Welcome back, Nelson Ascher

The New Neo Posted on by

I am very happy to announce that Nelson Ascher is back and blogging at his old address, Europundits.

If you’re unfamiliar with Ascher, it’s probably because he’s been away from blogging for quite some time. After several years of fairly regular blogging, his entries became almost nonexistent for the first part of 2005, and then totally dried up. Apparently, work and family sorrow intervened: specifically, the death of his elderly father.

He was one of my favorite bloggers back when I was a rabid consumer of blogs and not yet a producer. When I first set up my own blog I put Ascher on my blogroll immediately. I kept him there all this time mainly out of respect, long after I assumed he’d stopped blogging forever. I’ve been thinking I really should get around to deleting that link, and then–lo and behold!–I happened to idly click on it today, apropos of nothing, and discovered to my surprise and delight that he was writing again.

You may ask: who’s Nelson Ascher? He’s Brazilian, for starters. Despite the name of his blog “Europundits”, he now resides (as best I can determine) in Sao Paulo primarily, although he was living in Europe when he began his blog some years ago.

Ascher is not only a blogger. He is also a poet, in fact one of Brazil’s best-known and highly regarded; also an essayist, journalist, and translator. His style of writing in his English-language blog is forthright, fluid, bold, and conversational, all at once.

Ascher is the child of Holocaust survivors who fled Hungary after the war and emigrated to Brazil in the early fifties, with a brief stop in Israel along the way. He is a Brazilian native, but that parental history informs much of what he writes and is part of his unique perspective. Ascher is wide-ranging, as you might expect: he muses on politics, poetry, and whatever happens to suit his fancy and catch his interest.

Of special interest to me is the fact that Ascher is another post 9/11 “changer.” A liberal all of his life until that event, he has described his change thusly:

Look, I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in the supernatural.

But let’s say I’m walking along a deserted street around midnight and I see a vampire, with extra-long canines, sucking blood from a girl’s neck. There’s a mirror somewhere close by where I can see the girl but not the vampire. Then the girl reaches for a crucifix and, thouching the vampire with it, burns his skin and makes him run away. I know I’m not under the effect of booz or drugs. Later, as I get in touch with her, she confirms the story. People living where the event took place saw it from their windows and they also confirm it. Let’s say I reach logically the conclusion there actually was a real vampire right there.

Now, I won’t be able to say that my worldview remains the same as before and that what happened was just a meaningless exception to it….

Before 911 I was a social-democrat, a liberal. I thought the worst things in human history were either over of confined to small isolated groups operating in the world remotest places. There would be no nuclear war, world war, genocides in the developed world, mainstream anti-Semitism in Europe, large scale religious wars and so on anymore .

We lived in a new age of reason and human rights. Most of mankind had reached rational maturity.

On 911, however, I had to repeat with TS Eliot: “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” or “Humankind cannot bear much reality.”

I spent a month or so coming to terms with the fact that I had to change my whole worldview, that it wasn’t just a matter of some derranged terrorists and of an isolated incident.

My view of Europe and the Muslims, democracy and dictatorship, the Arab-Israeli conflict, human rights and the Euro-American left, the UN and the EU, of the late 20th century and the post-Cold War world, Clinton and Bush and Chirac and Blair and Schré¶der and Putin, of religion and secularism, of many intellectuals, writers, philosophers and movie-makers, even of human nature had to change.

There was almost nothing in my mind that didn’t have to be seriously reconsidered. This was the meaning of “everything has changed” for me: there actually are mosters, vampires, werewolves, death-cults and, besides, people I considered perfectly reasonable and rational were their objective allies and rooted for their victory.

That gives you a bit of the special flavor of Ascher’s style of thinking and writing. I’ve missed his voice in the blogosphere, and I offer a hearty welcome on its return.

[ADDENDUM: I wrote the following in the comments section, in response to those who felt that Ascher’s post-9/11 change was motivated by fear. I thought it was important enough to reproduce it here in the main thread:

I am quite puzzled at those who assume Ascher’s “change” experience was motivated by fear. That’s not my impression at all.

There is not a word of fear in his essay, at least as I see it. There is merely shock at the existence of people whose motives and actions are far worse than he had expected, and a resultant abandonment of his previous idea that we are all rational, reasonable, and kindly-disposed actors here. And an amazement that many of his seemingly rational and kindly friends were rooting for the victory of those who would be out to destroy us and the virtues and accomplishments of the Enlightenment.

This is what caused him to change his view of the world: the knowledge that the world was different than what he had thought it to be.

I also think it’s interesting that some of you are so eager to leap on the bandwagon of fear as an explanation. This seems to be, as I wrote here, a newly popular way to slam those who have undergone the change. But it totally ignores what’s going on here.

Perhaps what’s going on with people such as myself and Nelson Ascher is just too threatening, and it is easier to chalk it all up to some sort of fearful reactivity rather than a cognitive reorganization, based on facts.

I would like to add that you may not agree with that cognitive reorganization, and you may even dispute the facts, but don’t distort and belittle the motivation and the process by which the change occurred. If you’ve read my “change” series, you should know better than that.]

Tolerance and intolerance: the anti-cartoon jihad

The New Neo Posted on by

So far I haven’t written about the recent uproar sparked by the publication of cartoon depictions of Mohammed. It’s been covered so thoroughly by others that there wasn’t anything I felt I needed to add.

