Let’s have another cup of coffee, let’s have another piece of pie

The New Neo Posted on by

Come on, sing along with neo-neocon:

Just around the corner,
There’s a rainbow in the sky,
So let’s have another cup of coffee,
And let’s have another piece of pie.

Trouble’s like a bubble,
And the clouds will soon roll by,
So let’s have another cup of coffee,
And let’s have another piece of pie.

Why? Well, according to a long-term study of low-fat diets, (via the New York Times; via Austin Bay), they don’t help.

At least, they didn’t help half of a group of 49,000 women between the ages of 50-79, who for an eight-year period reduced their fat intake from an average of 35-37% of their diet to an average of 24-29%.

Those in the diet/health business aren’t sure what the results mean. They criticize it for not testing a large enough reduction in fat, or for not intervening long enough, or for not targeting the fat content by type of fat. And it is true that, like most studies of the sort, this one can be criticized on many grounds. But it is also true that it was large enough and long enough to have shown more effects than it did.

Actually, there was a modest decrease in the incidence of breast cancer, a change that didn’t approach the statistically significant level. But that’s about it, and it could well have happened through chance alone–that’s why we test for statistical significance.

The results are news. But it’s not news that one day we are told by doctors to do one thing, and then the next day it reverses (as Dr. Sanity points out, Woody Allen–back when he was still funny, long long ago–made a good joke about that in “Sleeper.”) I have been heartened by the dictum in recent years that eating certain kinds of nuts is good; likewise that the cholesterol in shrimp and other seafood doesn’t matter at all. And every now and then I am so bold as to eat an egg.

But I have also found that, for myself, certain foods just make me feel lousy, and I’ve come to respect that and to generally avoid them. Oh, they don’t make me feel lousy while I’m eating them–au contraire! It’s afterwards that I pay.

Sugar, for one. It just doesn’t seem to agree with me, and I feel better when I cut it out, although that’s not easy. High salt foods are another.

But for me, the worst of it is that a few years ago I started having regular migraines. By “regular,” I mean very often. They weren’t usually of the variety where I had to take to my bed in a darkened room (although sometimes they were; it was unpredictable). But they made me miserable nevertheless.

It turned out that there were a couple of food triggers for the migraines, but the worst one by far was chocolate. Chocolate!! Even a little bit was enough to start the headache up (often preceded by those lovely flashing zigzag light shows), sometimes within just a couple of hours.

It was hard to accept that I couldn’t eat chocolate any more. Until that point I’d no idea how much I liked it–or just how often, when I chose a special dessert in restaurant, it would be a chocolate one. After a subsequent difficult but rewarding year of no chocolate–and very few headaches–I decided, at Christmas time, to give myself a treat. I went to a Godiva store and bought a box. After all, if I was going to indulge, why not have some of the good stuff?

I don’t remember the exact quantity I ate that evening, but it was certainly significantly less than a pound, but more than a piece or two. I was prepared to have a headache the next day, but I’d factored that in already. And indeed, I did have a headache the next day.

And the next day. And the next day. In fact, I had a headache that lasted two weeks, from that one evening of indulgence.

That was a few years ago, and it was my last chocolate fling. Now, when I look at the stuff, it doesn’t tempt me in the same way. But I musn’t get arrogant: it’s one day at a time.

Humor in the Moslem/Arab world

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems to be a hot topic today, so I thought I’d do a few links:

At Dean Esmay’s, Mary Madigan points out that humor about Mohammed was not always verbotan in the Moslem world.

Dr. Sanity has an excellent post on the different varieties of humor and the function they serve.

And then there’s this.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the appropriate link right now despite searching–but I recall shortly before the Iraqi War reading an article about the Iraqi people and their culture. It mentioned that the Iraqis were known throughout the Arab world for their sense of humor.

I thought at the time that, if true, this was indeed a hopeful sign for the future of the country. And, since the end of the war, I’ve noticed evidence of an excellent sense of humor on many of the Iraqi blogs (notably, Iraq the Model). A good thing; they’ve needed it, and will continue to need it.

More arguments about Israel/Palestine

The New Neo Posted on by

This post is based on one of those comments of mine that grew and grew until I realized I’d written what almost amounted to an article. So, why not make it one?

Well, one reason is that arguments about Israel and Palestine are rather like a circle dance, round and round and round, and in the end, people usually end up pretty much where they began. I’ve read many such discussions on other blogs, and listened to many in person (even participated in a few at times, as you might imagine).

The same arguments, over and over. The information is out there, but it takes time to read and sift through, and few are willing to do so. Even fewer are willing to do so with open minds. In this, perhaps it’s not all that different from many other issues.

