"History occurs twice, once as tragedy, the second time as farce." (Karl Marx)
"As best as I can tell, [antiwar spin] is a parody of Stalin: one person killed by America is a tragedy. A hundred thousand killed by Saddam, or a million by Pol Pot, are a statistic." (Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds)
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Reflections of a former Belgian and "liberal mugged by reality" on politics, the US-European cultural divide, the conflict with Iraq, and the Israeli-Arab conflict.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2003
Miracles, miracles France and the US agree on something: all of a sudden France agrees to a 'suspension' of the sanctions on Iraq.
Update. Obviously the Daily Telegraph is having a field day, e.g. here and here and here. The Command Post is tracking the story in detail. Galloway married to Arafat's niece? Well, nothing would surprise me about this character, but it is The Sun they're quoting... We link, you decide. posted by Former Belgian at 9:37 PM
Easter is over but as Passover hasn't finished yet, I still can share this chain Email with you that was forwarded to me by a reader. (Several Jewish bloggers have it online, e.g. KesherTalk.)
CNN recounts the story of Passover
By Daniel P. Waxman
The cycle of violence between the Jews and the Egyptians continues
with no end in sight in Egypt. After eight previous plagues that have
destroyed the Egyptian infrastructure and disrupted the lives of
ordinary Egyptian citizens, the Jews launched a new offensive this week
in the form of the plague of darkness.
Western journalists were particularly enraged by this plague. "It
is simply impossible to report when you can't see an inch in front of
you," complained a frustrated Andrea Koppel of CNN. "I have heard from
my reliable Egyptian contacts that in the midst of the blanket of
blackness, the Jews were annihilating thousands of Egyptians. Their
word is solid enough evidence for me."
While the Jews contend that the plagues are justified given the
harsh slavery imposed upon them by the Egyptians, Pharaoh, the Egyptian
leader, rebuts this claim. "If only the plagues would let up, there
would be no slavery. We just want to live plague-free. It is the right
of every society."
Saeb Erekat, an Egyptian spokesperson, complains that slavery is
justifiable given the Jews' superior weaponry supplied to them by the
superpower God.
The Europeans are particularly enraged by the latest Jewish
offensive. "The Jewish aggression must cease if there is to be peace in
the region. The Jews should go back to slavery for the good of the rest
of the world," stated an angry French President Jacques Chirac.
Even several Jews agree. Adam Shapiro, a Jew, has barricaded
himself within Pharaoh's chambers to protect Pharaoh from what is
feared will be the next plague, the death of the firstborn. Mr. Shapiro
claims that while slavery is not necessarily a good thing, it is the
product of the plagues and when the plagues end, so will the slavery.
"The Jews have gone too far with plagues such as locusts and epidemic
which have virtually destroyed the Egyptian economy," Mr. Shapiro
laments. "The Egyptians are really a very nice people and Pharaoh is
kind of huggable once you get to know him," gushes Shapiro.
The United States is demanding that Moses and Aaron, the Jewish
leaders, continue to negotiate with Pharaoh. While Moses points out
that Pharaoh had made promise after promise to free the Jewish people
only to immediately break them and thereafter impose harsher and
harsher slavery, Richard Boucher of the State Department assails the
latest offensive. "Pharaoh is not in complete control of the
taskmasters," Mr. Boucher states. "The Jews must return to the
negotiating table and will accomplish nothing through these plagues."
The latest round of violence comes in the face of a bold new Saudi
peace overture. If only the Jews will give up their language, change
their names to Egyptian names and cease having male children, the Arab
nations will incline toward peace with them, Saudi [Clown] Prince
Abdullah declared.
The weird and wonderful blogosphere: Amritas mixes some warblogging with a heavy dose of linguistics, focusing particularly on Sanskrit (the literal "Mother of all Indo-European Languages"). posted by Former Belgian at 9:21 PM
In his weekly "Anglosphere" column for the UPI news agency, James Bennett wonders where have all the fascists gone? and finds them in the last place Europeans would look for them. He sees fascism, anti-Americanism, and modern antisemitism as expressions of an "Industrial Counter-Revolution", which he considers to be one of the main currents of continental European political thought.
Go read both articles. Best as I can tell, the priceless term "Industrial counter-revolution" was coined by Brink Lindsey in his book "Against the dead hand".
As an aside on Bennett, many people do not realize how many fascist leaders started out political life of the far left. Aside from the somewhat anecdoctal evidence that Hitler's party was called "National-Socialist German Workers Party" (at least part of the original NSDAP leadership, particularly the Strasser brothers, appear to have taken the 'socialist' part somewhat seriously), Mussolini enjoyed a reputation as a Marxist theorist before WW I, and British fascist leader Oswald Mosley was a renegade Labour MP. This without mentioning the 'De Man-ist' wing of the Belgian socialist party at the beginning of WW II... posted by Former Belgian at 9:32 AM
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Transoc (n.): short for "transnational oligarchic collectivism".
In "1984", George Orwell describes a world mostly ruled by three competing totalitarianisms: Ingsoc (for English Socialism) in "Oceania", neo-Bolshevism in Eurasia, and "Death Worship" in East Asia.
Orwell has a way of being prescient in unforeseen ways. While the geographic boundaries are different, we may indeed be seeing a trilateral tug-of-war, not between specific ideologies, but between meta-ideologies and/or systems of government.
The first would be traditional liberal democracy in all its variety.
The second would in fact be appropriately labeled "Death Worship", whether it be of the radical Islamist or of the Arab national-socialist (Ba'athist) variety, or any of the other nihilist ideologies that hold sway in that part of the world.
The third emerging meta-ideology has variously been named "transnational progressivist", or "transnational socialist" (tranzi or transnazi for short), and less frequently "mean green meme", and "vict[im]ocracy" around the blogosphere.
I am somewhat unhappy with the more popular names. First of all, as seductive as the "nazi" association may be as a rethorical annoyance device --- particularly when many "tranzis" act as fellow travelers for regimes that have a thing or two in common with Hitler's --- it amounts to some degree to a cheapening of the Shoah/Holocaust.
Secondly, while many "tranzi" ideologues are either outright post-Marxist or exhibit clear parallels with Marxist thought (e.g. the replacement of class warfare by that "oppressor" and "victim" groups --- be they national, ethnic, gender, or sexual orientation), there are other "tranzis" --- particularly in Old Europe, and particularly among those who pushed hardest for the EU --- who actually come from a statist authoritarian conservative perspective (which is somewhat similar to American "paleoconservatism")
Thirdly, the term "progressivist" may not be identical to "progressist" (what the Unabridged Merriam-Webster defines as "one who believes in progress ; especially : one who believes in the continuous progress of the human race or of society") but it still suggests there is something "progressive" about ideologies and attitudes that are objectively deeply reactionary or what I, as the antonym to "progressist", would term "regressist". (Examples: "deep ecology", anti-sciences and anti-technology movements, advocacy of pseudoscience and New Age, the glorification of the "noble savage"
that underlies much of "tranzi" thought.)
For a better term, let me go back to "1984", which contains a "book within a book" by the fictional Emanuel Goldstein (the object of the "Two Minutes Hate": the name is of course a thinly veiled reference to Trotsky's actual name of Lev Bronstein) entitled: "The Foundations of Oligarchic Collectivism". If there are some unifying features to the diverse ideologies called "tranzi", it would be:
(a) their post-national or transnational character. "Transnationalism" is used here to express the concept of group allegations supplanting traditional national identities (as distinct from "internationalism", which refers to cooperation between national units).