Especially good roundups and discussions are to be found at Michelle Malkin’s blog (just scroll down; there are quite a few), at Alexandra’s All Things Beautiful (see this and this), as well as at Gates of Vienna (scroll down for many posts).

But it seems I feel the need to add a few thoughts of my own.

What percentage of European Moslems is represented by the fiery protesters, the ones calling for death and destruction? (Please take a look at these photos to see the sort of thing I’m talking about). I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone knows. I tend to think most people lack a natural bent for fanaticism, so my guess is that they are not in the majority.

But that’s just a guess. More importantly, it may be irrelevant. If an extremist minority is sizeable enough, angry enough, active enough, and well-armed enough, it can do a great deal of harm; especially if the majority is silent, and is cowed by that minority.

So I’m really not interested in speculating on what the majority of Moslems in Europe or even in a moderate country like Indonesia believe, and I’m even willing to concede for the sake of argument that they’re not in sympathy with the more extreme protestors. What’s far more important is that the movement which–for want of a better term–I’ll call fanatical Islamicist jihadists (I tried “Islamofascists” for a while, but I’ve since decided to abandon it as an imprecise use of the word “Fascist”) is plenty large, active enough to be a force, angry enough to be taken seriously as a threat, and appears to be seeking to enhance its weaponry (Iran, for example).

So we need to pay attention, and not make excuses or stick our heads in the sand.

I remember back when the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was issued–oh, those innocent days when my ignorance was bliss!–the calls for his death seemed to be a mysterious and surprising anomaly. It was declared by the mullahs of Iran, after all, strange figures who didn’t seem at the time to represent much of anything except their own medieval ways, the law of the land only in Iran.

But that fatwa seems to have represented the rumblings of a strain of Islam that has since become bolder, more widespread, and more vocal. In Europe in particular, this strain has been widely catered to in the name of tolerance and diversity. But the Europeans should have recognized far sooner that this may be another case of feeding an alligator in hopes that it will eat you last.

And that’s because alligators are never sated; they just grow stronger and hungrier when fed. Islamicist fanatics in Europe have sensed that they themselves just might be (in Bin Laden’s memorable phrase) the strong horse and the Europeans the weak. Secular liberal Enlightenment notions of freedom of speech have not caught on with the fanatic Islamicists (no surprise there), probably much to most Europeans’ shock. Or, rather, to fanatic Islamicists, European freedom of speech is a useful tool–good when it supports Moslem causes, bad when it does not.

I’ve written before that one pitfall of tolerant societies is tolerance of the intolerant. When all alternate beliefs are respected and supported, what happens to those who, in the name of the tolerance of others for them, seek to impose their beliefs that freedom of speech be limited to that which does not offend them?

At that point a society must choose, and that’s the point Europe is facing at the moment. I have written about this “tolerance of intolerance” question before, here. But I think it bears repeating:

Tolerance should not be tolerant of intolerance, or it sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Why do I call the Moslem demonstrators “intolerant?” Well, take a look at the posters and their slogans, for starters. For an offense of “mere words,” they are demanding the death penalty (unlike, for example, demonstators against the “piss-Christ” art exhibit in Brooklyn. The “piss-Christ” controversy, however, is the closest analogy I can think of in which Christians are making the demands. I hope to deal with the similarities and differences between the present controversy and that earlier one in a subsequent post; the issues involved are so huge that if I were to discuss them here, it would make this post even more unwieldy than it’s already turning out to be).

The intolerance of Islamicist extremists runs very deep: they feel that they should be able to impose their own standards on the European societies they have entered but not embraced. In their successful attempt–encouraged by European tolerance–to keep their own customs and religion and culture, they have failed to adopt the most important tenet of Enlightenment thought: the idea that they cannot dictate their own mores to others.

There are extremists in every religion, to be sure. These extremists ordinarily believe that others who don’t follow their extreme ways are sinners. Often, they also believe that others who don’t follow their ways will be punished, either in this life or the afterlife. But even among these religious extremists, the vast majority believes that each individual decides these things for him/herself, and that the extremists cannot demand that others follow their ways or die. The extremists may indeed feel morally superior to others in their customs and beliefs, and seek to convert people to those beliefs. But that’s where it usually ends.

For example, some religions prohibit card-playing or dancing, but only for those who have embraced that religion. The esoteric and doctrinal rules of conduct for each religion are ordinarily limited to practitioners of that religion, and enforcement is ordinarily through persuasion and threats of divine punishment, as well as ostracism at times.

Fanatical Islam is quite different. It is the only religion I’m aware of that offers death as the punishment for apostasy (this offense, as well as blasphemy, was the reason behind the anti-Rushdie fatwa). And please don’t bring up the fact that in medieval times there were similar penalties against blasphemy in Christianity; we are not talking history here, we are talking about the present. There is no modern movement of any size in any other major world religion that has failed to embrace tolerance of other religions to the degree that Islam has failed to do so, and none that prescribes the Draconian death penalty for leaving the fold.

Because Islam is a religion, its extremists have gotten a great many passes in the name of tolerance. But not everything about a religion must be tolerated, simply because it is a religious belief (in fact, I’ve written an entire post on this topic). However, many fanatical Islamists feel they should not only be tolerated, but that the secular societies in which they live have a duty to accede to the demands of Islam–for example, that the prophet Mohammed not be depicted in a cartoon in any way that could be construed as negative.

