The New Neo

Pictorial propaganda: Part III–Kitsch and politics

Posted on March 24, 2006 by neoJanuary 18, 2014

The last post of mine (number two in this series) generated so many exceptional comments that I was thinking of just reproducing a few of them and calling it a day.

Here‘s one by grackle:

One problem with Rockwell for the critics is that Rockwell’s works are obviously good, so obvious that the average viewer can see it. This detracts from the modern art critic’s jealously guarded power to arbitrate between artist & public. And in modern criticism popularity is despised. Thus the critics like Saltz vigilantly & vehemently defend the corner into which they’ve painted themselves.

Despite Saltz’s condescension it is evident to even the casual & unschooled observer that Rockwell’s work has nuance & layers of meaning. One of the particulars of Rockwell’s genius is that his art, although accessible, is also subtle. He’s like Mark Twain in that his art can be approached in a variety of ways.

Like they did with Twain, with Rockwell the critics confuse sentiment with sentimentality, sentiment being the honest presentation of emotion based in reality & sentimentality being that which cloys under thoughtful examination & imbues the viewer with a feeling of being cynically manipulated.

And commenter SB poses the following question:

I must ask (for the hundredth time) when and how art’s highest purpose became to “challenge us and question things?”

That segues into the topic for today’s post: kitsch. Kitsch is a term referring to aesthetics, but—as we shall see—it also has class and political overtones.

The definition of kitsch:

Kitsch is a German term meaning “trash” that has been used to categorize art that is considered an inferior copy of an existing style. The term is also used more loosely in referring to any art that is pretentious or in bad taste, and also commercially produced items that are considered trite or crass.

Because the word was brought into use as a response to a large amount of art in the 19th century where the aesthetic of art work was confused with a sense of exaggerated sentimentality or melodrama, kitsch is most closely associated with art that is sentimental, mawkish, or maudlin; however, it can be used to refer to any type of art which is deficient for similar reasons ”” whether it tries to appear sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative, kitsch is said to be a gesture imitative of the superficial appearances of art. It is often said that kitsch relies on merely repeating convention and formula, lacking the sense of creativity and originality displayed in genuine art.

That’s the esthetic criticism of kitsch. The class and political elements of the objection to kitsch are apparent in this seminal article on the subject, written in 1939 by Clement Greenberg and published in the Partisan Review. I tried to wade through it just now, and I have to confess I didn’t have the patience to read it in its entirety. But the gist of the message seems to be “the masses ain’t got no taste, and those in power use kitsch to keep them dumb and happy.”

Kitsch is detested for its simplicity and its easy appeal to sentimentality, as well as its formulaic qualities. I personally don’t think Rockwell falls squarely into the category of kitsch—I’m with commenter grackle on that score—but many would disagree, and that’s part of their objection to his work.

The attitude bears some resemblance to the way a gourmet might regard a Big Mac—or a cultural elitist a Walmart (an attitude that was amply demonstrated in the comments section as well, here).

Greenberg’s analysis of kitsch positively oozes with socialist condescension and class consciousness:

The peasants who settled in the cities as proletariat and petty bourgeois learned to read and write for the sake of efficiency, but they did not win the leisure and comfort necessary for the enjoyment of the city’s traditional culture. Losing, nevertheless, their taste for the folk culture whose background was the countryside, and discovering a new capacity for boredom at the same time, the new urban masses set up a pressure on society to provide them with a kind of culture fit for their own consumption. To fill the demand of the new market, a new commodity was devised: ersatz culture, kitsch, destined for those who, insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the diversion that only culture of some sort can provide.

Kitsch, using for raw material the debased and academicized simulacra of genuine culture, welcomes and cultivates this insensibility. It is the source of its profits. Kitsch is mechanical and operates by formulas…Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of our times….