(b) their fundamentally post-democratic character. The EU and the UN --- de facto run by unelected bureaucracies of the (self-)anointed "elect" --- are perhaps paradigms of this.
(c) their emphasizing the ("oppressor" or "victim") group identity over the individual.
Combining these three elements, and borrowing from the title of Orwell's fictional political tract, we come up with "transnational oligarchic collectivism", or "transoc" for short. posted by Former Belgian at 5:05 PM
Meanwhile, a Fox commentator quotes General Tommy Franks as having referred to the UN "oil for palaces" program. posted by Former Belgian at 3:41 PM
Saturday, April 19, 2003
Steven Den Beste is unsatisfied with all his previous attempts at explaining the Chiraqi behavior
I've variously entertained the idea that what has motivated the French behavior was resentment about their diminished place in the world, a sinister attempt to create and lead a world anti-American coalition (especially including much of the Arab world), actual delusions that they were more important than they really are, straightforward pandering to the crowd that got out of hand, a sustained case of miscommunication with America based on deep and unrecognized differences in cultural assumptions, outright fear of American power and American motives, attempts to cover up years of illegal deals between French companies and Iraq in violation of UN sanctions, outright corruption of the French government due to direct bribery by Iraq, Iraqi blackmail of key French political figures, fear of an armed insurrection by France's large and increasingly hostile Muslim minority, fear of the economic damage to France if it loses access to the Iraqi market and loses its privileged place in the UN "oil-for-food" program, personal ambition by Chirac to "leave a political legacy" (and he will, but not the one he wanted to), personal fear by Chirac that once he leaves office he'll cease to be immune to criminal indictment in a major bribery scandal.
To some extent probably many of these are factors, but none of them has ever really seemed adequate. The prizes in each case don't seem to match the price being paid.
His answer boils down to this (am quoting just the 'money paragraphs' at the end of a long analysis):
As long as France is an independent nation, with an independent economy and exclusively dependent on its own tax base, France is doomed. France as we know it is unsustainable. The structural and demographic problems France faces probably can't be solved short of violent revolution. The European Union may be seen in Paris as the only hope they have of escaping the trap France is in, as long as the ultimate EU system was designed correctly to make sure the French had disproportionate power in it and could thus manipulate it for the French's economic benefit. If so, they would be willing to go to nearly any lengths to make sure that the EU happened, and to make sure it was dominated by France.
All the other explanations I've come up with for French behavior were unsatisfying; they didn't seem sufficient to explain their behavior, or their apparent desperation and ruthlessness. But this one would do it; if this is what they're thinking, then they really would be willing to do the kind of things they have been. For this they'd be willing to sacrifice the UN, willing to sacrifice NATO, willing to alienate the US. For this they'd be willing to make oil deals with a torturer and sell him illicit goods, and to work to maintain him in power so he could keep torturing to his heart's content. For this they'd be willing to partner with Russia and China. For this they'd be willing to do damned near anything. The only thing that would matter would be to make sure that the final establishment of the European Union happened and that France would have the ability to dominate it. If they win that, they win everything. If they lose that, nothing else matters.
Go read the whole thing. posted by Former Belgian at 9:26 AM
Friday, April 18, 2003
Iconoclasm redux: Erin O'Connor runs a blog called Critical Mass, devoted to the more idiotic tendencies in today's humanities faculties. posted by Former Belgian at 9:50 PM
Iconoclasm alert: a column on TechCentralStation argues that there is neocolonialism at work in Africa, but that the perpetrators are... those touchy-feely PC nongovernmental organizations à la Oxfam. (Hat tip: Instapundit.
Quote of the week: Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, definitely no superhawk or cheerleader:
For me, the best argument for pressuring Syria is the fact that France's foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said on Sunday that this was not the time to be pressuring Syria. Ever since he blocked any U.N. military action against Saddam, Mr. de Villepin has become my moral compass: whatever he is for, I am against. And whatever he is against, I am for.
Today's editorial in the WSJ looks at the chances of restarting Arab-Israeli peace talks in the aftermath of Iraq.
Speaking of Israel, retired left-wing parliamentarian and constitutional law specialist Prof. Amnon Rubinstein calls for adding 'the right to [live in a] democracy' to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Da Shark introduces a new term for the junior partner in the 'Axis of Weasels' (a.k.a. 'The Weasel-Poodle pact', for Charles Johnson).
Instapundit quotes a surprisingly self-critical article in The Arab News (of all places), entitled "It's not too late to face reality".
Jeff Jarvis (hat tip: Instaman) quotes a British Museum official as saying that some of the looted antiquities from the Iraqi national museum are showing up... in Paris. The comments section is quite interesting as well.
And in one of his best essays ever, Steven Den Beste looks at all sides of the CNN controversy. Go read it all --- I can't do it justice by selective quoting. posted by Former Belgian at 1:56 PM
Roundup: the upcoming issue of the Atlantic Monthly has two not-for-pay items of interest: (a) Michael Kelly's last (posthumous) contribution entitled "What now?" and (b) Thomas Ryback goes through the items in the personal library of Hitler (y"sh), which is presently sitting in a corner of the Library of Congress. Not just the contents, but particularly the annotations and passages underlined, offer a unique probe into the mind of one of the 20th century's two paradigmatic tyrants.
The other one was of course Stalin. Grossly oversimplifying (for a more detailed comparison, see Alan Bullock's parallel biography "Hitler and Stalin"), I see the crucial difference between the two as one of obsessive emphasis: while both traits existed in both tyrants (particularly near the ends of their respective lives), racism was Hitler's all-consuming passion and extreme paranoia (to the point of desire for 'mind control') Stalin's.
Note James Schlesinger's editorial in today's Wall Street Journal. An earlier piece by Michael Gonzales discusses the behavior of Belgium at some length:
In Belgium, I've witnessed the defense and foreign ministers feed the beast of anti-Americanism, only to protest later that they want to defang it. At a debate last month at the University Libre de Bruxelles, I saw Messrs. Michel and Flahaut inflame a crowd with their comments. Belgians, said the former, are beginning to look on the U.S. as they once did the Soviet Union. "I am beginning to fear the U.S.," he added, his voice rising, to much applause from a 2,000-strong crowd. Not to be outdone, Mr. Flahaut promised to do all he could to kick Tony Blair out of the Socialist International.
By "debate," incidentally, I mean a representative of Republicans Abroad and me on one side, and on the other the two ministers, two pro-government university professors, a journalist who was supposed to act as moderator, and Iraq's ambassador to Belgium. The Iraqi was twice interrupted by the crowd with applause; I [a member of the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal, FB] was accused of being a CIA agent. When one student stood up to complain that a representative of Saddam's regime was applauded while I was booed, the crowd shouted her down.
Can anyone wonder at the crowd's response, given such leadership? Mr. Flahaut called for bigger anti-U.S. demonstrations that weekend. The government needed them, he said. His government was doing more than just standing by. Just as in places like Castro's Cuba, parents at some Belgian schools received requests for their children to attend the demonstration. As for Mr. Michel, he personally quashed a revolt in his Mouvement Reformateur at a party meeting last month. One politician who was there told me the majority wanted the Belgian government to have a more nuanced policy and not to be in such opposition to the U.S. But Mr. Michel threatened, cajoled, and got his way. This is why there hasn't been a backbench revolt in Belgium and France, though this week a Belgian politician tried to redress the balance by delivering letters of support to the British and U.S. Embassies.