That this demand conflicts with freedom of speech is of no import to those who are demonstrating. They believe their cause to be a higher one which trumps freedom of speech. They either do not understand–or do not care–that the societies in which they live disagree.

But we shouldn’t be too surprised that they think they can make these demands, and that Europe will listen. And indeed, who could blame them? Everything in their experience has led them to that notion. In retrospect, the furor over the alleged Koran-abuse incidents at Guantanamo was merely a warm-up act. Islamicist extremists not only think that their beliefs should triumph over the Enlightenment beliefs of their new countries for reasons of moral and religious superiority, but they believe that their beliefs will do so because their experience has been that Europeans will almost always capitulate.

Whether this capitulation by European countries is in the name of tolerance and respect, or of fear of the consequences, is probably not of great importance to the Islamicist extremists. What’s important is that they think they have found the soft underbelly of Western Enlightenment nations, and plan to exploit it.

As I wrote earlier:

It’s like one of those brain twisters–those paradoxes or syllogisms or whatever they were called–in a course I took so long ago and dropped before I flunked it: symbolic logic. The idea is that, if one takes a certain principle to its extreme, it very often will be found to contain an internal contradiction… Tolerance applied without any distinction can become a trap. That way lies madness–not to mention the seeds of the destruction of tolerant societies themselves.

There are certain universal legal principles that are based at least partly on religious ones: the prohibition against murder, for example. But our Western society has separated church and state, and therefore those religious rules that have not been adopted into the secular legal system are not going to be enforced by that system. Blasphemy has not been a crime in the US for an awfully long time, for example.

Likewise, those acts that violate that secular legal system–for example, polygamy in Utah; or the refusal of some Seventh Day Adventists to allow their children needed blood transfusions –are, at least theoretically, prosecutable, even though those practicing these acts may be citing religious beliefs in their own defense. Although people in our society are most definitely entitled to their religious beliefs, they are not entitled to act on those beliefs in ways that violate secular law.

Similarly, they are not allowed to forcefully and violently impose those beliefs on others who do not share them. Abortion is a good example. Those who oppose abortion out of religious conviction are allowed to preach and to speak out against abortion, and also to peacefully demonstrate against it. Most certainly, they are allowed to refuse to have abortions themselves–no one is forcing abortions on them. But when a few–a very few–religious extremists cross the line into the murder of or injury to abortionists or their clients, then those religious extremists are to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The bottom line is that members of a society must adhere to the rules of that society or face the consequences. Islamicist fanatics in Europe see their opportunity to remake the rules, and see a chink in the armor of Europe’s Enlightment secularism. How Europe chooses to respond will help to determine the course of its own future, and perhaps much more.

War and the honor of nations

The New Neo Posted on by

I meant to call attention to this post of Callimachus’s when I first read it some days ago. But better late than never.

It’s entitled, “Why We Fight,” and is the usual thoughtful and wide-ranging rumination on history and present events for which Callimachus is known (and, if he’s not known for it, he should be). Read the whole thing, as somebody-or-other says.

Callimachus discusses the fact that wars are ordinarily fought for some combination of fear, profit, honor–and, more recently, idealism. But I was especially interested in his discussion of the concept of honor. It’s probably one of the things that was in my mind back here, when I called attention to Bush’s phrase in his State of the Union speech: there is no honor in retreat.

Some called the phrase empty posturing, a useless slogan. But I think if they had read Callimachus’s piece they might have better understood why it appealed to me. He writes:

The word “honor” itself rarely is heard any more in international contexts, but it lurks under words like “resolve” and “credibility…

Marxist anti-war rhetoric obscured the importance of honor in America’s failed bid to create and sustain an independent South Vietnam. A communist victory in South Vietnam would made no dent in America’s material interests, nor would it make American measurably less secure. Johnson and Kennedy both knew this. But once committed, our honor was at stake. Bin Laden and his ilk certainly understand this; they continually taunt America’s allies in the Middle East with the image of America going back on its word and abandoning its ally in Southeast Asia…”

Callimachus goes on to detail how these different motives have entered into the wars America has fought in the past, including the most recent one in Iraq, in which he says all four motives: fear, profit, honor, and idealism–were at play:

Why did America go to war against Saddam Hussein in 2003? Clearly there was fear. We debate endlessly and frivolously how much the fear turned out to be justified. But the fact remains, no amount of intelligence about Iraq’s weapons and controllinging force on Saddam’s intentions would have been flawless so long as he remained in power. And in that gap between what we know and what we suspect, always would have been fear.

Clearly there was an awareness of the “profit” — the riches of Iraq’s oil. Despite the angry denunciations of “blood for oil,” however, I think the worst the Americans can be accused of is intending to use Iraq’s oil to pay for the war and the reconstruction, which hardly amounts to a crime against humanity. It didn’t work, anyhow.

And clearly there was a question of national honor. Every day Saddam lived to murder and mock, to rape and preen, was felt as an affront to America. It must have been an especial affront to George W. Bush, Colin Powell, and many others in the administration who had failed to topple the dictator in 1991.

