,000 women aged 50-79 that calcium supplementation doesn’t appear to do all that much, except lead to a few extra kidney stones. There was a small increase in bone density at the hip, it’s true, and a significant reduction in hip fractures for the oldest group of women who took the full complement of supplements. But no significant reduction in fractures or in colorectal cancer was found for the group as a whole.

It wasn’t discussed in most of the newspaper reports, but if you go to the NIH website for a fuller report of the study, you’ll find that it had some very strong limitations in design, according to a Dr. Rebecca D. Jackson, who was in charge of the research:

The low rates [of fractures or change in their incidence] could be due to a number of factors, such as the high body mass index of participants (heavier people have stronger bones), the inclusion of relatively few women over age 70 years, and the fact that many participants were already using calcium and vitamin D supplements, or were on hormone therapy.

I find it quite astounding that a large and well-funded seven-year study of the benefits of calcium supplementation in reducing bone fractures could be conducted without including many women over seventy. That group is, after all, the population in which almost all such fractures occur.

I assume there are reasons for this lack–for example, it may be more difficult to recruit women of that age, more of them would be expected to die over the course of the study, and an intervention at that late stage might be considered too late to afford measurable benefit. Such long-term lifestyle/diet intervention studies are notoriously difficult to design, and therefore the results are often subject to criticism. But the relative lack of inclusion of such women makes the study almost worthless in studying the phenomenon, I’m afraid.

The cumulative effect of these “on again, off again” dietary recommendations and their Emily Litella-like findings can only be confusion and skepticism about all medical studies of this sort–and depression on the part of those who make and market low-fat food products and calcium supplements.

And today’s Hamas bulletin from the NY Times is…

The New Neo Posted on by

…this article, entitled: “Hamas leader faults Israel sanction plan.”

It’s not that the Times has become a mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda. Not exactly. Not precisely.

But it certainly comes uncomfortably close. Here are the first three paragraphs of the article (the part most people are likely to read):

The man many expect to become the new Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya of the militant Islamic group Hamas, on Friday criticized Israeli proposals to restrict the movement of money, people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank under a Hamas-run Palestinian Authority.

“These Israeli decisions are part of the policy of repression, terrorism and collective punishment against our people,” Mr. Haniya said after leaving Friday Prayer in Gaza City. “Hamas reflects the choice of our people, who will not be broken by a few measures taken by the Israeli occupiers.”

A new, Hamas-dominated parliament will be sworn in on Saturday at simultaneous, videoconferenced sessions in Gaza and the West Bank, and afterward, Israeli officials say, relations with the Palestinians will change.

Here, the Times somehow manages to write three entire paragraphs without an iota of context, merely reporting what the “Hamas leader” says. It’s an interesting moment for the Times to revert to “just the facts, ma’am, just the facts.”

Later, at least, there’s this (the only acknowledgement in the article of who and what Hamas is):

The [Israeli sanction] effort is intended to force Hamas to satisfy the three conditions imposed by Israel and other countries: to recognize Israel’s permanent right to exist, to forswear violence and to accept the validity of previous Palestinian-Israeli agreements, which are based on the concept of a two-state solution as the foundation stone for a peace treaty.

But then it’s followed by this:

Dov Weissglas, an adviser to the [Israeli] prime minister, was quoted by the Israeli news media as telling an official meeting: “It’s like a meeting with a dietitian. We need to make the Palestinians lose weight, but not to starve to death.” Mr. Weissglas was quoted in the past as saying that Israel would be ready to make peace with the Palestinians when they became as responsible as the citizens of Finland.

That last sentence, especially, is a remarkable one to place in this particular article. Bringing up this particular quote from the past seems to have the intent of making the Israelis sound as though they are asking for the moon from the Palestinians, rather than their rather reasonable request that Hamas quit talking about destroying Israel, and stop purposely blowing up their kids.

The fact that the Times gratuitously dragged it in, undated and unsourced (Weissglas “was quoted in the past”–could a blogger get away with that?), in an article that is minus a single Hamas quote about obliterating Israel or drinking the blood of the Israelis (oh, surely the Times wouldn’t have had too much trouble finding a few representative ones if it cared to look; for example, this and this), can only be interpreted as bias on the part of the Times.

I’m getting rather tired of this myself. Tired of reading it, tired of fisking it. No doubt you are, too. So I’m not planning to turn this Times-bashing into a daily event. But sometimes it just cries out to be done.