A senior Belgian official told me last week that Mr. Michel "now realizes he's gone too far, that he's made comments he ought not to have made, and is trying to calm things down." Too late. His government situated itself against the war and the U.S. out of a long tradition of subservience to the French and out of fear that otherwise its large Muslim population would riot. "The people then may react by voting for the far right," a Belgian official told me.
Explicable, perhaps. But how immoral to act in such a manner, and how dangerous.
The increasingly visible joy of liberated Iraqis is making clear the moral bankruptcy of those who purported to take the high ground by prolonging Saddam's rule. The diplomatic blunders of Brussels and Paris are coming home to roost. This is how we got here.
Victor Davis Hanson, classicist and military historian: The Three Weeks' War. posted by Former Belgian at 5:40 PM
For in-depth reading: two penetrating pieces in The Atlantic Monthly by the doyen of Middle East Studies, Prof. Bernard Lewis (Princeton): Religions and the meeting of civilizations and especially What went wrong?, which looks at the causes for the decline of the Islamic world. posted by Former Belgian at 5:33 PM
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
While over there, I had a telling exchange with a French woman. She was quite critical of 'les post-soixantehuitards' (i.e., the new-Left 'student revolt generation'), a successful professional in a useful pursuit, and clearly extremely worried about extremist tendencies among young French muslims and the spinning out of control of the personal security situation in her region of France. She also clearly had no love lost for Chiraq.
Yet she was convinced the US had done the wrong thing in Iraq, although she agreed with me that the US should have finished the job properly in 1991. (Cultural faultline #1: past sins of omission are justifications for present inaction in one culture, arguments for cleaning up one's own mess in another.)
We went through the usual exchanges about oil, politics being a dirty business, US 'naivete' vs. European 'sophistication' (one man's 'sophistication' is another's ethical cynicism), her view that this would just increase terrorism vs. my reminding her of what the phrase 'pour encourager les autres' has come to mean in English,.., until we hit the money paragraph. She pointed to the 'chaos' and 'rioting' in Iraq, and said 'the US is laughing that all away, saying that they have freedom now, so nothing else matters. What is freedom if you have chaos? If you don't know what tomorrow is going to bring?'
And there is cultural faultline #2. The fear of chaos and anarchy runs so deep in the old-European mindset (particularly among the bourgeoisie) that they will prefer a deeply flawed or even outright criminal regime (even at home, but especially far away from home) over 'chaos'. You could have asked her question to the many who lived through weeks of 'chaos' after the Liberation in WW II. (Particularly in France, looting and extrajudicial executions took on quite major proportions.) And, I am appalled to say, the answer would not have been as consensual as you would expect.
By contrast, at least one US state (New Hampshire) actually has for a motto: "Live Free or Die', and I have every reason to believe that this is more than an empty slogan.
The outcry over the post-9/11 suggestion that a federal ID system be introduced tells you quite a bit. I've always taken the requirement to carry ID at all times and present it when asked for granted (as do many Europeans), so I could not understand what the fuss was about in the US. In fact, I merely underestimated the extent to which Americans --- not just ACLU types or ideological Libertarians --- value their freedom more than their security.
Sure enough, Britain had (and has) its share of patrician isolationist conservatives. But it also has always had a strong 'Atlanticist' strain in its politics (Churchill, Thatcher, Blair) and I can personally testify that, however European Britons may be culturally in some respects, this is one area where the average 'non-New Class' Briton is much closer to their brethren in the Anglosphere than to their cousins across the Channel.
As it happens, Jews all over the world tonight celebrate the first night of Passover --- alternately known both as the Festival of Spring and the Festival of Our Freedom. As the Bible tells the story, some Israelites on their long trek out of Egypt yearn for 'the fleshpots of Egypt', that is, they lamented the loss of the relative material security (or shall I rather say: the predictability of their circumstances) they had in their abject slavery, as opposed to the uncertainty of what lies ahead --- a place among the nations if the gamble pays off, total destruction if it goes badly wrong. Some commentators even argue that some of the Jews deliberately stayed behind in Egypt --- not because they had it so great there but because their fear of what lay ahead prevailed over their loathing of their present circumstances. Had Moses' flock consisted not of Jews, but of a random mixture of present-day Europeans and Americans, I have a feeling the Bible would have been written in English, or maybe in a Slavic language --- but definitely not in French or German. posted by Former Belgian at 1:32 PM
Back from a successful business trip to a former Soviet satellite state. The hotel TV where I was offered two English-language news channels, namely CNN International and BBC World. The latter was almost hilarious to watch in these surroundings as its reporting on Gulf War II, in slant if not in slickness, had more in common with the state TV channel in Soviet days. Locals conversant in English have been telling me more or less the same thing. They also reminesced about watching state TV diligently, with a twist --- monitoring the news for what wasn't being said, and diligently listening to the commentary, then assuming the exact opposite.
As Baghdad fell last week, CNN announced that it too had been liberated. On the New York Times' op-ed page on Friday, Eason Jordan, the network's news chief, admitted that his organization had learned some "awful things" about the Baathist regime--murders, tortures, assassination plots--that it simply could not broadcast earlier. Reporting these stories, Mr. Jordan wrote, "would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."
[...]Would that this were an outbreak of honesty, however belated. But it isn't. If it were, Mr. Jordan wouldn't be portraying CNN as Saddam's victim. He'd be apologizing for its cooperation with Iraq's erstwhile information ministry--and admitting that CNN policy hinders truthful coverage of dictatorships. For CNN, the highest prize is "access," to score live camera feeds from a story's epicenter. Dictatorships understand this hunger, and also that it provides blackmail opportunities. In exchange for CNN bureaus, dictatorships require adherence to their own rules of reportage. They create conditions where CNN--and other U.S. media--can do little more than toe the regime's line.
The Iraq example is the telling one. Information Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf has turned into an international joke, but the operation of his ministry was a model of totalitarian efficiency. The ministry compiled dossiers on U.S. journalists. It refused to issue visas to anyone potentially hostile--which meant that it didn't issue visas to reporters who strayed from al-Sahhaf's talking points. CNN correspondents Wolf Blitzer, Christiane Amanpour and Richard Roth, to name a few, were banned for critical reporting. It didn't take much to get on this list. A reporter who referred to "Saddam" (not "President Saddam Hussein") was shut out for "disrespect." If you didn't cover agitprop, like Saddam's 100% victory in October's referendum, the ministry made it clear that you were out.
Go read the whole thing. For obvious reasons, Fox News cannot contain its schadenfreude, and the blogosphere is abuzz with discussion. Andrew Sullivan being on spring breank, Winds of Change perhaps has the best roundup (see also here). In the comments section olf the latter, Joe Katzman rips the words out of my mouth:
This is a literal example of a multinational corporation who deliberately, knowingly fattened its bottom line on the blood of the opressed. You can't get a more quintessential liberal/ leftist cause than that.