There was, indisputably, the Wilsonian ideal, embodied in the “neo-cons” and the liberal interventionists. There are Little Roosevelts in the mix, too, grumbling about the administration’s failure to grasp the hard truths of Realpolitik. And there are triangluations of the positions: “high-minded realists,” for instance, who stand apart from the self-appointed champions of global democracy but who recognize that a stated preference for liberty and justice can be a useful foreign policy tool in the fight against global terror.

Honor is a quaint word, and a protean one: it means different things to different people. One of the things it means is to keep one’s word, and to enforce treaties and agreements. In this way a reputation is gained for reliability. It is this, among other things, that America lost at the end of its long Vietnam travail.

It was the loss of “honor” in this particular sense that Bin Laden was counting on when he attacked the World Trade Center on 9/11. And it is this concept of honor–and honoring one’s word–that is at least part of the reason we cannot retreat from Iraq now.

The specter of Vietnam has been invoked–conjured up, really, as in a seance–almost endlessly during the war in Iraq, whether appropriately or not. But it’s time to put that specter to rest, and to drive a stake into its heart.

Spam poetics

The New Neo Posted on by

I sometimes think that whoever writes spam has a flair for the poetic.

Consider the following, which I received today:

Miss Happiness Umukoro
Abidjan-Cote D’Ivoire

Dear love,

CONFIDENTIAL.
I am Miss Happiness Umukoro. the only Daughter of Late Former Director of Finance, Late Chief Desmond Umukoro,Cote D’Ivoire Diamond and Mining Corporation.I must confess my agitation is real, and my words is my bond, in this proposal. My late father diverted this money meant for purchase of ammunition for my country, during the peak of disastrous civil war…

I don’t know about you, I think there’s something quite musical there. First, the name, worthy of a romance novel (or a porno movie–take your pick): Miss Happiness Umukoro. Then, the euphonious address from which the spam supposedly originates: the Ivory Coast–in French, naturalment.

The salutation, so very important in setting the tone of any letter, is decidedly warm. Perhaps too familiar for a business letter, but certainly bound to grab one’s attention: Dear love.

Then, the damsel in distress theme is set up: the dead father, he of the wonderfully evocative diamond and mining corporation in the Ivory Coast. Next, my very favorite sentence:

I must confess my agitation is real, and my words is my bond, in this proposal.

Who would not wish to rescue Miss Happiness from her confessions and her anxiety, and finally allow her some small measure of the joy that is her birthright, considering her name? And, note the clever use of the word “proposal;” might this proposal not be followed by one more intimate, some day soon, if help is given? A fellow can hope.

The rest of the letter follows the usual course of such matters, as Miss Happiness gets down to business. But she never forgets the romance. After she signs off, she closes with the following tender sentiment:

i Love you so much.

Note in particular the creative use/misuse of capitalization: Miss Happiness is humble, and so she employs the lower-case e.e. cummings “i” instead of the boldly egocentric “I” of general use. But love–ah, love! It’s capitalized, even though it falls in mid-sentence.

It’s almost a little valentine. A bit premature, but no doubt heartfelt.

It’s your Party and you’ll cry if you want to

The New Neo Posted on by

Via The Anchoress, I read Peggy Noonan’s column from today’s Wall Street Journal. Noonan thinks Bush’s State of the Union speech was okay, but mainly a rehash of past positions. If you agree with Bush, you agreed with the speech; if not, you didn’t. That’s probably about right.

Noonan went on to observe:

It was the first State of the Union Mr. Bush has given in which Congress seemed utterly pre-9/11 in terms of battle lines drawn. Exactly half the chamber repeatedly leapt to its feet to applaud this banality or that. The other half remained resolutely glued to its widely cushioned seats. It seemed a metaphor for the Democratic Party: We don’t know where to stand or what to stand for, and in fact we’re not good at standing for anything anyway, but at least we know we can’t stand Republicans…

The venom is bubbling on websites like Kos, where Tuesday afternoon, after the Alito vote, various leftists wrote in such comments as “F— our democratic leaders,” “Vichy Democrats” and “F— Mary Landrieu, I hope she drowns.” The old union lunch-pail Democrats are dead, the intellects of the Kennedy and Johnson era retired or gone, and this–I hope she drowns–seems, increasingly, to be the authentic voice of the Democratic base.

I, too, have noticed an increase in anger lately on the Democratic/liberal and/or leftist side, at least on the blogs. It includes an influx of commenters here. My once-proud party seems to be sinking ever faster into a sort of quicksand of peevishness and rage, like Rumpelstiltskin stomping himself into the ground.

My perception of so many Democrats in Congress as inane, negative, and immature crystallized when I saw their reaction to Bush’s mention of the failure to pass his Social Security proposals: they stood and cheered. Whether or not Bush’s call for bipartisan action was sincere, the Democrats certainly made themselves look bad in contrast.

The Anchoress received a letter on the subject from one of her readers who is a teacher:

My kids thought it was hysterical when the Demos stood up and applauded themselves for preventing any change to Social Security. They said they were like Wyle E. Coyote, blowing themselves up. Also, when they chose to sit rather than stand when Bush defended the NSA program by saying we won’t sit around waiting to be hit again. The Demos made a bad impression on kids who will be voting in ”˜08 and even, some of them, in ”˜06.

