The surge: “Hello we must be going…”

The New Neo Posted on by

Groucho Marx had a signature greeting song, always good for a laugh: “Hello I Must Be Going:”

Hello, I must be going
I cannot stay
I came to say
I must be going
I’m glad I came
But just the same
I must be going…

In relation to the surge, Congress is Groucho Marx, although not nearly as funny. That surge we’ve heard so much about, headed by counter-insurgency expert General Petraeus—originally held in such high bipartisan esteem—is only about a week or so into full deployment.

But of course it’s failed. Or, rather, it will fail. Inevitably, indubitably.

Because the pundits and the members of Congress know much more about such things than General Petraeus. No need to wait around to see what actually happens by the short-sighted September deadline. When last I checked it’s only late June right now, but what more could possibly happen in a couple of months? Why bother? We all know the outcome, don’t we?

The MSM made much of Senator Richard Lugar’s speech on the subject (and please actually read his words rather than the MSM reports of what he said) since it represented a defection from the Bush line by a prominent Republican. The gist of Lugar’s speech seemed to be the following: the Iraqis are no good, our military is tired, and neither the American people nor Congress has the patience and will to even try anymore, so let’s leave before we even discover the results of the surge.

Senator Lugar’s rationale for suggesting abandonment of the surge now rather than waiting any longer is predicated on the fact that we are more likely to get truly bipartisan cooperative policy going if we start sooner rather than waiting to accomplish it during a contentious election year.

Sorry, Senator, you may not have noticed, but it’s already rather late for that. Actually, it’s been too late since the election of 2006. In fact, it was probably too late even earlier. As you yourself noted in the first few paragraphs of your speech [emphasis mine]:

The prospects that the current “surge” strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the President are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate. And the strident, polarized nature of that debate increases the risk that our involvement in Iraq will end in a poorly planned withdrawal that undercuts our vital interests in the Middle East….The current debate on Iraq in Washington has not been conducive to a thoughtful revision of our Iraq policy.

Bingo, Senator Lugar. And that includes you.

Here’s an outline of the way the surge is supposed to work, if successful. You’ll note that its main thrust is not expected to occur until this summer—that’s actually where that September timeline for a report on the undertaking originated.

In fact, the surge is an example of what Lugar is asking for, “a thoughtful revision of our Iraq policy,” drawn up by a general who is the country’s expert in the field, newly appointed and approved (the latter unanimously, I might add) for the very purpose of implementing it after the architect of the old policy, Secretary Rumsfeld, was ousted subsequent to last year’s election.

Oh, details, details. And, as J.D. Johannes points out in this article, the four goals Senator Lugar has outlined for our policy in Iraq and the greater Middle East:

…are being advanced, some of them dramatically, by the surge strategy of Gen. David Petraeus ”” the very strategy that Sen. Lugar would scrap in favor of “downsizing and redeployment.”

Johannes has recently returned from three months in Iraq, and his article offers a strong critique of Lugar’s speech. Johannes notes that the surge has already accomplished important things, even prior to its being at full strength:

The principal accomplishment of the surge to date is solidifying the “Anbar Awakening,” the significance of which has been under-reported by the media and ill-understood by the public. If any piece of territory in Iraq qualified as a “terrorist safe haven,” it was bloody Anbar. This province of little over 1 million people ”” 4.5 percent of Iraq’s population—has accounted for 34.6 percent of U.S. casualties….The virtual extinction of the insurgency in the province ”” a victory that I was privileged to witness first-hand ”” represented not some momentary quirk of tribal alliances, but a diligent application of the revised tactics that coalition forces have implemented under skilled, battle-proven officers and Gen. Petraeus.

It’s not hard to predict that whatever gains may occur this summer as a result of Petraeus and his “skilled, battle-proven” officers and troops will likewise by “under-reported by the media and ill-understood by the public.”

And that’s because the fix is in, and the song is being sung: Hello, we must be going….

What price diversity?

The New Neo Posted on by

Today the Supreme Court has handed down this decision blocking attempts by the public school administrations of Seattle and Louisville to reassign students solely on the basis of race in an attempt at greater diversity.