Without getting too far ahead of my own “change” story, I want to say that until a few years ago I was one of those “cycle of violence” folks on the topic of Isreal. As part of my post-9/11 education, I spent an incredible number of hours reading about the topic online: pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian sites in fairly equal measure. And I came to the conclusion that Israel–which, like any nation, is imperfect and flawed–has the stronger case.

I’m not going to devote this blog to arguing that issue. The information is out there; you can do your own research. So don’t expect any sort of exhaustive point-by-point discussion here, or tons of links.

However, in the comments section of my post discussing the Irgun/Hamas comparison, an anonymous commenter offered some of the classic anti-Israel arguments here. I responded to some of them in a comment of my own, and I’d like to repeat and discuss a few of my remarks (follow the links if you want the full text of anon’s comment and my response; I’m only dealing with some of the points here).

First, an observation: I’ve noticed that commenters who disagree with me sometimes misunderstand what I’ve written. I’ve wondered about this quite a bit–surely there’s enough to disagree with in what I’ve actually written; there’s no need to twist it or misunderstand it to find fault. But I’ve become convinced that (and this probably happens on both sides) when a person is emotionally incensed about a discussion, and is engaged in reading something on the “other side,” it’s especially easy to fall into the trap of misunderstanding what has been said. I’d really like my critics (and even my defenders!) to be aware of this potential problem, and to try to stop misreading or putting words into my mouth, or into the mouths of others.

An example is the following, from the comments in the Irgun/Hamas thread:

Commenter “anonymous” writes:

Neo-neocon: “I’ll even go so far as to speculate, for the sake of argument, that the Irgun actually intended to kill British soldiers”.

A most stunning intellectual leap. Imagine that, “even go so far” as to “speculate” Irgun intended to kill an English soldier? I certainly stumbled onto a cutting edge site here.

..You’re damned right they intended to kill British soldiers, I know, my father (Irgun) was one of them (again so did Palmach, the Stern Gang and Haganah).

But in fact, when I wrote, “I’ll even go so far as to speculate, for the sake of argument, that the Irgun actually intended to kill British soldiers”” I was writing about the King David Hotel incident only. In the very next sentence, I wrote: “in fact, if you read the Irgun links, you will see that there were definitely other Irgun operations that had the explicit purpose of killing British soldiers and which did accomplish that end, as well as killing some others into the bargain,” thus explicitly saying that, whether or not the Irgun intended to kill British soldiers at the King David, they most definitely targeted them in other operations.

So, commenter anonymous did not understand (or pretended not to understand) my point, and I wanted to clear that up.

But more importantly (and this is really why I’m highlighting anon’s comments here), I think that he/she offers an excellent example of what have become the standard arguments against Israel. As such, anon (although he/she no doubt has his/her own special history and agenda) is an excellent example of a certain approach to the issues involved.

Once again, to refute the comments point by point would take years. The arguments about the unfairness/fairness of Israel’s offers at Camp David are a case in point. One can go to countless websites online and read the pro-con. As stated before, I spent many long hours reading both sides carefully and tried to do so with as open a mind as possible. I became convinced that Arafat was offered a decent (not perfect, but pretty decent) deal but refused it because he was an utterly corrupt “leader” who most definitely could not change. He sold his people down the river, and had been doing so for decades. Subsequent events and revelations certainly bore that out; anyone who thinks Arafat had his people in mind is ignoring the preponderance of the evidence against the man (here’s an excellent article on the subject from the Atlantic Monthly, by the way, if you’re interested in reading more).

I believe that anonymous’s bias was revealed in this statement of her/his:

There are many reasons why Israel didn’t write down it’s true aims on paper, as Hamas has, foremost being the necessary illusion that Israel, and it’s western backers, stand for something decent.

So, Hamas gets points for honestly stating its desire to obliterate Israel, whereas Israel is hiding its true aim–which I can only conclude that anon believes is an analogous desire to obliterate the Palestinians and all its Arab neighbors? And, indeed, there is a group in Israel which believes that Israel should take over all of historical Palestine (although not all the Arab countries). But they are a minority and do not represent what Israel stands for, which is indeed something “decent.” My guess is that anonymous knows that, and chooses to ignore it for purposes of sophistry.

Anonymous also writes: “The Palestinians on the other hand have, well, ..nothing, do they? Only hate, and who can blame them. Perhaps a reason for their ‘terrorism’?”

This is the classic excuse for Palestinian suicide bombers, which I’ve discussed at some length previously, here.

Indeed, however, the Palestinians have been misused and shunted around by their Arab “friends,” and kept isolated and as second-class citizens in “camps” administered by a corrupt UN and “leaders” such as Arafat who’ve rob them blind and reign through terror. Yes, it’s unfortunate, but don’t blame Israel for that.