Teacher-blogger Betsy Newmark also pointed out that young people in her high school AP class didn’t see this as the Democrats’ shining hour. She adds:

Many of my students have no intention of voting Republican, but they’re not seeing anything from the Democrats to make them enthusiastic. And these are kids who want to vote and are excited about turning old enough to do so. In that, they’re probably anomalous among young people today. If there is no longer the hatred of Bush to drive young people to the polls, the Democrats might want to think about creating a positive reason for people to want to vote for them, rather than simply voting against Republicans.

It’s not just kids. I, too, would be willing to vote for the right Democratic candidate. But at this point the party itself has reached the lowest and most extreme point that I can remember in my lifetime. The Republicans aren’t looking so hot at the moment either (i.e. Abramoff), so this could be the moment for a Democratic renaissance. I wish the Democrats could find their center again (literally), for the sake of the two-party system in which I believe, if for nothing else. But on Tuesday night I saw absolutely no sign of it.

All Democrats who care about their party should please take note: it may feel good to “vent,” but it doesn’t bode well for the future of the party. The whole world may or may not be watching, but the kids–the future voters–are.

State of the State of the Union

The New Neo Posted on by

I thought the State of the Union speech last night was pretty well done, especially the first–the non-domestic–half. Bush is no Churchill (who is?), but he can speak clearly and forcefully, and he seemed relaxed and confident.

My favorite line: There is no peace in retreat. And there is no honor in retreat.

The first half of the sentence seemed to speak to Bush’s opponents on the left, the “peace at almost any price, hang the consequences” folks. The second seemed addressed to his isolationist opponents on the right who think it’s not our business to intervene in far-off places; they are the ones who might be moved by the appeal to “honor.” He mentioned isolationists explicitly several times in the speech, America rejects the false comfort of isolationism. And he also very explicitly mentioned “radical Islam” as the opponent.

I saw another theme, that of the need for rising above politics, for bipartisan cooperation. Good luck on that one, Mr. Bush.

My favorite line addressed to my former party, the Democrats: Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy. But it can certainly feel like one, can’t it? Especially when you can’t quite come up with another.

But, as often is the case, I saw one speech. The MSM, for the most part, saw another.

In his article on the speech, David Sanger of the Times describes an anxious, weakened Bush on Iraq (note the beginning of the sentence, emphasizing the length of the war):

Three years into the war in Iraq, Mr. Bush tried anew to strike a tone of optimism, saying that “we are in this fight, and we are winning.” But he also bowed to the country’s anxiety about finding a path out of a mission that seems to become harder each day, and he warned anew of the dangers of premature retreat.

Hmmm. Bush tries anew to strike that tone of optimism, despite a “mission that seems to become harder every day.” No evidence is offered of this ever-increasing difficulty; the reader is just supposed to understand it as a tautology. And perhaps to many Times readers, it is–after all, it has been repeated often enough.

Sanger’s piece reads like a column, but it’s on the front page right under the lead article on the speech. And speaking of the lead article, there’s quite a bit of editorializing going on there, too. (This, of course, should come as no surprise.) A few examples:

…Mr. Bush was more tempered and less partisan than a year ago, evidence of his diminished political standing…In foreign policy, Mr. Bush broke no new ground, and used language drawn from previous speeches…The president built on the theme of his second inaugural address, and even in the face of the Hamas victory issued a strong call for democracy and elections in the Middle East…

I especially noticed that first sentence, the idea that, if Bush were more tempered and less partisan in this speech, it must be prima facie evidence of weakness and not of–well, of temperance and non-partisanship. Of course, that could be correct. But notice that authors Bumiller and Nagourney state their speculations about Bush’s motives for the call for nonpartisanship as a foregone conclusion, not a hypothesis.

The coverage is not only critical of Bush (no surprise there), but profoundly cynical about his motives. Now, cynicism about the motives of politicians on either side is certainly not ill-founded. My guess (and this is not really a tentative hypothesis; I’m just stating it that way to be careful) is that such cynicism in the Times is displayed mainly in one direction, towards the Republicans.

But the greater question, for me, is this: is this sort of editorializing, which one can find in virtually every paragraph of the piece, appropriate for a straight news article? My answer is no; it rightly belongs on the editorial page.

Perhaps my brain is getting addled with age and those pernicious neocon vibes, but it seems to me that, in my youth, most newspapers aspiring to journalistic distinction used to respect that difference.

Drafting behind Sam

The New Neo Posted on by

No, not “drafting” as in “the draft;” drafting as in bike racing. In other words: here’s a lazy post of mine.

In case you missed it, here‘s commenter Sam’s handy numerical summary of the basic antiwar positions, presented for your convenience:

I guess we need to be more nuanced when sorting out the anti-war constituency. I know that, as Iraq war supporters, we get tired of being lumped in with the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge all the time. So let’s be fair.

List of Anti-War Categories:
1. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, on moral grounds.
2. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, on legal grounds.
3. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, on religious grounds.
4. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, on political grounds.
5. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, on military grounds.
6. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, because it was Bush’s idea.
7. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, because it distracts us from the real War on Terror.
8. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, because it distracts us from saving the environment, feeding the poor, rescuing hurrican victims, fixing Social Security, etc.
9. People who oppose the Iraq war specifically, on a combination of the previous grounds.
10. People who oppose any war that the Republicans are involved in because of something or other to do with Big Oil or the Military Industrial Complex.
11. People who oppose any war the United States is involved in on any of the previous grounds.
12. People who oppose any war the United States is involved in because the United States is Bad.
13. People who oppose any war the United States is involve in because the United States is Good.
14. People who oppose any war white people are involved in because Western Civilization is Bad.
15. People who oppose any war anyone is involved in because War Doesn’t Solve Anything.
16. People who oppose any sort of definite move anyone’s part because actions have unpredictable consequences and it’s safer to have endless discussions about the nature of problems rather than taking actual steps to solve them.
17. Wussies.