If the Left and American liberals decide this can be ignored or downplayed because it hindered action in Iraq (am I the only one wondering if Clinton might have gone ahead in 1998 had CNN and others acted ethically?), they will reveal themselves to lack even an ounce of belief in one of their most fervently-claimed doctrines. It won't be the first time, either... and the commonality binding these incidents together is that in every case, the silence or even shilling was chosen over a course that might defend the USA or make it look good.
After a while, the consistency of the coincidence makes one suspect that the pattern one sees is the reality, and the specific examples merely symptoms.
Decidedly UNfunny (because UNdeniably true). Meanwhile, my favorite French graphic artist The Dissident Frogman put up this priceless political French parfum advertising spoof (click on the picture to zoom in):
And finally, the enviromaniac murderer of 'post-Left/Right' Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn has been given a paltry 18 year sentence, and, with time off for good behavior, can be sent home in as little as 12 years. The judge is reported to have said that 'life in prison is not the answer'. In fact, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement ;-) posted by Former Belgian at 12:08 PM
Wednesday, April 09, 2003
And speaking of religious hymns: as poetic hyperbole is the stock in trade of love songs, some of the more agapic ones could do double duty as religious hymns. For instance Wind at my Back by progressive rock band Spock's Beard:
[...]
I just want to live
In the place that you have to give
I'll let the heat beat me down
Until the water comes down
[...]
Can it be true
That it all comes rushing from you
When my resistance is gone
And there's nothing that I can lean on
[chorus]You are the wind at my back
You give what I lack
You're the jewel in my hand
You're like rain on dry land
And my soul has been kissed
Just because you exist
You're the dream that's a fact
You're the wind at my back
Blessed be the 1 who gives strength to the weary. Good night. posted by Former Belgian at 8:49 PM
Blog round-up: SdB being his usual acerbic self; mystery writer Roger L. Simon has a brand-new blog designed by none other than Charles Johnson, a.k.a. LGF; and Daniel Drezner, an anti-idiotarian assistant professor of political science at U. of Chicago, has a nice celebration roundup.
As baseball start and pundit-despite-himself Yogi Berra used to say: "It ain't over until it's over", but I can't help feeling giddy and grateful, mixed with awe and humility towards the men and women who are continuing to court death so others can live in freedom. Glenn Johnson quotes a most appropriate hymn (of a religion that is neither mine nor his):
Today in history: On April 9, 1865, Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrenders to his Union colleague Ulysses S. Grant, thus ending the American Civil War. (Hat tips: Best of the Web and Silent Running.) Coincidence moves in mysterious ways.
Baghdad liberated. Donald Sensing has captured video of the Saddamite statue being pulled down. He also captured this priceless image of the liberation of Baghdad: posted by Former Belgian at 5:12 PM
Tuesday, April 08, 2003
Deadline season in realspace for Former Belgian --- blogging will be light until middle of next week.
Meanwhile, Europundits has gotten a really nice makeover and had its style sheet fixed --- now you can actually see which comments belong to which article :-) Go have a look.
Signing off for now with this cartoon from the Daily Telegraph:
But seriously --- if you still have any respect left for Jimmy "Fiskie" Carter, go read this. I am a firm devotee of Hanlon's (actually Heinlein's) rule "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity", but Carter's actions stretch my faith in that principle to the limit. (Hat tip: The mother of all bloggers.) posted by Former Belgian at 6:03 PM
Monday, April 07, 2003
In this weekend's Sunday Times issue, Andrew Sullivan presents a useful overview of left-wing/liberal supporters of the war and their arguments.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. forces near Baghdad found a weapons cache of around 20 medium-range missiles equipped with potent chemical weapons, the U.S. news station National Public Radio reported on Monday.
NPR, which attributed the report to a top official with the 1st Marine Division, said the rockets, BM-21 missiles, were equipped with sarin and mustard gas and were "ready to fire." It quoted the source as saying new U.S. intelligence data showed the chemicals were "not just trace elements."
It said the cache was discovered by Marines with the 101st Airborne Division, which was following up behind the Army after it seized Baghdad's international airport.
U.S. Central Command headquarters in Qatar had no immediate comment.
The report is especially interesting considering the well-known "left"-ist, "anti-war" slant of NPR. posted by Former Belgian at 4:56 PM
CENTCOM spokesman advises caution, stresses that raid is just that (a show of force [presumably aimed at demoralizing what's left of the defenses]), that Baghdad is a city the size of Los Angeles, and that some difficult days might lie ahead. posted by Former Belgian at 7:31 AM
Fox reports three independent sources that `Ali Hassan al-Majib, a.k.a. "Chemical Ali", has been found dead in Basra. See also here. posted by Former Belgian at 7:26 AM
Meryl Yourish announces that Robert Fisk has just been fisking himself. A coworker who used to live in San Francisco misheard me and nearly laughed himself to death. Meryl, you shouldn't type such things while people are eating or drinking coffee :-) posted by Former Belgian at 7:17 AM
Tim Trevann (on Fox News) thinks "Baghdad Bob" (as the Iraqi "Minister of Postmodern Lit-Crit" has been nicknamed) was actually broadcasting from the roof of the "Palestine Hotel" about 2 km. away from the Ministry of (dis)Information. This would be the safest location for him as most of the remaining foreign correspondents are staying there. posted by Former Belgian at 7:11 AM
US Troops are apparently under strict instructions not to fly American flags from any buildings, in order to make it clear the Coalition regards it all as Iraqi territory (just not Saddamite). posted by Former Belgian at 7:01 AM
Greg Kelly, who's on the parade grounds of SH's palace, asks some soldiers to respond to the claims of the Iraqi "Ministry of Truth" that they're not there at all. Soldiers: "he's right across the street, we'll have to go talk to him".
He also said that the statue was demolished by a high-explosive round from a tank named by its crew "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue".
Shots of "mopping-up" fire can be heard in the background.
Iraqi Minister of "Information" speaking: "We have slaughtered about 3/4 of the invaders... We are mopping up the remainder... They are sick in their minds... They said they have entered Baghdad, but it is all a literary construct [sorry, that I just made up] in their imagination... There is no presence of the Americans in Baghdad... They are beginning to commit suicide at the walls of Baghdad" This 5 seconds after video of statue of SH in downtown Baghdad being blown up by American soldiers.
Somebody ought to offer this guy a job as a comedian. But French universities will fall over themselves to offer him a chair in postmodern literary studies since he clearly has exceptional talents for this. posted by Former Belgian at 6:39 AM
Seeing video of Iraqi minister of disInformation about to make a statement somewhere on a roof. posted by Former Belgian at 6:33 AM
Woke up to video of US forces investing the Saddamite palace in downtown Baghdad. The Command Post reports that a wag raised the flag of... University of Georgia over the palace.
TCP also quotes a rumor that Soddamn Insane and sons left Baghdad incognito for Tikrit (the hometown of Saddam and almost all his close associates). Considering the importance of extended family and tribal ties in Arab society, it stands to reason he might pick Tikrit for a "last stand" if he feels he's losing his grip on the country.
Meanwhile, CENTCOM announces it is "just a raid" to show that they can go anywhere they please in Baghdad.
The Command Post is literally getting updated every 30 seconds now.