Here’s the NY Times’ summary of the ruling, which was a close 5-4 decision breaking along the expected Supreme Court lines, with the usual conservative/liberal split among the Justices. In the majority opinion, the Court wrote that the districts had failed to meet the burden of justifying the “extreme means” they chose to right the perceived racial divisions.

I haven’t had time to read the full opinion with all the dissents, although I hope to do so later. But I have several preliminary observations, two based on memory, one based on social science.

The first is that I lived in Boston back in the days of the controversial institution of busing, and although I was (and remain) extremely sympathetic to the plight of African-American students in inner cities with virtually segregated schools, I thought busing opponents had understandable objections. Yes, yes, I know, some were motivated by racism, but others were motivated by the principle of keeping young children in local schools and not making them be guinea pigs to social science experimentation ordered by courts under the aegis of academics (the busing plan was based on a PhD thesis by Harvard student Charles Glenn).

In the case of Boston, busing went both ways, and white students (in predominantly poor neighborhoods, naturally) were forced out of their own districts on sometimes lengthy rides to predominantly (and often substandard) African-American schools. This was supposed to foster equality of opportunity and greater racial understanding. It may have done the former—an example of “a lowering tide sinks all boats”—but it certainly didn’t lead to the latter, as this fascinating history of the busing experiment will attest.

In fact, the result was not only increased racial turmoil, but helped lead to the effective desegregation of Boston public schools as whites pulled out of the city (or the public school system) and the student body become approximately 85% minority. Perhaps this would have happened anyway, but the process supposedly was accelerated by the busing crisis.

Busing in Boston effectively ended in the late 1980s, when school choice—which seems to have been a comparatively effective and successful solution—was instituted. But that was found unconstitutional by the courts at the turn of the millennium, and the Boston public schools are now unable to use either method to balance schools racially (perhaps moot, considering the racial demography that exists today among the public school student population).

My second memory is of the college I attended back in the mid-to-late 60s. When I started it was a large coed school with an almost totally white student body, its black students mostly athletes on scholarship. Two years later the African-American student population there had increased enormously to approximately 15% or so, but I noticed (I had transferred, but was back for a visit) that there was virtually no mixing. When the number of blacks had been small, they were well-integrated into the student body, but now the dining halls were utterly segregated, seemingly by choice. In other words, the black kids stuck together and so did the white kids.

It’s easy to say that enforced integration of these two types certainly has not led to racial harmony. And yet something has—at least, relatively speaking. Those of us who grew up in the 50s and 60s can readily tell the difference, and it is profound: African-Americans are far more integrated into our society, and far more visible in positions of power and influence than ever before. In addition, the sort of seething racial turmoil that one could feel simmering—and often erupting—seems to have diminished. So perhaps, in the long term, some of these solutions “worked.”

That brings us, however, to my third point. Recently there has been some interesting research indicating that, in the short-and even the medium-term, increasing diversity ends up fostering problems more often than not. Well-known Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, the author of Bowling Alone, has found over five years of research that:

…immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities. He fears that his work on the surprisingly negative effects of diversity will become part of the immigration debate, even though he finds that in the long run, people do forge new communities and new ties.

This conforms almost exactly with my observations, but there’s more. Diversity leads to a general lack of trust and withdrawal from community activity, a kind of “hunkering down” effect, lower confidence and investment in community, less charitable giving, lower happiness. This is true whatever the economic level of the community is, by the way.

Putnam himself was disturbed enough by his own findings that he “delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity.” A very odd course of action for a scientist—but this is a social scientist, after all. At least he published in the end, although he has yet to make the details of his research available and has only released a summary.

But the results indicate that diversity has profound negative consequences in the short and medium runs, and so we should not be surprised if we notice that is exactly what has happened. And, by the way, for those who think this is primarily a phenomenon of the big bad old USA, it is not. The result apparently holds true in studies of communities in Australia, Sweden Canada and Britain as well.

I’m not suggesting we go back to the days of segregation, or that we ban legal immigrants. But I am suggesting that the idea that the enforcement of diversity at all costs is no panacea, and is not going to lead to the results even its proponents are hoping for. At the very least, expect a very bumpy ride for decades along the way.