Did I miss any?

OK, now any anti-war people who show up can simply refer to themselves by these handy numbers and we’ll immediately know pretty much where they’re coming from.

Next step: A similarly organized list of pro-war counter-arguments. That will really save some disk space.

It will also keep all of us from having to listen to the same freaking discussions over and over and over that we’ve been enduring since 2003 – evidently without anyone becoming any better or wiser for it.

Imagine a typical comment exchange using this system:

dove01 said…
Hi, I’m a 2, 7, and a bit 13-ish.
2:45 AM, January 32, 2006

sgtslaughter said…
dove01, get real: #14, #7, and #8.
2:46 AM, January 32, 2006

dove01 said…
#8? I just said I was #14.
2:47 AM, January 32, 2006

sgtslaughter said…
Well, #14 is doo-doo.
2:48 AM, January 32, 2006

dove01 said…
Everyone on this blog is stupid.
2:49 AM, January 32, 2006

neo-neo said…
Be nice!
2:50 AM, January 32, 2006

There – my stab at healing the festering wound in America’s body politic. Gonna grab some supper, then sort out that global warming thing.

That could save us all a lot of time and energy.

The silence of the lambs

The New Neo Posted on by

On this recent thread, about Jonathan Steele’s Guardian article concerning the Hamas victory, commenter Shan made the following interesting observation:

I must take exception to your calling the killing of civilians in an Israeli air-strike “accidental.” For someone who claims to care about what words mean, you must realize there is nothing “accidental” about it. The commanders who give the go ahead for a strike know perfectly well that some civilians will also die. They make the calculation that the cost of these deaths is less than the cost of allowing a terrorist to live.

They are probably right, and Israel, alone amongst civilized nations, takes the greatest pains to minimize civilain casualties in what is a war.

But to call it “accidental,” as though it were like a fender bender on the highway, is disingenuous.

I used the word “accidental” in the sense that includes the idea of “unintentional.” The definition of “accidental” is as follows:

Occurring unexpectedly, unintentionally, or by chance.

Shan is correct in pointing out that the innocent deaths from Israel’s targeted bombing of terrorists are not unexpected. But they are most definitely unintentional, unwanted, and undesired.

But Shan introduces a topic that could use further discussion. Rather than to nitpick about the meaning of the word, I think his/her larger intention was to point out that the Israelis who decide to bomb a Palestinian terrorist do know that, although they try incredibly hard to reduce what is known as “collateral damage,” chances are that their bombs will hit more than the intended target. That must be factored into the equation of every strike.

Ah, to have perfectly clean hands! To obtain a magic bullet that targets only the guilty is a wonderful goal indeed. But it is, unfortunately, an unrealistic dream at the moment–although the smarter and smarter the bombs (and intelligence) get, the closer it is to being realized.

The United States, Israel, and most Western states who engage in combat all aim mightily towards that goal. And that goal is getting closer and closer; compared to the messy horror of WWII or even an event as recent as the Gulf War, collateral damage has taken far fewer lives.

But this progress has had has the unintended effect of lowering the bar and raising expectations. Now there are many people who want (and expect!) that civilian (or “innocent”) casualties in war, or in targeted terrorist assassinations, become zero. And that seems impossible.

It’s impossible because bombs are still bombs, and they are not all that smart. Until and unless we develop a bomb that successfully seeks out only a single set of DNA, I think it will always be the case.

But Shan is correct in another way: these collateral deaths are not completely accidental, although they are completely unintentional on the part of the Israelis. There is an intent on the part of the terrorists themselves, a purposeful, cold, and calculated PR move. Let me explain.

One thing terrorists in the Middle East count on is the reaction of Europeans and Americans who hate and deplore the killing of innocents. That’s most of us, of course. But there are those who deplore such deaths equally no matter what the circumstances, and those people are, in a sense, the “targets” of the terrorists, as much as the children they blow up with their bombs, although in a totally different way.

In other words, terrorists rely on people such as Jonathan Steele to ignore the fact that they (unlike soldiers, for example) purposely live among families, women, and children. This is a win/win situation for the terrorists: it either affords them protection because it plays on the opposition’s reluctance to kill innocents (an opposition of which they are fully aware, by the way, although they may mouth words to the contrary); or, in the event of an attack, they count on the fact that deaths of such innocents will lead many in the West (such as our hero Jonathan Steele) to draw a moral equivalence between Israel and terrorists. Win/win, as I said.

The best thing, of course, as far as the Israelis are concerned, would be if the Palestinian government were to crack down on said terrorists so that the Israelis wouldn’t have to. But this has never happened, despite intermittent Palestinian leadership lip service to that effect. Therefore the Israelis are faced with a dilemma.

Israel (or any other nation in the same position, such as the US in hunting down people such as Bin Laden and his henchmen) is faced with Hobson’s choice: do nothing, and get hit over and over again by terrorists who, I repeat, purposely target innocents. Or kill those terrorists, and understand that some innocents will probably die also, despite the fact that you are doing the very best you can to minimize the killing of innocents in the process.