Saddam (what's left of him) and posted by Former Belgian at 6:19 AM
Sunday, April 06, 2003
Follow-up: on "universal jurisdiction" law: yesterday night, according to De Standaard (in Dutch), the Belgian Senate finally approved the restriction of the "universal jurisdiction law" with 36 "ayes", 22 "nays", and 5 "present". Both Flemish and Wallon, liberal-democratic parties, Flemish Christian-democrats, and the far-right Flemish Block voted in favor, as did Socialist Guy Moens. The remaining Socialists and the Greens voted against. The Walloon Christian-democrats abstained.
The Council of State (=constitutional court) did rule last night that it had misgivings about a clause under which, if no Belgian citizens or residents are involved and the country of the alleged perpetrator knows the rule of law, the Minister of Justice has the discretion to forward the case to the judiciary of the perpetrator's country. The goverment however argued that this is subordinate to judicial review by the Court of Cassation (Belgium's highest court of appeals), and that therefore no encroachment by the executive branch on the authority of the judiciary branch is involved. Socialists and Greens are planning to submit an additional amendment, but in view of the imminent parliamentary recess this will have to wait a while.
And William Kristol sees a once-in-a-generation crisis in the (US) Democratic party, with a developing split between a traditional but patriotic liberals like Gephardt and Lieberman, and a leftist faction that hates Bush Jr. more than it loves America or cares about liberal ideals. He sees parallels with the 1948 split in the Democratic party between an ultra-liberal, "fellow-travelling" faction around Henry Wallace and the liberal (but anti-Marxist) faction around Harry S Truman, but also with the malaise in the Republican Party in the late '90s, where sheer hatred of Bill Clinton seemed to blind the GOP faithful to all other concerns.
Speaking as a non-American: whatever one may think about the behavior of Bill Clinton in "Monicagate" (and I certainly was thoroughly underwhelmed), I think few Americans realize just how much damage was inflicted on the image of the USA abroad by the Starr report and the endless goings-on about it --- not just in Europe (where, by unwritten law, the press considers the 'love' life of politicians off-limits unless it directly endangers their countries --- e.g., affairs with alleged Soviet spies during the Cold War), but particularly outside Europe. posted by Former Belgian at 4:30 PM
Hypocritic [sic] Oath: A CNN reporter who is also a neurosurgeon dropped camera and mike to assist in an operation on an Iraqi boy. Now some "ethicist" apparently has problems with the journalist not acting as a passive bystander. This is not the first instance of literally demoralized ivory-tower ethicism I have seen, and I am afraid it won't be the last.
And on to literally "demoralized" esthetics: author Martin Amis gets a well-deserved fisking for apparently having compared Saddam Hussein to Winston Churchill. Amis and Dawkins have one thing in common: an all-consuming hatred of religion that leads them to see 'religious right' consipracies everywhere, and to seek alliances against it with the devil himself if need be. posted by Former Belgian at 4:03 PM
Hear, hear: a remarkably pro-war op-ed in the far-left LA Weekly, of all places. (Hat tip: Instapundit.) posted by Former Belgian at 3:56 PM
StrategyPage.com discusses different urban warfare tactics. posted by Former Belgian at 3:47 PM
Fox News had live TV-quality video from a US armored patrol going along a Baghdad suburban thoroughfare. The air of studied nonchalance (they seemed almost bored with the level of resistance, such as it was) on the part of the troops was just eerie. The juxtaposition with the Iraqi (dis)Information Minister's dispatches could rank with a Samuel Beckett play.
I could not help thinking of the final weeks of the Nazi regime. Hitler's advisors telling him what he wanted to hear (out of sycophancy, or for fear of being shot), ordering elaborate counterattacks with division that had either ceased to exist altogether or had been reduced to battalion strength, his henchmen carrying out all sorts of atrocities in the dying days of the regime,... as well as the Werewolf units (the largely abortive attempt to create a kind-of "fedayin Hitler" force). posted by Former Belgian at 3:39 PM
According to Sky News, British troops discovered something grisly at an abandoned army base outside Az-Zubayr (24 km. southwest of Basra).
Hundreds of human remains have been discovered by British soldiers in a makeshift morgue in southern Iraq.
The remains, including bundles of bone in strips of military uniform, were found in an abandoned Iraqi military base on the outskirts of Az Zubayr.
It was not known how long the remains had been there.
They will be investigated by forensic specialists as possible evidence of atrocities carried out by [the Saddamite] regime.
[...]
British troops found a warehouse with rows of cardboard coffins full of human remains stacked five deep. There was also a book which appeared to contain a handwritten list of the dead.
[...]
A neighbouring building reportedly contained catalogues of photographs of the dead, most of whom had died from gunshot wounds to the head.
Others were said to be mutilated beyond recognition, with faces burned and swollen.
A reporter [...] described what appeared to be a "purpose-built shooting gallery" outside. A tiled plinth, about a foot high, stood in a courtyard and the brickwork behind it was riddled with bullets. Behind it was a drainage ditch.
Bags inside the warehouse contained military webbing and foot soles plus an identity card written in Arabic.
In another building, there was a picture of Saddam Hussein, what were believed to be prayer stones and metal hooks on racks hanging from the ceiling.
The discovery was made early Saturday by officers from the 3rd Regiment of the Royal Horse Artillery.
The quotes speak for themselves, I believe. posted by Former Belgian at 3:28 PM
Friday, April 04, 2003
One of the US's most senior journalists, Washington Post columnist and Atlantic Monthly editor-at-large Michael Kelly, was killed in a Humvee accident in Iraq. His last column for the WaPo appeared yesterday. He is being eulogized on Fox News as I type this; the comments are about his (my compressed version) "being neither liberal nor conservative, with no partisan axe to grind, but always true to his moral convictions". I will sorely miss his writing, and I am not even an American.
You thought the BBC was biased? Ribbity Frog, an Israeli blogger who is an Arabic language specialist, checked out the BBC's Arabic language service and found it to be a couple of orders of magnitude worse. The post is followed by several more on the BBC. posted by Former Belgian at 2:33 PM
For the umpteenth time I lost a long post thanks to Blogger. Perhaps I will bite the bullet and go Movable Type, if the missus will allow me to rent webspace somewhere :-)
Department of Sore Losers. I mentioned a few days ago that the Belgian lower house of parliament had passed an amendment to the "universal jurisdiction in crimes against humanity" law, which in effect restricted the competence of the Belgian courts to cases involving Belgian citizens or residents. This law still had to be approved by the Senate, which is about to go on its pre-election recess. According to De Standaard daily (in Dutch), the Belgian Socialist and Green parties have now requested judicial review by the Council of State (a kind-of constitutional court) in a transparent attempt to filibuster the vote in the Senate. Their argument that the law violates the separation between the legislative and judiciary branches of government leaves me speechless. After all, what do you call the efforts of the "put Sharon on trial" lobby to have the law modified so Sharon could be tried in absentia?
I previously hinted at the "problematic" nature of the Sharon case. Let me briefly recap it. During the Lebanon War, the Christian president-elect Gemayel was assassinated. A Christian militia allied with Israel, entrusted with guarding two Palestinian refugee camps named Sabra and Chatila, went on a revenge killing spree, causing worldwide outrage as well as the largest protest demonstration in Israeli history. In response to public pressure, the Israeli govenment appointed a commission of inquiry led by retired Supreme Court Justice Yitzchak Kahan (not to be confused with extremist anti-Arab politician Meir Kahane). The commission ruled Sharon (then defense minister) indirectly responsible in the sense that he should have foreseen the slaughter and taken steps to prevent it. Sharon was forced to resign as defense minister.