A mighty poor documentary

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t seen it and probably won’t, because I don’t go to the movies often and this one doesn’t sound very good. And reading this review of the Danny Pearl story “A Mighty Heart” only reinforces that notion.

Daniel Pearl’s friend and colleague Asra Q. Nomani seems incensed that the movie doesn’t portray anything like the Danny she knew, respected, and platonically loved. She cooperated with the film’s development, thinking the movie “had the potential to be meaningful” and would explain Pearl’s passion for reporting as well as tell the story of the team that searched for him so vigorously and yet futilely. Nomani also hoped the movie would spark what she refers to as “a search for the truth behind Danny’s death,” which she feels has not yet been learned (not sure about that last part, but I’m fairly certain it doesn’t involve George Bush; she sounds like a relatively sensible woman).

Sensible yes, but naive about Hollywood. Please, someone, let me know when has Hollywood ever done right by a true story?

The fact that, as Nomani points out, the movie has been turned into a vehicle for star Jolie, and Pearl has become, as she says, “a cameo in his own murder”—and a bland, boring cameo at that, unlike the exceptionally witty and charismatic Pearl—is hardly surprising. Nor is the fact that details of the kidnapping are botched to make it seem more dramatic and simplistic, such as having Pearl receive (and ignore) a series of three warnings not to meet in a public place with the man he was due to interview.

Never happened, says Nomani. But it makes for a more easily “readable” story line, so who cares if it trashes Pearl’s memory by insulting his intelligence and caution?

Not the movie industry. Nor should the somewhat naive Nomani have expected it to. After all, this is the same Hollywood that cast the non-athlete (and left-handed) Tony Perkins as right-handed Red Sox player Jimmy Piersall, that simplified and distorted Gandhi’s life with tremendous inaccuracy to the tune of eight Oscars, that provides a home for Oliver Stone’s “historical” shenanigans. Why would Daniel Pearl’s story be any different?

If war is not the answer, what is?

The New Neo Posted on by

You’ve all seen those posters and bumper stickers: “War is not the answer.”

You’ve also seen discussions of why those sporting them are incorrect; war has solved some things and provided answers to certain questions—such as whether, for example, there would be a 1000-year Reich.

I’ve spent some time puzzling over the use of the “war is not the answer” mantra. For some people—the less thoughtful—I think it’s merely a kneejerk catch phrase, a method to decorate a car in a way that says, “I’m a good person, not a bloodthirsty sonofabitch like those who advocate war.” This group (and I have no idea what percentage of the whole it might represent) has no particular understanding of history, especially the history of warfare, and no real thought about the limitations of the perfectibility of human nature.

And then there are those who really don’t have much interest in pacifism, but have an ultra-Leftist political agenda that an alliance with pacifists serves. These people see pacifists as a subset of the category “useful idiots” that they’ve found so very helpful over time.

That leaves us with the third category, the one that interests me most, the committed and relatively thoughtful and well-meaning people who sustain a hope that, although war will sometimes happen, they can promote a set of programs that will lead to a world in which war will be resorted to less and less. I will summarize their position by saying that, although they understand that war sometimes has provided short-term answers to certain questions (such as the one posited above about the Third Reich), it has never provided a long-term answer to the problem of human intra-species aggression on a large scale, and each war has introduced new problems in its wake that lead to further war.

In other words, when members of this third group say “War is not the answer” their accent is on the word “the.” War isn’t not the final answer to the problems of human conflict, and although it may appear to solve some things, other problems are bound to arise that will lead to future wars.

Well, excuse me but: duh. Or to put it more politely: there are no solutions to the problem of human conflict that will eliminate the need for force at times, just as there are virtually no large-scale societies that can do away with police or prisons.

The advent of the atomic age gave pacifists—and their hopes for a way to end war—a boost, and understandably so. As dreadful as war has been in the first half of the twentieth century, with the invention of nuclear weapons it became far worse to contemplate. Early on in the atomic age the hope was that nations would be sane enough that the prospect of mutually assured destruction would be a powerful deterrent to any war, and that therefore—paradoxically—the very power of the weapons would be the reason they were unlikely to be used in the future.

Amazingly enough, so far that hope has been borne out; Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still both the first and the last times nuclear weapons have actually been detonated on a populace.