Sound familiar? Certain recent criticisms of Rockwell such as Saltz’s, discussed at some length here, partake of a similar quality of sneering condescension, although Saltz skips the socialism and the overt class consciousness. But there’s a common theme, and it is this: “we elites know better than to be suckered in by this stuff, like you common folk. Not for us your simple pleasures; we are far more complex and nuanced.”

Author Milan Kundera has expounded at some length on kitsch and its relation to politics, and why its simplicity is to be abhorred. My guess is that, growing up in Soviet-era Czechoslovakia, his exposure to the genre would have been mainly through the soulessness of Soviet art, and the inherent lie within it (what commenter grackle refers to as cynical manipulation).

Kundera states that kitsch is:

defined it as “the absolute denial of shit.” [Kundera’s] argument was that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult to come to terms with, offering instead a sanitised view of the world in which “all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.”

In its desire to paper over the complexities and contradictions of real life, kitsch, Kundera suggested, is intimately linked with totalitarianism. In a healthy democracy, diverse interest groups compete and negotiate with one another to produce a generally acceptable consensus; by contrast, “everything that infringes on kitsch,” including individualism, doubt, and irony, “must be banished for life” in order for kitsch to survive. Therefore, Kundera wrote, “Whenever a single political movement corners power we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch.”

So here we have the germ of an answer to commenter SB’s question above: kitschy simplicity in art is often used in the service of a totalitarian society in which doubt and questions are not allowed. In response to that, art and artists feel a need to “challenge and question”—or at least, to be part of a society that allows challenge and questions. Kundera objects to kitsch for this reason: he feels that its lack of complexity and denial of darkness is somehow allied with the totalitarian impulse, which he rejects utterly.

A similar sort of thinking may underlie some of the objections of those such as Saltz to the paintings of Rockwell. It’s not just elitism, although that is most definitely part of it. They reject the paintings on esthetic grounds, defining them as inferior art designed to appeal to the masses (kitsch). But many also see them as insidious and seductive propaganda in the cause of a jingoistic, nationalistic, power-mad America.

We have become so sophisticated as a society that it is very difficult to use art as a rallying cry for a cause, as was done so effectively during World War II. Whether it be posters such as Rockwell’s, or movies and songs (see Armed Liberal’s recent discussion of the film “Yankee Doodle Dandy”), even our popular culture has become imbued with a darker and more critical tone. I don’t think Kundera need be concerned about any “absolute denial of shit” in today’s America.

The impulse to reject facile and simplistic propaganda is not necessarily a bad one. It’s a good thing to be aware of how easily opinion can be influenced, and to guard against skillful manipulation in an unjust cause, especially when the medium of that manipulation is the stirring up of hatred (which is never the function of kitsch anyway). But when all propaganda—including everything simplistic, sentimental, or feel-good—is rejected, then one of the most effective tools in rallying the public to that cause is eliminated. This can be especially hazardous when the enemy is not the least bit reluctant to use every propaganda tool that the modern world can offer, and to use them skillfully and well.

Pictorial propaganda: Part II–Norman Rockwell and Soviet art

Posted on March 23, 2006 by neoFebruary 9, 2013

[Part I here.]

Now, who doesn’t like Norman Rockwell?

Yeah, he’s corny as all get out. But breathes there the man (or woman) with soul so dead who wouldn’t be touched by this picture, and a host of others by Rockwell?:

Well, there are some who indeed seem to be untouched by it and its brethren. But there may be an even greater number who actually are touched by it, at least for a moment—but then their sense of their own cultural, personal, and political sophistication kicks in and will not allow that feeling to stand, because they distrust it.

An excellent example of the sort of thing to which I’m referring is this article by Jerry Saltz, appearing in the Village Voice of November 2001 (shortly after 9/11). It is a review of a Rockwell exhibit that was mounted by Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum, entitled: “Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People.”

That title, of course, is no accident; as I wrote yesterday, Rockwell’s paintings were indeed a sort of advertisement and even propaganda for America, geared to the American public itself.