Kindheartedness is a wonderful thing, as is empathy. No one with any sense of either can fail to feel sorrow and even revulsion when innocent people are slaughtered. But what is the proper response? To recoil from the entire situation with such horror that one fails to draw any moral distinctions whatsoever? That way leads to other horrors, I’m afraid.

There is a paradox here. One finds it, for example, in pacifism (see my pacifism series for a rather lengthy discussion of the matter). That paradox can be stated many different ways–for example, Orwell’s “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf” (go here, and scroll down to the heading “rough men” for a discussion of whether Orwell in fact ever said exactly those words).

In this respect, note also the Talmudic “he who is kind to the cruel ends up being cruel to the kind.”

The truth is, there is no way to be totally and unequivocally kind. One is always implicated in some sort of cruelty no matter what stance one takes, passive or active. The Israelis try to avoid the infliction of death on innocents, knowing that by fighting back at all, they will inevitably inflict some. But if they desisted from the assassinations, and were “kind to the cruel,” they believe (and rightly so, in my opinion) that it would lead to the loss of far more innocent lives, particularly those of Israelis.

Israelis try to make their bombs smarter and smarter, and in this case “smart” means “killing only the target.” Palestinians try to make their bombs dirtier and dirtier, and in this case “dirty” means “killing as many people as possible, and the more innocents, the better.”

Why do some observers persist in seeing no difference? Why do some insist on holding Israel and the US to a standard that is both impossible and dangerous, a standard by which no self-defense would be possible, and by which “the cruel” would end up triumphing?

There are many answers. Some people hate America and Israel so much that they would rejoice at their destruction. Those people are not the subject of this particular discussion.

I am more interested in the others, those unrealistic Utopians who have abdicated the responsibility to make moral distinctions about killing–types, purposes, contexts, goals. What is their motivation? I believe that many of them are driven by the need to keep their own hands clean (please see this post of mine, particularly the second half, for a more thorough discussion of this phenomenon and what lies behind it). It serves their cause to believe, against all evidence throughout the long march of history, that all violence can be avoided if we wish it to be, that it can eradicated by pleasant talk and understanding.

To distinguish those situations in which talk has a chance of working from those in which it does not is a difficult task. But it is one that must be faced realistically, and not covered over with dreamy imaginings.

To deplore the killing of innocents is easy, especially when there are no immediate consequences for doing so. Safe in Western countries, protected by freedom of speech and all the wonders it entails, it is easy to forget the truth of what Orwell said (or perhaps didn’t exactly say): People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. It is easy to forget that such violence can never be perfectly targeted solely at the guilty. Nevertheless, we must do our best to see that as few lambs as possible are led to the slaughter.

Acquainted with the White

The New Neo Posted on by


The inspiration for this poem of mine: the snow, Robert Frost’s timeless “Acquainted with the Night,”and Gerard van Der Leun’s timely “Acquainted with the Blight.”

Just to make sure I receive full appreciation for the arduous work involved in writing it, I refer you to this. It explains terza rima, the convoluted rhyme scheme involved:

Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, d-e-d. There is no limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet…There is no set rhythm for terza rima, but in English, iambic pentameters are generally preferred.

So, without further ado, I bring you:

ACQUAINTED WITH THE WHITE

I have been one acquainted with the white.
I have walked out in snow–and back in snow.
I have watched drifts climb to impressive height.

I have felt blizzard winds that rage and blow.
I have shuffled my muklukked, booted feet
And sniffled wanly, crying, “Woe, oh woe!”

I’ve slipped on ice and skidded down the street
And heard those dying voices with my fall*
Then gone inside to fix myself a treat.

“Snow is design of whiteness to appall,”**
My favorite poet would say, with keen insight.
(Just note his name; he’s called “Frost,” after all.)

I’ve heard friends call me wrong, and far, far Right.
I have been one acquainted with the white.

*go here and scroll down to line 52

**go here and scroll down to the next to last line

Why is this man the senior foreign correspondent at a major newspaper?

The New Neo Posted on by

Dymphna at Gates of Vienna is astounded at this article by the Guardian’s senior foreign correspondent, Jonathan Steele, in which he sees the recent Hamas victory as a chance for Europe to try its more nuanced approach to the Middle East conflict.

Steele is so nuanced he is practically insane. That’s not a word I ordinarily use (“insane,” that is, not “nuanced”), and of course it’s hyperbole.

But I can think of no better one to describe how out of touch this man is with reality. Either that, or he doesn’t actually believe a word he says, and merely trusts that his readership is totally out of touch with reality.

Either way, I have a question: why is this man senior foreign correspondent at a major newspaper? Surely even a leftist/liberal rag such as the Guardian could find a journalist who advances their arguments and positions with more finesse and believability than this:

If Europe, weak though its power may currently be, wants to have an independent role in the Middle East, clearly different from the manipulative US approach, it is vital to go on funding the PA regardless of the Hamas presence in government. Nor should the EU fall back on the cynical hope that Hamas will be as corrupt as Fatah, and so lose support. You cannot use European taxpayers’ money to strengthen Palestinian institutions while privately wanting reforms to fail. Hamas should be encouraged in aiming to be more honest than its predecessors.