But that does not mean war has ended; sub-atomic conflicts have regularly sprung up around the world, and many of those are presently of the asymmetrical variety, involving terrorism and/or guerilla warfare and insurgencies. Another common type of war in recent times has been the internecine inter-tribal, inter-ethnic, and/or inter-religious conflicts of the third world, particularly Africa.

As for nuclear weapons, unfortunately they have recently become tools that seem more likely to be used. We now have an enemy who is less obviously interested in life than in death, and motivated at least in part by apocalyptic religious thinking (example: Iran). We also have another and related enemy that is not a state and therefore has no nation of people to protect, would be difficult to trace a bomb back to, and is driven by the same aforementioned religious motivation and otherwordly emphasis, (examples: al Qaeda and its spawn).

All of this fuels the depth of the desire to find an alternative to war—an alternative that provides not only “an” answer, but “the” answer, in a way that war never can. If you go to websites that promote pacifism, such as this one run by a Quaker lobby, you’ll find attempts to explain what that alternative solution should be.

What you find there, of course, is not “the” answer, either. This is no surprise, because if you hold the more tragic (and, I believe, more realistic) view of human nature that I happen to, then you’re not looking for “the” answer, because you believe there never can be one.

There is really nothing so terribly wrong with the “solutions” offered there (except for reliance on the corrupt and/or incompetent UN), at least as far as they go, which isn’t all that far. The Quaker website stresses the idea of prevention, of nipping things in the bud before they ever get to that point. Nice idea, and I’m sure in some cases it works, but the programs described mostly focus on preventing one type of conflict, the so-called “mass humanitarian crises” such as the Rwandan slaughter. Although the role of the UN and NGOs in Darfur doesn’t indicate things have been going very well in this regard, there is some evidence of success (follow the link and scroll down to number four) in a very limited and circumscribed number of cases, none of which involve the so-called “war on terror” or Islamic totalitarianism.

But let’s not fool ourselves. Pope John Paul II negotiating a deal between Argentina and Chile over the Beagle Channel, or a social service society soothing the seething shantytowns of Ahmedabad in India through street plays and festivals—laudable though such things may be—aren’t about to give us “the answer” to the current question of what to do to counter the threat that militant Islamic fundamentalist totalitarianism represents now, including both its national and its terrorist manifestations.

Prevention is wonderful, and I’m all for it. It’s good to exercise aerobically, to eat healthfully, try to avoid carcinogens, and to get your vaccinations. The disease model dictates, however, that although an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, human beings rarely follow all the rules, and even those who do can end up with the shock of cancer or some other dread disease. When that happens, cure is worth many ounces of prevention, because prevention is no longer possible. And treatment must occur quickly.

Does that mean that someone who is diagnosed with cancer should give up practicing good health habits? Of course not; the two—prevention and treatment—work in tandem, and healthful practices can make treatment more effective. That’s why the “treatment” known as war does not preclude peace efforts such as those described on the Quaker website, as well.

War as a treatment? Yes—an exceptionally drastic one that should only be resorted to when there are no good alternatives, or when time has run out on the ones that might have worked in the past (the problem, of course, is deciding when that has happened). And like all drastic treatments it has many side effects, and can backfire and cause worse problems than those it attempts to address.

With war, every now and then there’s a cure, of course—World War II as a “cure” for Nazism, for example (although of course small pockets of that particular disease remain). But although World War II “cured” Nazism on a worldwide basis, the side effects were profound and devastating, and its aftermath fostered the growth of another already-existing disease: Communism.

Yes, indeed, war is not the answer to the problems that bring about armed conflict, and war is probably the least benign “treatment” on earth. But when prevention (and our very incomplete knowledge of how to accomplish it) has failed, sometimes it’s the only answer.

[ADDENDUM: In one of those examples of simultaneity in which the blogosphere is especially rich, Shrinkwrapped writes today on the psychological underpinnings of this sort of ultra-pacifist point of view.]

Who put the Cialis in socialism?

The New Neo Posted on by

Ymarsakar asks why my blog refuses to accept any and all comments featuring the word “socialism.”

Well, I certainly had no idea! It was never my intent! I wasn’t even there! Blame it on WordPress! Blame it on….Cialis.