Later TIME Magazine printed an article alleging that Sharon had a more direct responsibility, suggesting that he in effect had knowingly acquiesced in a revenge killing. Sharon sued TIME for libel ["smaad en eerroof in geschrifte"] in a New York court. Under American law, a libel conviction where the plaintiff ["de eiser"] is a public figure requires that the material be (a) materially false ["fundamenteel onwaar"] (not just in details); (b) damaging; (c) malicious ["met kwaad opzet"]. (In cases where the plaintiff is not a public figure, (a) and (b) are sufficient.) The court ruled that the TIME article was both materially false and damaging, but found no proof of malice on the part of the journaist or TIME magazine. (Fortunately for the media industry, mere incompetence des not count as malice.)
Aside from the general problems with unrestricted universal jurisdiction laws (their easily becoming tools for politically motivated "judicial harassment"; cycles of legal retaliation leading to international legal chaos; erosion of national sovereignty;...), and aside from its flimsy merits in their own right (much of the case is based on the evidently self-serving testimony of Elie Hobeika, the commander of the militia that did the killing, who later switched allegiance to the Syrians and most recently died -- with or without assistance -- in a diving accident), the Sharon case involves at least borderline double jeopardy, the facts already having been the subject of both a libel trial and a quasi-judicial body.
UPDATE:Prof. George P. Fletcher comments on FindLaw.com. He raises many of the same issues as I (a non-lawyer) did, and raises one additional point.
Indeed there is a compelling analogy between the jurisdiction of the ICC [International Criminal Court] and federal criminal jurisdiction in civil rights cases. The American federal courts began to prosecute racist crimes when it became clear after the Civil War that Southern states were either unwilling or unable to bring these crimes of white against blacks to justice. The same standard applies in the ICC. The jurisdiction of the international court will apply if the state with primary jurisdiction is "unwilling or unable" to prosecute and convict the offenders.
These limitations on the authority of the International Criminal Court reveal the extraordinary pretensions of universal jurisdiction. Belgium need not have made a determination that Israel was "unwilling or unable" to prosecute Sharon. If they had looked into it, they would have discovered that Israel had made a good faith effort to determine Sharon's criminal responsibility. The blue-ribbon Kahan commission considered the precise question Belgium wants to raise once again: Was Sharon criminally responsible for the 1981 massacres in the Sabra and Shatila detention camp?
The commission found that the Lebanese Phalangist forces were directly responsible, but that Sharon was indirectly responsible, since he had allowed the Phalangist forces to enter the camps. The commission concluded that this indirect responsibility did not amount to criminal negligence, and hence there was no prosecution in Israel.
The International Criminal Court could not, in good faith, ignore the findings of the Kahan commission and decide to prosecute Sharon regardless of Israel's prior determination. Every criminal defendant has the right to avoid double jeopardy - [the specter of being] tried first in one country, and then in another, and then in another - until some court is willing to convict.
The events of the pasy day are just too fast-moving and exciting to keep up with. Instapundit and The Command Post are doing a much better job than I ever could. posted by Former Belgian at 12:59 PM
Wednesday, April 02, 2003
Barry Rubin, editor of MERIA (Middle East Review of International Affairs), has an op-ed piece in the Jerusalem Post (registration required) that deserves quoting at length:
Simply put: Things thought to apply only to Israel have now been shown to work almost equally against the United States. Problems attributed to an Israeli hasbara weakness also hold true for the mighty and competent American public relations system. Attitudes attributable to anti-Semitism are paralleled by the effects of anti-Americanism.
In short, Israel's situation is by no means unique. Deeper, systemic, problems about how governments, media, and intellectuals function and how they view the world can work against anyone, or at least anyone who deals with the Middle East.
[...]
Being a democracy battling a dictatorship earns you little or no special credit, and can be an outright disadvantage. The assumption of the dominant sector in the intellectual class which runs much of academia, the media, and all verbal, opinion-forming sectors of society is that democracies lie about as much as dictatorships, especially if the dictatorship claims "progressive" credentials.
Forcing its own intellectuals and media to voice a single line makes the dictatorship sound popular abroad. Since all Iraqis or Palestinians say the same thing, it must be true. In contrast, a democracy's dissenting voices about its real or imagined shortcomings can be used to undermine its assertions.
To make matters worse, you have the claims of a "people" versus those of a "government." (You can imagine which one the opinion-making class is more likely to believe.)
In addition, since no critical information comes out of a dictatorship, the only way we know it does anything wrong is from its enemies' assertions. All the data, no matter how well-documented, from Israel on Yasser Arafat's backing of terrorism, or from the US on Saddam Hussein's repression and concealment of weapons can be dismissed as partisan.
Then there is the fair-minded "neutrality" of those who shape opinion in the media, academia, and elsewhere. "Patriotism" is identified as a right-wing belief and replaced by its opposite. To doubt, criticize, slander, or at least avoid agreeing with your country's position seems politically courageous and morally noble.
"Why should we assume the US is telling the truth? Let's give equal weight to Saddam Hussein's version."
As a result, if soldiers of a democratic state make a mistake an Israeli or US attack that inadvertently kills civilians they are denounced as something close to war criminals. But if their adversaries torture people to death, employ terrorism or do a dozen other heinous things, the response is, "How do we know it really happened?"
The democratic states must meet a higher standard. Their mistakes matter, and they are held accountable for each and every one.
He continues by poiinting out some parallels between Israel's and the US's international predicament:
Both the US and Israel are headed by internationally unpopular leaders against whom virtually any slander can be launched.
In both cases the bystanders ridicule the existence of very real threats. Thus the defensive actions can be judged as unnecessary and aggressive.
Their enemies are judged with excessive apologetics. Even if the individual leaders of these parties are judged harshly, their actions are excused and those of the US and Israel held in contempt because of what is seen as sympathy for their peoples. Yet it is precisely their own leadership that so impoverishes and endangers those peoples.
In talking about either the US and British armies or about the IDF, many people will not hesitate to tell any lie or make any exaggeration. And they will find more innocent, but quite willing, ears to hear them.
The fact that their adversaries lose every battle is taken to prove that the US and Israel are bullies. The differences between the two sides' casualty figures are viewed not as showing the foolhardiness of the provocations offered by the weaker side, but as proof of its victimization.
In the Arab world, though, the losers are simultaneously victims and heroes, whose victory is proclaimed up to the moment of total, undeniable defeat.
In Europe there are many who wrongly believe that hating the US and Israel will make the Arabs love them and pay them, and not kill them.
The information/hasbara battle is unwinnable not because of ineptness but because Arab and many European governments, all of the Arab and much of the European media, and a large part of the world's intellectual class will not give you a fair chance. They will quickly declare your intentions bad, your leaders dishonorable, your plans unworkable, and your efforts unsuccessful.
In a twist of delicious irony, a radical enviromaniac group defaced US Army vehicles in support of you-know-who. Two commenters point out the delicious irony of the situation:
[(not Tony) Blair] The Earth Liberation Front must have missed the oil well fire thing in Kuwait ten years ago. The logic behind their existence seems flawed. Maybe they could use a new slogan.... how about
No Reason for Pacifists.