Anonymous also offers the following as the explanation for the Palestinians’ refusal in 1947 to accept the state that was offered them by the UN partition:

In 1947 the U.N. “offered” the Palestinians to be ruled under a non-Palestinian, the Hashemite King of Jordan (more malable to western interests then the troublesome Mufti of Jerusalem). I wonder if the Jews would have accepted the State of Israel ruled by ..the Pope? In other words the Palestinians were offered nothing. No homeland anyway.

My response:

I am relatively certain you are quite aware that the objections to the formation of the Palesinian state in 1947 did not rest on problems with a Hashemite king, although that may have not been to their liking, either. You no doubt know that the entire kingdom of Jordan was carved from Palestine, also, and that early in the game the Palestinians did not consider themselves to be a distinct people from the Jordanians. That came later. The Jordanians managed to accept their king, somehow. The objection to the creation of Palestine was that it coincided with the creation of Israel. Israel was unhappy with many elements of the deal, also, but they accepted it. The Palestinians did not. It is a great tragedy.

And ah, yes, that “troublesome” Mufti of Palestine, less malleable to Western interests. It would be helpful if you would level as to the truth about that troublesome Mufti (see this and this). No doubt the Mufti would have made a completely acceptable head of a Palestinian state at its creation–acceptable to Hitler, that is, had he still been alive.

Anonymous also writes the following:

As for “the goals of Israeli’s” and Jews it’s worth mentioning that prior to the creation of Israel, many, if not a majority of Jews were against a solely Jewish State. They (Jews at the time) were predominantly socialist and communist, and saw such a State, based solely on race and religion, as inherently undemocratic, “the Siamese twin” of that other purely despised racist State, facist Germany. That nothing fruitful could come out of something so unjust was clear to them. They were right.

I have no doubt whatsoever that many Jewish residents of the area prior to the creation of Israel were in fact Socialist and Communists, and no doubt many didn’t want Israel to have a solely Jewish identity. But anonymous must know that he/she is distorting the facts about Israel’s identity and its so-called racism. In fact, the shoe is on the other foot. Jews are not allowed to be residents of Israel’s Arab neighbors, whereas Arabs constitute one-fifth of the population of the country of Israel. I am fairly certain that anonymous knows that fact, but chooses to ignore it for his/her own purposes, and instead to use the despicable comparison to its “Siamese twin,” fascist (ie, Nazi) Germany.

In an interesting irony, that is a comparison worthy of Goebbels (and I don’t care who made it, even if those persons are Jews; it is still worthy of Goebbels to call Israel a Siamese twin of Nazi Germany). I don’t mean this as sophistry, either; I mean it as the literal truth: it is a statement worthy of Goebbels in its use of the Big Lie. But of course, as Goebbels himself said, if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes the truth.

Once again, let me reiterate that this post is not meant to be any sort of definitive and exhaustive discussion of Israel and Palestine. My purpose is merely to highlight a few points. My arguments here are not to convince those such as anonymous (an impossible task, anyway). I am simply attempting to respond relatively briefly, in an effort to clear up some things in the record.

For further information, I refer you once again to the following website (and, believe me, this is just the tip of the iceberg): Mideast Web. You can do a search and find countless other pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian sites that offer information. My guess is that many of you have already done so, and have formed your own opinions.

Hamas is a difficult (or impossible?) thing to change

The New Neo Posted on by

A question posed by the folks at Augean Stables:

Michael Portillo, Conservative Member of Parliament for Kensington and Chelsea (UK) hopes that Hamas will change. He makes the following analogy in an Op-Ed piece in the London Times:

Terrorist organisations do sometimes metamorphose into law-abiding political parties. Anything is possible if Menachem Begin, once leader of the Irgun movement that carried out the murderous attack on British forces in Jerusalem ’s King David hotel, could go on to be Israel’s prime minister and a Nobel peace prize winner.

I heard this analogy many times (including by those who are strong supporters of Israel, such as Michael Portillo). Israelis were once terrorists and then changed. The same will happen with the Palestinians. My question is: is it a fair analogy?

Well, there’s a short answer, a long answer, and a very long answer. The very long one could be a multi-part series (oh no, another?) Perhaps some day I’ll tackle it. But today I’ll take the (relatively) short route.

The history of Israeli terrorism, and the definition thereof, is complex. One problem with looking up the history of Israeli terrorism online–where I’ve done most of my research so far– is that most of the websites offering information have a rather transparent agenda, either pro-Israel or con. Now, having an agenda doesn’t mean that a site can’t offer correct and objective information. But it certainly can make it hard to evaluate the truth and completeness of the information one finds there.

From my own rather brief foray into researching the topic, my impression is that one of the better sites for general information about the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict is this one. The article is long, but I think you’ll find it worth reading if you’re interested in the details.