Cialis? The erectile dysfunction drug? Whatever does being “ready when the moment is right” have to do with socialism—or socialists, apparently another word inadvertently banned from this site?

One could make an argument for some sort of link between the two: for an awfully long time, socialism has been waiting—and ready—for the moment that has somehow never quite come (and yet has seemed to socialists to be on its way), the moment that will prove once and for all that socialism is the superior method of running a country.

But no; the true connection is the fact that (as most of you may have figured out by now) the word “cialis” is embedded in the word “socialism.”

I currently have blocked about fifty drug names on this site; if I hadn’t done so, there might be upwards of a fifty or so pharmaceutical spam comments here a day. Cialis, of course, is one of them, and the unintended consequence of blocking Cialis is to block socialism.

So as an experiment, and in the interests of free speech (wouldn’t want to be accused by the Left of blocking that), I have temporarily and experimentally unblocked Cialis. Therefore you are free to discuss socialism and socialists to your hearts’ delight, without resorting to such ruses as soci@list.

And you’re free to discuss Cialis as well.

The unintended consequences of teaching expurgated history

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t know about you, but I hated the subject “history” in school. School history courses were almost uniformly boring, and this is a source of wonder to me because history itself is almost unfailingly fascinating and even gripping. To make history dull, one has to work at it.

But work at it they did. They purposely left out (and continue to leave out—although what is deleted now is different than it used to be) the good stuff.

In my day, what was left out was anything that was too complex, and also anything that conflicted with the perception of America as a righteous and near-perfect place—which included any personal foibles and imperfections of the Founding Fathers (and of course, anything remotely related to sex). What’s left out today is anything that isn’t politically correct on either side (which of course is virtually everything of truth) and anything that might make the US look good (I’m engaging in only a slight bit of hyperbole there, I’m afraid).

In short, anything of interest is left out, as well as anything that would meaningfully connect the teaching of history with the problems we are facing today—which would be what would make it most interesting and most helpful.

The consequences of putting history into a blender and turning it into bland, featureless, and easily digestible pap is not just having students who are bored to tears, although that would be bad enough. Nor is it just that history textbooks now have a strong bias on the Left, although that isn’t a good thing either. The worst effect is that such an approach to the teaching of history creates an ignorant and naive populace that is even more condemned than would otherwise be the case to repeat history’s errors.

I’m convinced, for example, that failure to properly teach the history of the wars that we have fought in the past—their complications, controversies, and errors, as well as what led to them and what was accomplished by them—has led to unrealistic and simplistic expectations of warfare itself.

And, come to think of it, perhaps this is not an unintended consequence; it’s possible that the current overarching Leftist bias of the writers of today’s textbooks include a pacifist agenda, of which this is part.

Or perhaps not. I’m not sure it matters all that much, because the effects are the same: a populace that cannot understand what is happening now because it cannot intelligently analyze its own past and apply it to the present. Of course, how to apply that past to the present is a subject on which reasonable—and even well-informed—people can and will differ.

But even though we can never know the truth of what happened in the past with absolute certainly, we can most definitely approximate that truth far better than we’ve been doing so far in our classrooms. Our future may depend on it.

Getting to the pointe

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a pair of my old pointe shoes.

They are from about twenty years ago, the last time I took a ballet class. I threw out the innumerable other ones, myriad shapes and sizes and makes purchased in my longstanding but unfulfilled quest for the perfect pointe shoe.

Dancing on point (or, in the French terminology of ballet, “en pointe”) is one of the elements that distinguishes ballet from other forms of dance in most people’s minds. And yet most ballet training occurs in soft shoes, and men ordinarily never go on pointe. But it’s the thing that most little girls who start ballet lessons dream about, as well as probably being the most misunderstood, painful, and transformative aspect of ballet.

Pointe shoes help a bit in enabling the dancer to perform the strange feat of rising to the very tips of her toes. But it’s actually the foot itself that must be trained and shaped in such a way as to be strong enough to support the entire body on that tiny pedestal. And not just support that body, but support it as it moves through space in an extraordinary way, twists and pivots and turns and balances and even throws itself purposely off-balance at times. And, although dancers are thin, they still have enough bulk and bone and sinew and muscle that their poor feet—and especially the toes—become sorely battered in the attempt.