[...]
[Andrew X] The violence of “peace” activists is quite pertinent, but it is not the most significant dichotomy here. Most significant, along with the de facto alliance between Green Parties and Socialists, is their categorical willingness to abandon at whim their very purpose for being…. that is, “protecting our environment”.
The havoc wreaked upon this world by “socialist” regimes, and tyrannies in general, staggers the mind. The death of the Aral Sea in Soviet Central Asia is one of the greatest environmental catastrophes of human history, and has destroyed a region the size of the Great Lakes area. Not to mention Chernobyl, built under laws that put “people above profits”. The environmental comparisons of East vs. West Germany, and North vs. South Korea, are glaringly telling. Saddam himself drained enourmous wetlands of the Tigris in order to kill and displace large numbers of Shiites, which is a twofer, when you think about it. Destroying the environment specifically in order to destroy human beings.
Not so funny. British war memorial defaced in France (pictures too disgusting to include here).Not surprisingly, according to an opinion poll published in The Times of London, 54% of all British no longer regard France as a close ally. (Duh.) They quote another poll in Le Monde, according to which only 1/3 of all French is rooting for a Coalition victoriy, and 1/3 of all French is rooting for Sod-Damn Insane. Either they held their opinion poll in Sarcelles or there is something rotten in the state of France. (Duh2.)
Steven Den Beste pretty much sums up my own feelings on the matter. In an update, he refers to an anonymous commenter on Donald Sensing's site who left the following "updated" version of "In Flanders' Fields":
In France's fields the ingrates grow
Who stain the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and on the stone
Their marks, bid us depart, our sacrifice
Scarce felt amid the hate they sow.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our grave from the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
And don't break faith with us who died.
We cannot sleep, when ingrates grow
In France's fields.
Like Merde in France, I give the last picture to the Dissident Frogman:
And now for something completely different. April Fools Day is apparently a French invention.
The French connection to April Fools' Day is no joke. It all started in 1564, when King Charles IX of France adopted the Gregorian calendar, thereby switching the New Year's Day to Jan. 1.
Up until then, Europe used the Julian calendar and held New Year's celebrations around the spring equinox, on dates ranging from March 21 to April 1.
But news of King Charles' edict spread rather slowly — especially in small towns. And, as always, the French held tight to their old traditions and defiantly celebrated New Year's on the old date.
The result: calendar chaos. Suddenly, that old excuse, "I'll pay you next year," took on even less significance.
Parisians grew frustrated and mocked these backward bumpkins as Poisson d'Avril, or "April Fish". This led to expressions of sarcasm, then gag gifts, and the rest, as they say, is history.
It's still a favorite prank among French kids is to tape a paper fish to the backside of an unsuspecting rube.
Se non e vero, e bene trovato. (Roughly: "If it's not true, it's still a good story.") posted by Former Belgian at 9:08 PM
Belgium not the world's supreme court after all. According to the Gazet van Antwerpen (in Dutch, see also here and my previous entries here and here), a new amendment to the controversial Belgian "universal jurisdiction" law was approved by an ad hoc alternate majority ("wisselmeerderheid") in the Chamber of Representatives. (The previous vote was just in the relevant Chamber Commission, the present one in the Plenum.)
Under the terms of the new amendment, Belgian courts still have universal jurisdiction in genocide cases, but only if Belgian citizens or longtime residents (at least 3 years) are involved.
Socialist and Green lawmakers attempted to introduce a "grandfather clause" under which the old legislation would still apply to cases opened prior to July 1, 2002. In this manner, the case against Bush Sr. and Colin Powell would still have been canned, but not the one against Israeli PM Ariel Sharon. In the end, liberal-democrat lawmakers prevailed (with support from Christian Democrats and the far-rightist Flemish Block) and the new restrictions will be retroactive, in effect quashing both cases.
UPDATE: De Standaard (thanks, R.!) has additional details. If no Belgian citizens or residents are involved, the courts have the option to forward the case to the judiciary of the country involved, provided that it has a "similar" judicial system. The vote went 63 ayes against 48 nays (Socialists, Greens, and two CDH [formerly PSC, French-speaking Christian Democrats] ) and 9 abstentions (five CDH, Socialist Fred Erdman, VU-ID [Flemish Nationalist] whip Frieda Brepoels and the former Spirit faction [Flemish nationalist, recently merged with liberal-democrats]). posted by Former Belgian at 10:19 AM
?QUE? Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel calls US war planning "unprofessional". There's stiff competition for the Nobel Prize for chutzpah (and particulary the French candidates have soared to cosmic heights), but "the only bull to bring his own china shop" surely makes the shortlist of candidates. posted by Former Belgian at 7:55 AM
Tuesday, April 01, 2003
Strategypage.com has a rolling blog on GW II. Scroll down about two-thirds of the way to March 29, and the entry entitled "What Saddam learned from Serbia, Stalin, and the SS" (no permalink available). posted by Former Belgian at 8:53 PM
Guess who's pro-war: leftist and civil libertarian Nat Hentoff of The Village Voice.
And my heartiest congratulations to blogger Stefan Sharkansky for being called "more frightening than WMDs" by al-Ghardiyan. That's roughly the Blogosphere's equivalent of being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. posted by Former Belgian at 8:26 PM
Sod-Damn Insane was supposed to have delivered another speech -- then in the end it was read out by the Minister of Disinformation. My guess is the [expletives deleted] is alive but wounded beyond camouflaging, and being by all accounts pathologically vain, he would not show up on TV in that state. The speech was the usual rant and rave.
A Shiite cleric getting interviewed on Fox News claims that the suicide taxi driver was in fact not enthusiastic but pressed into doing this by the threat that his whole family would be killed otherwise (presumably with the usual "creativity" on the part of the executioners). Look up "Sippenhaft" in your Dictionary of the Third Reich.
Live in Brussels has a handy round-up of the positions of the Belgian political parties on the war.
April Fools Day over at Blogger and Blogrolling.com, huh? ;-)
In the spirit of the day, here is the "Transnational Progressivist" successor to the Socialist anthem the "Internationale"
THE TREES Words by Neil Peart, Music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson
Performed by Rush on the album "Hemispheres"
There is unrest in the Forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the Maples want more sunlight
And the Oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the Maples
(And they're quite convinced they're right)
They say the Oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the Oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the Maples
Can't be happy in their shade?
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the Maples scream `Oppression!`
And the Oaks, just shake their heads
So the Maples formed a Union
And demanded equal rights
'The Oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light'
Now there's no more Oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet,
Axe,
And saw ...
"It is time to admit it. We are not the Peace Movement. We are not the Environmental Movement. We are not the Human Rights Movement. We are plain and simply the Anti-America Movement. And the Anti-West Movement.
"We have an unerring nose for figuring out how to hurt the West. Our language games in our internal discussions, with all our code words about what is 'progressive' and what is 'reactionary' or 'imperialist' or 'corporate' or 'racist' or 'foundationalist' or whatever -- they all come down in practice to ways of invalidating any Western interests and validating every interest that is damaging to the West.
"We make sure the code words are used only in this way. It seems by now everyone instinctively understands that's how these words are to be used. Let us face it: what 'political correctness' is about isn't protecting minorities, it's about demonizing the West and privileging anything that's Anti-West. It's a tool for channeling people into an anti-Western course.