Reviewer Saltz finds the entire concept of an art museum honoring Rockwell somewhat offensive:

When it comes to the claims being made for Norman Rockwell, my advice is just say no. A cadre of museum directors, curators, national critics, art historians, and suddenly populist art theorists want you to love him.

At one point, Saltz quotes an explicit reference to the inspiration Rockwell’s work might be able to offer the American people, post-9/11—the propaganda aspect, that is:

Thomas Krens opines that Rockwell’s “nostalgic images of American life” might “offer comfort and inspiration . . . during such a difficult moment in U.S. history.”

But Saltz says such comfort should be resisted. His reasons are not just artistically elitist (that Rockwell is an inferior illustrator, not a true artist), although that reason is certainly part of his objection. An additional reason he cites is a political one; and, in fact, the two objections seem to be fused in his mind [emphasis mine in the following quotes]:

At its best, this show proves that Rockwell is what he’s always been: a top-notch illustrator who can grab your heart and wring it…At worst, it shows the Guggenheim further trashing the reputation won for it by generations of artists, and only underlines Rockwell’s reputation as merely the maker of what he himself called “feel-good” “story-pictures.” …

For the art world to fall for this simple vision now””especially now—is, as Flash Art American editor Massimiliano Giorni put it, “like confessing in public that deep down inside we are, after all, right-wing.” He adds, “We all like stability and the cheesy beauty of a little day in the greatest country in the world””our beloved America. But it’s simply reactionary. It scares me.“…

Loving Rockwell is shunning complexity…Much is made of Rockwell’s popularity, “virtue,” and ability to create a world. But Rockwell’s world is cardboard compared to someone like Brueghel’s…As for populism, an exhibition devoted to The Simpsons would be less sentimental, more visual, and have twice the virtue of this affair. And an empty room with piped-in music by Hank Williams and Sonny Boy Williamson””both Rockwell’s contemporaries””would take you deeper and tell you more about America than this show.

Rockwell’s America is not Saltz’s America. It’s an America that Saltz (along with Giorni, whom he quotes approvingly) seems to find dangerous, right-wing, reactionary, and all-too simplistic.

What’s going on here? For one thing, we see in Saltz a familiar dislike for a vision that’s not “nuanced” enough; a distancing from populist tastes and an assertion of cultural superiority through complexity. What might this “complexity” be that Saltz and those who agree with him so crave?

It’s partly emotional: Rockwell’s world is not dark enough. It deals mostly with the light (although I’d have Saltz study that “Freedom from Fear” painting again if he thinks Rockwell always ignores the dark). But the emotional merges with the political; it seems that Saltz also understands and perceives the propagandist undertones of Rockwell’s art, and this quality is a good part of what offends him and others, since it simplifies America and makes it seem too “good.”

Saltz seems to actually be afraid of Rockwell’s ability to speak to certain values that are quintessentially American, and to unequivocally affirm them in a way that is not complex. Why might this be?

My impression is that, in addition to wishing for constant nuance, Saltz and others have lost the ability to make a clear distinction between propaganda that inflames hatred (such as, to use just one example, this) and the work of those such as Rockwell, propaganda that embraces human values and explicitly rejects that hatred—as long as such art is in praise of America. Both “dark” propaganda and “light” are lumped together and detested as though they are one and the same, in the same way that patriotism and love of nation is often considered a suspicious emotion, guilty until proven innocent.

In a similar manner, there is a kneejerk distrust of art that is seen as sentimental, and not just for esthetic or elitist reasons, but for political ones. And there is some validity to that, I think: there is a history of totalitarian governments using such art to manipulate their populaces.

Here, for example, is a lengthy article on Soviet art, comparing it to the works of—none other than Rockwell himself!:

It does not take an experienced connoisseur to notice the uncanny similarity between the widely popular art of Norman Rockwell and certain artworks of Socialist realism. Similarly, some of the official art created in the Soviet Union during Rockwell’s most successful years could easily pass as emblematic of the Saturday Evening Post covers depicting that era.