Nevertheless, the little girl who studies ballet looks forward to the day she will get her first pointe shoes. For me it happened around the age of nine, after several years of training. We waited patiently in a line while the ballet teacher traced in pencil the bare feet of each of us on a special paper she’d laid on the floor, signing each outline with the name of the girl whose foot it represented. The handmade shoes (usually by Italian artisans) arrived a month or two later, shiny and pastel pink satin, and as yet untouched and unmarred. That would not last long, nor would the pristine state of our feet.

Pointe shoes, as you can see from the above photo of mine, are not really foot-shaped. Like the Chinese custom of foot-binding, the idea is to alter nature rather than bow to it. The toes are stuffed into the tapering box and conform to its sleek shape. A typical result is here (not my feet, by the way, I’m happy to report):

Although the effect of dancing on pointe is esthetically pleasing, you can see that the naked unadorned ballet dancer’s foot tends to be anything but. It’s a demonstration of a dirty little secret: like many aspects of ballet, going on pointe hurts. For some aspirants, this is the point (pun intended) at which they leave the study of ballet, perhaps to make a lateral move to modern dance (ordinarily barefoot), perhaps to the pursuit of sports or even couch-potatohood. Others master the discipline of dancing on the tips of their toes and come to ignore the pain for the incredible sensation of having a body that has mastered something both difficult and transcendent.

Is this masochism? It can be, but for most dancers it’s not. Not just ballet, but all sports and many arts (such as, for example, playing a musical instrument) are inherently physical, and they nearly always put the body through movements that are unnatural and stressful for the sake of achievement, or beauty, or both. Human beings seem to be constructed to strive for that sort of thing.

For the duration

The New Neo Posted on by

In my series on al-Marri and beyond, I made some suggestions for taking prisoners in this conflict. They involved the concept of incarcerating people “for the duration,” a standard practice in warfare. But we face a special problem in this particular struggle: how is end of the “duration” going to be determined, and are we prepared to detain people in a conflict that could easily last decades?

It’s true that for any war we never know the length of “the duration” in advance; not exactly, and sometimes not even generally. WWI is a case in point, and a typical one for its times: initially it was thought by most on both sides it would all be over quickly, and yet it dragged on and on, and was ended only by armistice. But it did end after “only” five years (although some would say WWII in some ways represented the unfinished business of WWI).

Our attitudes have changed so much that nowadays, when a war begins, people shout “quagmire” before (or shortly after) the first exchange of hostilities. But there’s a certain point they are making, absurd as it may seem, and that is that the current run of asymmetrical wars against an implacable and religiously fanatical foe, dealing not in regular armies but in guerilla and terrorist tactics, dictate that the wars in which we engage these days will ordinarily be very long, even if the formal warfare between the ordinary armies that might be involved tends to be very short. Failure to recognize that the “informal” hostilities will go on and on (and I think that, in some ways, the Bush administration failed to recognize that in its behavior, even though it paid lip service to it in its rhetoric) is a grievous error.

In addition, the duration is long partly because of the broken societies and political systems involved in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and the need to rebuild and change those systems in some basic ways. When WWII began, the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe was not envisioned as being part of it, nor was the long occupation of Germany and Japan. If you take these events into consideration, that war was very long indeed (we already know it was very harsh and bloody), and the aftermath, of course, included the Cold War and the long struggle involved in the division of the world into free and Communist.

This article about the legal fine points of the war against Islamic totalitarianism points out that, whatever we call the incarcerated terrorists/militants—illegal enemy combatants or POWs (a status they do not qualify for, but could receive if we decided to bestow it)—the “for the duration” conundrum comes into play, and raises the specter of keeping them indefinitely. This is certainly a unique prospect in recent history, and a disconcerting one that makes many (including myself) uneasy. And yet it is difficult to see a way out of it.

We may not be happy with the prospect of a lengthy duration for the hostilities is facing us. But that’s the way it is. The timetable has been set not by us, but by an unusually patient enemy who sees history in terms of centuries, not years.

Abbas and peace: fed up with “dialogue?”

The New Neo Posted on by

Do I detect a new tone in the rhetoric of Mahmoud Abbas, or is it just wishful thinking on my part?