It appears that Rumsfeld reads neo-neocon

The New Neo Posted on by

According to Reuters (and who am I to doubt them?):

The United States lags dangerously behind al Qaeda and other enemies in getting out information in the digital media age and must update its old-fashioned methods, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Friday.

Let’s see, I post it on Tuesday, Rumsfeld says it on Friday–works for me.

Then he even cites blogs:

The Pentagon chief said today’s weapons of war included e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs.

Here’s the text of Rumsfeld’s entire speech (at RealClearPolitics). Well, perhaps he’s not reading neo-neocon after all.

You’ll notice that, although the headline of the Reuters article is “US lags in propaganda war: Rumsfeld,” he does not actually utter the word “propaganda” during the speech. Instead, Rumsfeld speaks many times of “communication” and “communications,” and of truth. It’s not surprising that Rumsfeld is reluctant to use the “p” word; propaganda has gotten a bad name. But, as I wrote in my previous post on the subject, it by no means precludes telling the truth; on the contrary.

You may also notice that Rumsfeld’s speech deal entirely with foreign propaganda (“communications”) rather than domestic, which he ignores. Ah, well.

The pragmatic NY Times

The New Neo Posted on by

Right from the start–its very title–this NY Times article is a good example of what’s wrong with the paper.

Are there any incorrect facts in the piece? I doubt it. My guess is that, strictly speaking, it contains not a single lie. But the wording, the shading, and the placement of information are all quite stunning in their subtle bias.

To start with the title, “Pragmatic Hamas figure is likely to be next premier”–that’s a little bit like calling Goehring pragmatic as compared to Hitler. It’s true, but somewhat irrelevant. In this case, the Times offers not single example of Ismail Haniya’s “pragmatic” views. In fact, it doesn’t even identify who finds him so very pragmatic:

Hamas plans to nominate Ismail Haniya, viewed as one of its less radical leaders, for prime minister.

Does the Times see fit to report anything about the policies he advocates, his past, or his attitude towards certain little details such as the right of the state of Israel to exist, of the suicide bombers, and of the Second Intifada? Just this, which occurs towards the end of the lengthy article rather than the beginning (is the Times counting on the fact that its readership might not get that far?):

Mr. Haniya, 42, has good relations with other Palestinian factions. He was at the top of the Hamas election list and has been viewed as the most important Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, the group’s stronghold, since the parliamentary election. While considered to be part of the more pragmatic side of Hamas, he endorses its fundamental positions.

So, he endorses all the fundamental (is that a pun?) Hamas postions. Boy, I’d dearly love to know what “pragmatic” could mean in that context. More willing to pretend to be reasonable, in order to get concessions, like the very pragmatic Mr. Arafat? I really don’t know what the Times means, and I read the article a few times in a vain effort to find out, since they saw fit to highlight the word in the headline.

There’s food for thought in almost every paragraph of the article, I’m afraid. But I’ll just highlight a few. The opening paragraph is a good example:

The militant group Hamas on Thursday appeared poised to name its candidate for Palestinian prime minister, while Israel’s Defense Ministry drew up sanctions likely to be imposed after the new Palestinian parliament dominated by Hamas is sworn in on Saturday.

So (from the headline) we’ve got the “pragmatic” (read: “reasonable?”) Prime Minister elect of the “militant” (surely if any group richly deserved the appellation “terrorist” instead, it would be Hamas) Hamas, and then the Israelis preparing those nasty sanctions, without even giving the pragmatic militant a chance! How vengeful of them!

The next few parapraphs focus on what form the sanctions will take, without giving further background about Hamas except that the Israelis consider it a terrorist group and say that they will not transfer money to terrorists. An example of what the Israelis are planning:

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz held talks about possible restrictions to be imposed to reduce Israel’s already limited contact with the Palestinians. The measures would include preventing Palestinian workers from entering Israel and making it even more difficult for Palestinians and their goods to move between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Then there’s a delicately nuanced paragraph about Europe:

The European Union, the largest single donor to the Palestinians, prefers a wait-and-see approach before any punitive measures are imposed. That position was reaffirmed Thursday by Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, who met with Ms. Livni. After the Palestinians began an uprising against Israel in late 2000 their economy crashed, and they depend heavily on roughly $1 billion in annual aid.