This can be a confusing realization given that these images originated from the two very polarized ideological standpoints of that time. Is this a mere coincidence of style, or are these two forms of expression somehow more deeply bound?

I see what the author is getting at, although I think the similarity is strictly superficial. Take a look at this Soviet-era genre painting, entitled “Low Marks Again”:

This painting—which is far more charming than most Soviet-era pictures, which tended to feature Lenin and a flag, as I recall—does bear a superficial resemblance to Rockwell’s work: the genre family scene, the dog trying to comfort the boy but failing, the mother’s concern, the flatness of the drawing style. Yes indeed, it’s all quite a bit Rockwellian.

But not really. To me, it looks as though the heart has somehow been cut out of the picture, a painting which ends up being not even of greeting card quality. In short, it seems dead. It gives off the flavor of textbook illustration more than anything else.

It’s as though the artist were painting under some sort of compulsion, with an assignment and rules to follow—which, of course, he or she probably was. The totalitarian nature of the government has somehow oozed out in the art and could not be disguised. Despite all efforts at cuteness and light, the picture is heavy.

Rockwell was painting for the commercial market, but he was artistically free and made his own choices. In fact, the famous “Four Freedoms” paintings were his own concept, and they glow with life and love. All of these facts are somehow present and reflected in the paintings themselves. As propaganda, they were doubly effective for that—because the artist, and most of the viewers, believed them to be essentially true. Despite superficial similarities to Soviet genre art, Rockwell’s paintings manage to express the vast differences between American and Soviet society, between an artist who is free and one whose work is dictated, between an artist who believes in the truth of his work and one who doubts.

Well, I’m not finished yet. Tune in tomorrow for Part III (the finale), about kitsch and its relation to pictorial propaganda….

Word verification for comments temporarily turned off

Posted on March 22, 2006 by neoMarch 22, 2006

I’ve temprorarily turned off the word verification feature for the comments because it’s malfunctioning. It’s not allowing a number of people to post a comment, including myself!

The whole word verification thing was only enabled in the first place to discourage spambots, and it’s been very effective at that. As soon as Blogger fixes the problem, I plan to turn it on again. Till then, enjoy posting without the bother of that added step, and ignore all spambots–who will undoubtedly pay a visit.

Pictorial propaganda (Part I–Norman Rockwell and the Four Freedoms)

Posted on March 22, 2006 by neoDecember 7, 2008

Those of you who read here regularly have probably noticed I’ve been mulling over the uses of propaganda lately, especially here, and again (at least to a certain degree) here .

At some point it occurred to me that nearly the entire work of artist/illustrator Norman Rockwell (some consider him the former, but others say he was “only” the latter) can, in a sense, be considered to have been propaganda for America.

Case in point, the “Four Freedoms” illustrations Rockwell did for the Saturday Evening Post in 1943, which I’ve duplicated here (freedom from fear, freedom to worship, freedom from want, freedom of speech).

The story of the paintings is interesting in and of itself: Rockwell tried to interest the government in the project, but no dice, and so they ended up appearing at his old venue the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell is said to have labored for six months over the project’s execution, losing fifteen pounds in the process. But when he was done the response was overwhelming—and, in the end, the government realized the extraordinary value of the paintings to the war effort, organizing a sixteen-city tour and an accompanying bond drive that netted $130 million dollars, no chump change in those days.

The photos were accompanied in the magazine by an essay on each freedom, written by such luminaries as Booth Tarkington, Will Durant, Carlos Bulosan (not quite as luminous as the others), and Stephen Vincent Benet. Hard to imagine today–but then, all of it is hard to imagine today.