He’s reported to have issued some stinging criticism of his former “partners” in the ill-fated “unity” government of Palestine, Hamas.

Maybe it’s the murder of so many colleagues. Maybe it’s that it got very personal this time—“this bomb’s for Abu Mazen [Abbas],” a video shows men purported to be Hamas assassins (oh, sorry, “militants,” according to the linked CNN article) saying as they plot his murder. Maybe it’s that he sees his opportunity to get some traction as head of the West Bank, a traction that utterly eluded him before as the titular head of the coalition government.

We’ll see. But one sentence certainly had me (and his audience, his followers in Ramallah) applauding: There will be no dialogue with Hamas no matter what.

Sounds about right. Of course, dialogue with Fatah (of which Abbas is the head, heir to founder Arafat), used to be contraindicated as well, and led inexorably to fake peace talks in which Arafat could not accept reasonable offers, and then the horrifically bloody terrorist excesses of the Second Intifada.

Now chickens, as they say, have come home to roost for Abbas and Fatah. They were content to wink at the violence as long as it wasn’t directed at them. I take no joy in this, but my hope is that something about being the target of the viciousness they spawned will cause some sort of sea-change in Fatah itself. A person can hope, right? It would be good to have a true partner for peace, after all these years.

Dying to leave: Palestine, Lahore, and fanaticism

The New Neo Posted on by

Donald Sensing notes that since 2000, the beginning of the Second Intifada (which followed the breakdown of Camp David, when Arafat failed to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity), Palestinians have desired to escape from Gaza and the West Bank in greater numbers. Many have filed to leave, but lately a Muslim cleric—actually, the Palestinian Authority’s chief mufti—has become alarmed at the prospect and issued a fatwa forbidding them to do so.

The desire to get away is hardly surprising; the place has been mired in ever-escalating ruin and murder for quite some time now. I remain convinced that the majority of people (even Palestinian Muslims, who’ve been brainwashed into a cult of death and dying for a long time) still want to live and have a more pleasant experience while they’re about it. Emigrating from Palestine probably sounds like an excellent way to do that.

I’m also not surprised that the PA cleric issued a fatwa to try to stop them, although I have no idea how much he will be listened to. The prospect of the local population shrinking down to near-nothingness would be an interesting twist on the old saying, from “what if they gave a war and nobody came?” to “what if they gave a war and nobody stayed?”

The PA cleric’s admonition rang a bell with me, and I realized that sound emanated from what would appear to be an unlikely source: Gandhi. Yes, folks, that man of peace (whom I’ve written about at great length before, here), had a similar message in a similar time of civil war.

Of course, Gandhi’s motive was utterly different from that of the PA cleric; you might say it was the opposite. But the effect of his plea—if heeded—would have, strangely enough, been the same: to keep potentially victimized people from saving their own skins, and to what purpose?

Gandhi was speaking to Hindus on the occasion of the partition of India and Pakistan, an event marked by migrations and horrific violence on both sides. Gandhi, who had opposed partition, reacted in the following manner:

During [Gandhi’s] prayer meeting on 1 May 1947, he prepared the Hindus and Sikhs for the anticipated massacres of their kind in the upcoming state of Pakistan with these words: “I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. I would be a real sinner if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek revenge. I must die without rancour. You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain.” (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol.LXXXVII, p.394-5) It is left unexplained what purpose would be served by this senseless and avoidable surrender to murder.

Even when the killing had started, Gandhi refused to take pity on the Hindu victims, much less to point fingers at the Pakistani aggressors. More importantly for the principle of non-violence, he failed to offer them a non-violent technique of countering and dissuading the murderers. Instead, he told the Hindu refugees from Pakistan to go back and die. On 6 August 1947, Gandhiji commented to Congress workers on the incipient communal conflagration in Lahore thus: “I am grieved to learn that people are running away from the West Punjab and I am told that Lahore is being evacuated by the non-Muslims. I must say that this is what it should not be. If you think Lahore is dead or is dying, do not run away from it, but die with what you think is the dying Lahore”¦

“Die with the dying Lahore” is a phrase that resonates with the ring of fanaticism. The PA mufti is also a fanatic, dedicated to an idea of war that is very different from Gandhi’s. Gandhi was a fanatic dedicated to an ideal of peace—but one that uses methods that run so counter to human nature it can never be realized on earth, and in the name of that dream he made suggestions that can only be described as insane.