Above all, Europe should not get hung up on the wrong issues, like armed resistance and the “war on terror”. Murdering a Palestinian politician by a long-range attack that is bound also to kill innocent civilians is morally and legally no better than a suicide bomb on a bus. Hamas’s refusal to give formal recognition of Israel’s right to exist should also not be seen by Europe as an urgent problem. History and international politics do not march in tidy simultaneous steps.

Almost every sentence in these two short paragraphs shows a naivete (at best) and a wrongheaded illogic (at worst), plus a subtext of such profound hostility to Israel and joy at the Hamas victory that it is, quite simply, stunning.

“Hamas should be encouraged in aiming to be more honest than its predecessors.” I wonder how Steele proposes to reinforce that honesty; strangely enough, he’s mum on the subject. I think the construction of the sentence is also interesting; note he writes “encouraged in aiming” to be more honest, not in actually becoming more honest. Perhaps Steele would be satisfied with the mouthing of good intentions by Hamas.

It’s clear that Steele’s main interest is in sticking it to those dreadful Americans, and in showing that Europe knows so much better how to handle these matters. Along the way, he seems to have a great respect for (and trust of) the Hamas leaders he’s interviewed.

But I was most aghast at the following sentence of Steele’s, “Murdering a Palestinian politician by a long-range attack that is bound also to kill innocent civilians is morally and legally no better than a suicide bomb on a bus.” I’ve heard such sentiments before, it’s true. But usually from commenters on a blog rather than a senior foreign correspondent of a major newspaper. If this is an example of his reasoning power, his editors should be canning him, pronto.

Interesting that Steele says “murdering a Palestinian politician,” as though the Israelis are in the habit of killing the Abbas’s or the Arafat’s of the Palestinian world. The word “terrorist” seems to stick in Steele’s craw, even when there is no doubt in the world that is what is meant. This sort of subtle use of inexact language is as pervasive as it is pernicious.

But even beyond that is the idea itself, treating all civilian deaths in a way that is devoid of context, intent, history, goal–anything but the sheer fact of a death. By that type of reasoning (and I use the word “reasoning” advisedly), an accidental traffic death is as bad as gunning someone down in cold blood, police killing a bystander with a stray bullet while pursuing a murderer would be the same as the killer him/herself, and on and on and on. Yes, the collateral damage resulting from the killing of a terrorist who purposely hides among civilians is a terrible thing, as is the purposeful blowing up of Israelis by a suicide bomber. But to say they are morally and legally equivalent is abhorrent.

I looked up Steele’s biographical details online, but could find very little. I did find a list of his articles, and perused quite a few. No surprises there; they are pretty much of a piece. Here are some representative ones, in case you’re interested: this, this, this, and this.

What goes into the making of a Jonathan Steele? The only clue I could find was this article. Take a look at it.

It turns out that Steele, although British, was a graduate student at Yale during the tumultuous 60s, and played a small part in the civil rights movement in the South. In the article, he describes his experiences as a civil rights worker at the time of the Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner murders. He clearly feared for his own life, and found the entire experience to be a formative one.

In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if Steele sees the Palestinians as the equivalent of the blacks of Mississippi whose civil rights were so long denied, and the Israelis as the southerners who despised them, although its a bit of a stretch, “The image of Price and Rainey, leering and chewing tobacco through the trial, was branded on many Americans’ minds as a symbol of ignorant racism.”

The image may have also been branded on the mind of one rather young Englishman at the time, and may have been generalized to Americans as a whole. My guess is that this is when Steele’s politics became set in stone. In fact, he hints as much:

But in the end the Freedom Summer of 1964 may have done more for the volunteers who took part in it than for the people they tried to help. Some went back into the mainstream, but with a new commitment to justice. A few became lifelong radicals. None remained untouched.

And here Steele states it even more clearly:

As a British graduate student I took part in the mock election to elect Aaron Henry as governor of Mississippi in November 1963 and again during the Summer Project of 1964 as a volunteer in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

It was an inspiring and radicalising experience.

Steele was part of an important movement for freedom in this country, and his idealism, hard work–and yes, bravery–were rewarded. The danger is when such experiences are overgeneralized and become the lens through which all later life is viewed–a lens that, with age, can become cloudy with cataracts.

The voting game

The New Neo Posted on by

I came across this article from the Telegraph via Clive Davis:

Like many others, a young Fatah activist wished yesterday he could go back in time and replay the Palestinian elections all over again.

“I voted Hamas so that my own Fatah Party would be shocked and change its ways,” he said, giving his name only as Mohamed, in the Palmeira cafe in Gaza City. “I thought Hamas would come second.

“But this is a game that went too far. Nobody thought Hamas would win – even them. I know lots of people who voted Hamas, who regret it now. If I could vote again, I would vote for Fatah.”

I wonder how large a group he represents.

It’s always a bad idea to treat a vote as a game or a protest. Or, rather, it’s not so terrible if only a few individuals do it. But each person has no idea whether he/she represents an isolated case or is part of a vast trend. If a large bloc of voters happens to decide to play the same game at the same time, the results could well be catastrophic.

I’ve always been amazed at people in this country who fail to vote through apathy, or who vote for third-party candidates without a chance of winning because “there’s really no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.”

There may not have seemed to have been all that much difference between Fatah and Hamas, either, except a matter of emphasis: corruption and violence vs. violence and corruption. But voting for one when you would prefer the other is a stupid and dangerous game.