President Roosevelt’s reaction to the project, which had been inspired by a 1941 speech of his, was the following:

I think you have done a superb job in bringing home to the plain, everyday citizen the plain, everyday truths behind the Four Freedoms…

Roosevelt was explicitly acknowledging the paintings’ ability to reach “the masses” (although he didn’t use that term) in a way that augmented speeches and other “mere words.” The paintings tap into another part of the brain—much as aromas can—a more “feeling” part, which is one of the reasons that this sort of thing is so distrusted today; we’ve learned the power of images to manipulate, and that manipulation is certainly not always for the good. Witness Al Jazeera, for example.

There may be indeed a fine line between inspiration and cold-blooded manipulation. The difference between the two may be our opinion of the uses to which they are put: if we agree with those uses, it’s inspiration; if we disagree, it’s manipulation (I plan to go into this at somewhat greater length in a later part of this series).

I would maintain that Rockwell’s paintings provided necessary and desirable inspiration to a populace who already knew what they were fighting for during WWII. Yes indeed, the pictures simplify—America is not, and never was, as simple and good as the world Rockwell portrays. But he was tapping into ideals that were—and still are—a huge part of America, and are realized in this country more fully than they are in most of the world, flawed human nature being what it is. During WWII virtually the entire country understood this, and the illustrations simply put these thoughts into an easily perceived—and very moving—form.

Note my personal favorite, the couple putting their children to sleep: “Freedom From Fear.” I’m a sucker for parent-child stuff anyway, and this one struck me with unusual force. The painting is so powerful, and the choice of subject so seemingly inevitable, that it takes a moment of reflection to realize that part of Rockwell’s genius was his selection of this particular scene to illustrate freedom from fear–which, after all, is an abstraction.

Anyone who thinks Rockwell is never complex should study the expression on the father’s face. The children are asleep, blissfully innocent and unaware (and that’s the point, isn’t it?). The mother is engaged in the tender act of tucking them in, and her face reflects her gentle and loving concern. But the father stands back—although not very far—as an observer. From his ever-so-slight distance, he comments on the scene, allowing his face and posture to express, along with his love, a contemplative and pensive awareness of threatening danger. This is underscored by the headline of the newspaper he holds almost casually in his left hand, which you may be able to read in the blown-up version of the picture, here. The fragment visible is:

BOMBINGS KI…
HORROR HIT…

During WWII, American citizens were well aware of the dangers to which European civilians, including children, were exposed on a daily basis, and this generic headline brought that home (almost literally) only too well. It is a powerful appeal to one of the strongest of human emotions, the desire to protect one’s children.

Rockwell’s paintings weren’t really for export; as far as I can see from reading about the history of the Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell’s primary venue, the propaganda was for the domestic market. The Post itself was unashamed of what it saw as its mission, a charge that may seem laudable, merely quaint, or truly pernicious today, depending on the perspective of the beholder:

Inside the covers of the Post was fiction targeted at the masses. The fiction of the Saturday Evening Post was not highbrow like The New Yorker or even literary like Harper’s and the Atlantic. It was popular, intended to strike a chord with the most possible people, not the most educated….When founded in the 19th Century the Post proclaimed itself neutral in politics, under Lorimer it would take on the editor’s pro-business, Republican personality…At first a lot of the covers would contain an illustration which corresponded in some way to one of the stories or features inside. Lorimer would quickly abandon this strategy and instead select covers which evoked those same masses with whom he was trying to connect the contents to. He let the covers stand out as a representation of the magazine as a whole. Each issue of the Saturday Evening Post was intended from cover to cover and contents included to represent the same America that its readers were living in.

Rockwell was the magazine’s main and very prolific cover artist, drawing his first for the Post in 1916 and his last in 1963, when the magazine abandoned illustrated covers in favor of photos—a move that did little to postpone its demise in 1969.

For those who are interested, here is the website of the Norman Rockwell Museum, featuring photos of virtually all of his covers, only some of which are overtly political. But I maintain that, in a way, they are all propaganda. That is probably one of the reasons so many look down on Rockwell and dislike him, and on pictorial propaganda in general (at least, if in the service of a pro-US agenda).