The oft-cited example of the bombing of the King David Hotel, mentioned in the London Times op-ed piece quoted by Augean Stables, is one of the most famous instances of Israeli terrorism. The details of that event are shrouded in a certain amount of mystery, but the preponderance of evidence (check out that link, and the ones that follow this paragraph) seems to make it fairly clear that the bombers only intended to demolish the building and some incriminating documents within it. A warning was delivered by the Irgun in enough time for the inhabitants to have evacuated, and this warning was apparently ignored or the evacuation bungled (it’s not clear which).

But some may deny or question that fact. What’s the truth? Here are some further sites on the subject: this and this.

What of the case for the other side? I’ve spent some time searching for the Palestinian viewpoint on the King David Hotel bombing. My search couldn’t be called exhaustive, but it wasn’t brief, and all I’ve been able to find are the usual cursory references to the bombing as terrorism, and the fact that people were killed–nothing that contradicts the official Israeli story. (I found an article at Al Jazeera on the subject, but I’ve lost the link and can’t find it now–I’ll try to recover it later).

So as best we can conclude from the historical record, the King David Hotel bombing differed in many important respects from the usual terrorism employed by a group such as Hamas. The site had strategic value, and a warning was given. If we concede that the King David bombing was only intended to destroy the building rather than the people in it, and that it went horribly wrong, then I think it’s clear it should have been called an act of sabotage rather than terrorism.

But those who place a bomb in a building loaded with people, even for purposes of sabotage and with a warning, are aware that they are putting those people at risk. I’ll even go so far as to speculate, for the sake of argument, that the Irgun actually intended to kill British soldiers, and even understood that some civilians might die in the process. If so, this would certainly have made the bombing a terrorist act–and, in fact, if you read the Irgun links, you will see that there were definitely other Irgun operations that had the explicit purpose of killing British soldiers and which did accomplish that end, as well as killing some others into the bargain.

But even so, are all terrorist acts the same? Are terrorist attacks that target only soldiers always morally acceptable for that reason, for example? I don’t think so, but I absolutely refuse to put them on the same moral plane as purposely targeting as many civilians (including women and children) as possible. I think there is a hierarchy of terrorist acts, and that the latter is considerably more heinous.

So, did the Irgun ever target Arab civilians rather than British soldiers? The plot grows thicker here, and murkier. Here are two interesting articles on the history of the Irgun: this and this. The first site is the official Irgun site, but it seems relatively straightforward; the second, of course, is Wikipedia, which has its own drawbacks.

In fact, speaking of drawbacks, take a look at this. It gives you an idea of the quicksand into which one almost immediately sinks when attempting to research this area. It’s a discussion of whether many of the alleged Irgun attacks (especially some on Arab civilians) in fact happened, and whether they can be attributed to Irgun. It’s way beyond the purview of this post to even try to sort it out right now. But again, for the sake of argument only, let’s just say that some attacks on Arab civilians occurred, and that Irgun was responsible. This would make the Irgun/Hamas analogy more tenable. However, there still remain many differences, which I will get to in a moment

Getting back to the original question–whether Hamas is likely to undergo some sort of change and renounce the use of terrorism, as Irgun did–it is extremely important to look at context. Much Israeli terrorism existed in the shadow of World War II and the Holocaust, and was a desperate attempt to allow the Jews of Europe a place to emigrate when all other avenues were largely blocked. The terrorism was always considered temporary and strategic, with the long-term goal of driving the British out of the country and establishing the only Jewish refuge on earth.

Some, of course, would say this is the goal of Hamas re Israel: driving out the “occupiers,” and creating a Palestinian homeland. However, the history is quite different: for one thing, the Palestinians had a chance for their homeland in 1947, and refused to take it. Also, take a look at their charter and study it; see whether you think it resembles the goals of the Israelis in regard to the British, or if you think Hamas would be satisfied if the Israeli “occupiers” left the current area known as Palestine, and whether Hamas would allow Israel to exist.

Another very important difference is in the context of the societies involved: among the Israelis there were, and are, no generations systematically and broadly steeped and educated in deepest hatred (although no doubt there are individuals), no children wearing bomber belts in parades, no glorification of the act of bombing as martyrdom, no deliberate intent to maximize the number of women and children as casualties. In fact, there have been no deliberate martyrs, as far as I know; the perpetrators of the Irgun bombings wished to live. There was/is no glorification of killing and death itself, no nihilistic fury, except by one or two random individuals.

Israeli society as a whole has consistently condemned terrorism, whereas Palestinian society has come to embrace and elevate it. This, along with the careful education of an entire generation in hatred of Israelis and Jews, is one of the most unfortunate and deepest obstacles to any change in Hamas.

In summary, I don’t think the analogy to Irgun is a valid one; there are too many points of difference.

Is change impossible for Hamas, then? I would never say “impossible,” especially if we are looking at change over a very lengthy time. But is it likely to happen, if only the Palestinians can get their own country, as occurred with Irgun? My answer is a most definite “no,” although I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

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.