Aren’t those Europeans kind and forgiving compared to the punitive Israelis? But it’s the last sentence in the paragraph that is especially masterful in what it says–and what it doesn’t say. Yes, after refusing the offers made at Camp David and launching the murderous and repellent Intifada (oh, I forgot, let’s just use the Palestinians’ own definition of the Intifada: “uprising”–they’re just freedom fighters), the Palestinian economy fell on hard times. But let’s not explicitly blame that on the Infitada and what it did to relations with Israel.

And then there’s this (still with me?), the next to last paragraph of the piece. Note that the Times finally calls Hamas a terrorist organization, perhaps long after most people have stopped reading:

Israel, the United States and the European Union regard Hamas as a terrorist organization. Israel, which has been hit by dozens of Hamas suicide bombings, is seeking to isolate the group internationally.

Oops, my error. I guess the Times doesn’t call Hamas a terrorist organization after all. It reports that Israel, the US, and the European Union regard Hamas as a terrorist organization. At least the Times does acknowledge that Hamas is responsible for suicide bombings–almost at the end of the lengthy article.

This may all seem needlessly picky, a fuss about semantics. But as a former believer in the NY Times as the paper of record, I can attest to the power of such subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) shadings to shape opinion. There is no doubt that, whatever faults they may have, the writers and editors of the Times know the meaning of words. I cannot believe that they are not purposeful in their choice of exactly which words to use, and how and when to use them–and which ones to leave out.

The Saddam WMD tapes: smoking gun or cap pistol?

The New Neo Posted on by

The WMD tapes story that aired last night contained no smoking gun. In fact, as presented on Nightline, it was almost a nonevent. Sandwiched between Dick Cheney’s hunting accident and another feature, the story was given short shrift.

So, how are we to evaluate whether the tapes have any meaning or not? The people behind the release of the tapes–a former weapons inspector named Bill Tierney and attorney John Loftus–have both been labeled as having a few skeletons in the closet.

Loftus’s official bio, found on the website of the group with which he’s affiliated (“The Intelligence Summit”), seems on the up and up. But then again, so did Ramsey Clark’s–for a while. A quick Googling of Loftus reveals only vague charges of sketchiness from various critics on the left (if you have something more specific, please let me know).

As for Bill Tierney, the situation is similar, although there’s a bit more to go on there. He’s been fingered as a demonstrator on the right during the Schiavo affair (oh, no![/sarcasm off]), and as a believer in his own ESP. His biography seems otherwise rather impressive, but that doesn’t really tell us much about the man.

So I’ll just stick to what I heard on Nightline. Brief though the presentation was, it indicated the following (assuming the tapes are authentic, which they so far appear to be):

(1) Saddam had the will, determination, and ability to reconstitute his WMD programs, just as the Duelfer Report alleged.

(2) Saddam had the will, determination, and ability to deceive the weapons inspectors.

Most reports on these tapes are short, and emphasize the fact that they contain no information about events immediately prior to the Iraq War. That is certainly true. Nightline indicated (without being extremely precise on the matter) that the tapes were made mainly during the mid-90s. And this very short Newsweek piece emphasizes the age of the tapes. However, the Intelligence Summit website states that the tapes continue into the year 2000, which certainly would make some of them far more relevant to the question of later events.

I will be interested in knowing whether there is anything further these tapes will end up revealing. According to the Intelligence Summit website, there will be an unveiling and discussion this coming Saturday. But don’t expect that event to be covered by the MSM in any more depth than the original Swift Vets’ news conference was.

I have no idea how this will pan out. It may wind up like so many previous WMD “smoking guns”–a cap pistol.

But if all that the tapes ever reveal is what was shown on Nightline last evening, I think they still tend to bolster the WMD argument rather than negate it. Certainly, they substantiate the Duelfer report’s conclusions about the dangers of the fact that Saddam could easily reconstitute his weapons programs.

For me, this is actually enough. For me, the combination of the human rights benefits of liberating (yes, I do still use that word) the Iraqi people from Saddam’s violent and tyrannical regime, coupled with his clear intent to restart his weapons programs as soon as his European friends helped the sanctions to be lifted, coupled with his clear violations of UN resolutions and inspections, were enough to justify the invasion.

But hey, that’s just me–and after all, what would you expect? I’m a neocon.