But more about that in Part II, tomorrow….

First day of spring! [belated]

Posted on March 22, 2006 by neoMarch 22, 2006

[I tried to post this yesterday, but I couldn’t get Blogger to upload the photo for some unknown reason.]

Right outside my house, quite a bit ahead of schedule (you may need to look closely): a crocus starting to bloom.

What I’d be thinking right now if I were a terrorist/Islamicist

Posted on March 21, 2006 by neoMarch 21, 2006

It’s the three-year anniversary of the Iraq war, and I’ve read a host of discussions as to how Iraq is doing at this point. Yesterday I linked to Wretchard’s excellent post on the subject (or at least tried to link to it; I hope I’ve been more successful this time). Alexandra has compiled a nice roundup of blog commentary on the subject, and today Dean has posted links to commentary from the Iraqi blogosphere.

Let’s just take a moment and let that last one sink in: the Iraqi blogosphere. Three years ago, such a thing did not exist; or, rather, the Iraqi blogosphere was limited to a single pseudonymous blogger known as Salam Pax, posting clandestinely and at great risk.

Alexandra writes:

The Bush administration says Iraq is not in a civil war, but that terrorists are desperate to foster one, desperate to foment a civil war which would conveniently propel them into the spotlight.

There is no question that one of the important lessons of this war for the enemy (a lesson already learned in Vietnam, but driven home now in modern form) is that the “spotlight”–i.e. worldwide and domestic US press coverage–is worth its weight in gold.

At this point in time, winning the propaganda war is the way to go for militarily weaker entities, be they states or stateless terrorists, if they ever hope to win against the US and its interests. It is actually the only way to do so at present; even the acquiring of nuclear weapons by our enemies would not really change that picture, since it’s highly unlikely that any of those entities would ever achieve parity with the US on that score. Such weapons would merely up the ante and cause more carnage; they wouldn’t change the general equation.

The “spotlight” is another word for propaganda, which I’ve written about here. I’m not an expert on the history of propaganda (although some of my commenters seem to be); maybe some day I’ll take a look at this text. But it’s my impression that, prior to the 20th Century, propaganda was more local in scope due to limitations in communication. It’s only with WWII, and certainly since the advent of television and satellite communications, that propaganda has become not just an adjunct to some wars, but the main weapon of those wars.

All the world is now a vast propaganda stage, and we men and women (and children) merely players (blogs, of course, are part of this).

When I was researching and writing my “change” posts, especially this one, I came across the following quote (taken from this must-read article about the fall of Vietnam) offered by the American officer in charge of negotiating the withdrawal of US troops from the area:

“You know you never beat us on the battlefield,” I said to Colonel Tu, my NVA counterpart.

“That may be so,” he said, “but it is also irrelevant.”

Colonel Tu was a smart man, was he not? As I wrote in that same post close to a year ago:

Lessons learned from Vietnam: all that is necessary to win a war against the US is to turn domestic public opinion against it, even if you are militarily outclassed, even if you are defeated in every battle. It’s a lesson that was not lost on our current opponents. In a sense, our recent task in Iraq has been to reverse that perception…”

It is as true today as it was then. And how do we stack up in that respect? It’s a mixed bag. Yes, we are still in Iraq, despite the complexity of the situation, and the fact that (whatever we might call it: civil war, crime, feud, insurgency, or terrorism) killing is still going on. But there’s also a perception that the only real reason we are there is because George Bush is a stubborn man, and because he happened to have been re-elected by a slim margin. The message of so much of the cacophony of the media is that the American people have to a certain extent accepted their framing of the war as an utter failure, and a chaotic civil war situation, and they want out, the sooner the better.