Despite the desire of most people to continue living, human beings can—and regularly do—lay down their lives for a greater good. That is something we all applaud, and we call those people “heroes.” But there is nothing heroic in staying in a failed and miserable country being torn apart by a civil and/or gang war between corrupt and vicious leaders, just as there is nothing heroic in being asked to stay in a country to be slaughtered by marauding mobs. Fanatics will sometimes ask it of us, nevertheless.

Stand by your man?—Ségolé¨ne Royal, Hillary, and political wives

The New Neo Posted on by

The French legislative elections were a victory for Sarkozy and his party, but not the sort of landslide that was predicted. PJ’s correspondent in Paris, Nidra Poller, reports that the Socialist Party is far from moribund.

Ségolé¨ne Royal, failed Socialist candidate for President, took the opportunity to drop what was not much of a bombshell, since rumors had been swirling for months: the news that she and her—er—partner Francois Hollande are separating (they can’t be divorcing because they were never married, despite having been together for longer than most marriages these days—about thirty years—and having four children).

In classic French fashion, she announced that he was having an affair. In classic American fashion, she announced that she is releasing a book about her campaign in which she tells, if not all, then at least quite a bit about her marital woes.

Royal’s situation points out some of the pressures of the political marriage (or marriage equivalent), especially one in which the personal merges with the public. Royal and Hollande were not just quasi-spouses, they were colleagues, both leaders in the Socialist Party and rivals for the top position. That gives them a slight resemblance to another highly political couple whose sailing has been far from smooth, Bill and Hillary Clinton. The difference (aside from the fact that the Clintons are married, and remain so) is that the Clintons’ political ascendances worked in sequence, not simultaneously, and so they were probably able to avoid being rivals in the same way as Royal and Hollande.

Even without such overt rivalries, politics can be very hard on marriages, quasi or otherwise. In the olden days of my youth, when divorce was the kiss of death for an aspirant to high office, couples made various sorts of practical and emotional compromises to stay together despite affairs and incompatibilities, and the fact that they might have separated but for the political ambitions of one of their members (back then, it was almost always the man). Politicians, being attracted to power (among other things), were also fairly notorious for their attraction to one of the perks of power, sex (none other than the not-so-telegenic Henry Kissinger was referring to this when he said, in those pre-Viagra days, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac”).

Political wives have traditionally had to put up with quite a bit of carryings-on, and to keep a stiff upper lip as they did so (think Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Eleanor Roosevelt). Their husbands’ affairs might not have been common knowledge, at least, so they were spared the public humiliation of Hillary Clinton, but privately it must have been hard. As this piece on Lady Bird says, however, she didn’t consider herself a martyr:

[Texas governor] Connally wrote, “[Lady Bird] handled the affair, I suppose, as well as such things can be handled: by behaving as if there were nothing to handle.” Lady Bird has always refused to play the role of the wronged wife. “I am not a saint,” sighed Lady Bird during an interview, implying that she bears some responsibility for the problems in her marriage. “All I can say is I had a great love affair. No matter what, I knew he loved me best.”

That’s one way to look at it, I suppose, although not the way most women today would see it. But it’s the way most old-fashioned political wives navigated through a difficult situation.

And in deed, if not in her heart (and who knows, despite constant public and press speculation, what is actually in her heart?), Hillary Clinton has followed in their footsteps and in the footsteps of other political wives, repairing—perhaps for the sake of ambition, in this case hers—a relationship that could have been irretrievably broken.

Royal has left her man, it seems—or perhaps she had no choice in the matter, and he left her. But in a touch of irony, Hillary actually has “stood by her man,” as in the Tammy Wynette song she famously (and sarcastically) quoted in a “60 Minutes” interview during her husband’s 1992 Presidential campaign. One thing is for sure, however: she hasn’t “stayed home and baked cookies and had teas,” another Hillary quote from that era—although many of her enemies probably wish she had.

[NOTE: By the way the linked article on the Johnson courtship, wedding, and marriage makes fascinating reading.]