This perception has its own consequences; I’m afraid that it cannot help but fuel the violence there, even if this is not the intent of its proponents. This is not to say that criticism of the war is verboten. But it is to say that it must be careful, measured, logical, and not motivated by partisanship or irrational hatred.

A great deal of the rhetoric against the war focuses on the toll it’s taken on our military.

That’s an interesting message. On the one hand, we all mourn every military life lost; the human toll is devastating and dreadful (see this).

But the harsh and terrible truth is that, if we are not prepared to incur military losses, we may as well not have a military and not fight at all. We have now advanced so far in the laudable goal of minimizing casualties that the numbers posted on the previously linked antiwar website for the three years of this war–2317 US deaths, 1860 in combat–are considered unconscionable.

“Ah, warmonger!” I can hear some of you cry at what I am about to say next. But pointing out that this is a relatively low death toll, as three-year wars go, is not the same as saying that any of these deaths should not be mourned. They are mourned, and should be mourned, deeply.

But if the message of that mourning is that that is an unacceptably high number, the message is that if an enemy mounts a war of attrition against us, the numbers don’t even have to be very high to defeat us. A slow, steady trickle will do.

Many who are against the war would answer that it is not the sheer numbers that are the issue here, it’s that those deaths are wasted because the war was not necessary, but rather was the whim of a single demented and/or deluded man: George Bush. That’s where all those old arguments about the causes of the war take us. If a person believes, truly believes (for whatever reason) this theory of the war’s genesis, then of course a single death in that cause would be one death way too many, and Bush would be no better than a murderer.

I’m not going to debate that one again here (although it probably won’t stop anyone in the comments section from doing so). I do have a question, though, for the less rabid antiwar critics among you: does a war have to be “successful” in its goals, ex post facto, in order to be justified? Because if the answer is “yes,” there’s a Catch-22 built into every war of the future, and that is the following: while the war is going on, there’s no way to know its end result. Success? Failure? And that leaves almost any war (except the rare case of some sort of unequivocally “just war,” some large-scale invasion of this country by a foreign power, highly unlikely to ever occur) subject to a drumbeat of defeatism and second-guessing while that war is going on, because the outcome is always unknown and the course of every war is to have its ups and downs, short-term.

If every fluctuation along the way is met with cries that the deaths are in vain and we should withdraw, the propaganda value to the enemy is always going to be immense. If a message of weakness is delivered while the war is underway, the enemy will be heartened by the news, whether or not that is the intent of those mounting the criticism.

Messages of weakness of resolve during an ongoing conflict can backfire by prolonging that conflict and increasing the death toll. It’s a paradox for those who have valid criticisms of a war, and who are motivated not by partisanship but by realistic appraisals (and I certainly do believe such people exist among the war critics).

The answer, as I said before, is not to silence all criticism of a war. That would be a very bad direction to take. But my impression is that it used to be that war critics themselves were more likely to weigh such factors before speaking out during a war effort; I would appeal to modern-day critics of this war to be more mindful of the consequences of their current speech, as well.

There are many valid criticisms of the war that can be made, especially in details of its execution (see this, by the way, for some excellent recent criticism of the conduct of the war, from an Iraq war proponent). But focusing on the death toll itself sends a very different message to the enemy, and that is this: all you really have to do to win is to increase that number, slowly but surely.

And that, unfortunately, is relatively easy to do. It turns out that death tolls rarely decrease.

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

Posted on March 20, 2006 by neoJuly 25, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, what else is new?

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

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

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

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

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

A candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize: Stanislav Petrov

Posted on March 20, 2006 by neoMarch 20, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whew.

From insurgency to civil war

Posted on March 20, 2006 by neoMarch 20, 2006

Wretchard at Belmont Club has another exceptional post that’s a must-read, in my opinion. So, just do it. Please.

More notes from the spam folder

Posted on March 19, 2006 by neoMarch 19, 2006

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dueling: defending one’s honor

Posted on March 18, 2006 by neoAugust 3, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are a few highlights:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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