"So now that we see who we really are and it's not a pretty picture, what should we do with ourselves? We have always spoken in the name of all the sacred causes: Peace, Justice, Love, Humanity, Freedom, Environment. Now we must begin the hard work of figuring out how actually to serve these causes in a real world that is completely different from the one of our propaganda. And how to choose among them when they conflict.
"We will have to stop thinking issues are simple. We'll have to evaluate our choices by the evidence, not live in a cocoon of praise for our in-group and vilification of outsiders. In fact, we will have to stop thinking as a 'we' and get back to the rigors of individual moral responsibility. And we will have to practice finding our way to the right side of issues, after years of practicing the opposite."
LGF wonders "tell me about the roadmap" as Palestinians rename the main square in Jenin in memory of the islamikaze who just blew up four American soldiers.
Speak of LGF, it and a number of the other "usual suspects" are written up in a TIME magazine article on warblogs.
The next few days are going to be light on blogging as it's deadline season at work. Check my blogroll, and the click the Command Post button, if you're looking for stuff to read :-) posted by Former Belgian at 9:12 PM
Peter "O Tool" Arnett is apparently out of a job following this bizarre interview. I was not entirely surprised that NBC sacked him --- even a liberal network has limits --- but to get fired from National Geographic takes some doing. Perhaps al-Ghardiyan may hire him now. Update: the Daily Mirror (al-G's tabloid brother) hired him.
Speaking of which: the once-proud Manchester Guardian has in recent years degenerated into a loony-"left", virulently anti-American, and Israel-bashing screed (with a few token exceptions like Julie Burchill). But even in a publication widely known in the blogosphere as The Daily Wanker (a play-of-words on the name of the Communist Party of Britain newspaper of old), Charles Johnson notes an article that sets a new benchmark for yellow "journalism". C. P. Scott (the founder of the newspaper) must be spinning in his grave. Update:Bill Herbert did some digging and finds out one of the "sources" was a neo-Nazi mag. posted by Former Belgian at 8:14 PM
I found the following revolting image (snapped by ProtestWarrior at a "peace" demo) at Clubbeaux.
I do not believe public figures should be immune against being derided. Nor that a public personality belonging to an ethnic minority should ipso facto acquire such an immunity. But just ask yoursef this question: if a conservative or libertarian group would have made a similar poster about Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton (or Kofi Annan, for that matter), how many people would (rightly) have called for their scalp?
Just in case you still harbored the illusion that so-called "left"-ists cannot be racist. posted by Former Belgian at 7:30 PM
Surprise, surprise.Former TotalFinaElf exceutive reveals payments of US$5M to various French political parties, including that of Jacques Iraq. For the uninitiated: TotalFinaElf is a Franco-Belgian oil concern that got sweetheart deals from the Iraqi regime worth as much as US$75 billion. Need I draw a picture? posted by Former Belgian at 6:42 PM
Here in the United States, we tend to think of images only in terms of cameras and television: Photography is separate from narrative. In the Arab world, language is full of images, which cannot be separated from narrative. Arabic is a metaphorical language, rich in shades of meaning.
The image-based style of the Arabic language acts as an excellent interface with pictures. Thus television is terribly important. Consider the effect achieved, for example, when Majid Abdul Hadi, an al-Jazeera reporter in Baghdad, shows a picture of a coalition bombing while referring to Baghdad as the pulsing heart of the Muslim caliphate, a pulsing heart engulfed in flame.
[...]
Beneath the Arab modes of visual representation, the Western style is also present. Indeed, Arab coverage often copies the CNN and Fox News formats. Today, just like CNN, every one of the 10 Arab channels I watch, or appear on as a commentator, has a "war room" staffed with retired generals discussing the progress of the war and freely advising the Iraqis how to conduct it. In this way, these veterans of Arab wars are compensating for past defeat with on-air political speeches.
The tone of many reporters in Baghdad is much the same. For example, an al-Jazeera reporter in the Iraqi capital falsely told his viewers on the first day of the air campaign, "Here in Baghdad, a city accused of hiding weapons of mass destruction is being hit by weapons of mass destruction." This kind of repetition is the stuff that has made Arabic poetry so justly admired. Here, the rhythm and sonority of the language act to encourage audience disregard for the true definitions of the words being used.
I remember a rabbi who had grown up in a French colony in Northern Africa bitterly remarking that where it came to getting intoxicated with their own florid language, "les francais, ce sont les arabes de l'occident" (the French are the Arabs of the West). It is hard not to see certain parallels.
One for the road: The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler feels "discriminated against" because he has not yet been indicted for war crimes by a Belgian court, and sent a missive to the Belgian minister of Justice requesting to be indicted.
A reader on LGF drew attention to a PBS debate on the Scottish heritage (transcript here) which contained some interesting observations on the contrast between the Scottish and the French enlightenments:
What [Scottish skeptical philosopher] David Hume does is he shows that far from being this great sort of dangerous weapon, although it can be, that self interest is, in fact, the driving engine of change and progress. The free market is more than just a place where goods are exchanged, that the free market is really the clearing house of civilization because civilization is about exchanged, self interested exchange between customer and business person, between consumer and producers but also the exchange of ideas among scientists, among intellectuals within the larger culture as a whole. That’s the focus that the Scottish Enlightenment gives us, the role of self interest as this driving creative productive force in society.
[...T]he French Enlightenment tends to put its faith not in individuals or entrepreneurs but at those who hold power at the top -- whether they were a monarchical government, as someone like Voltaire did -- or a revolutionary as happens later as the French Enlightenment morphs into the French Revolution. And it’s two fundamental[ly] different points of view, two different views of the future that emerge out of the French Enlightenment, which is one in which a large centralized state is able to bring about and transform society by dictating by enlightened and legislation and guidance versus a Scottish Enlightenment view which says this is ultimately about advocates of individuals pursuing their own self interest and that those two distinct visions have shaped our future in the history of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century ways in a really extraordinary degree. And you could argue that the Cold War was in many ways a confrontation of the principles of the Scottish Enlightenment embedded in American values and in institutions of America and its allies versus the French Enlightenment with its inheritance uh, that it passed on to Karl Marx and to the utopian socialists in the Nineteenth Century and then on to the vision of the Soviet Union and that Communism brought as to what human improvement was about.
There is another characteristic that sets the "Latin" (by extension also German) and "Scottish" (by extension Anglo-American) enlightenment thinkers apart: the fundamentally rationalist, deductive, and idealistic tradition of the former (Descartes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel,... ) and the fundamentally empiricist, inductive, and utilitarian tradition of the latter (Bacon, Hume, Bentham, John Stuart Mill,...). In fact, this distinction is arguably reflected in the distinct characters of Anglo-American and French scholarship in the humanities almost to this day. There are plenty of exceptions on either side, but an American historian or sociologist of the old school will generally be fact-driven, while his French counterpart will be concept-driven. Both approaches may lead to first-rate scholarship in the right hands, but the latter is much more prone to "the theoretician falling in love with his/her own model" and looking only for facts that corroborate the theory. It is no mere accident that postmodernism (which takes this trend to its logical extreme) and Marxism both developed in the Franco-German intellectual ambit. posted by Former Belgian at 8:51 PM
Pundit roundup: Mark Steyn has a hilarious parody in which various historical generals comment on the "quagmire" the media reporting campaign has hit; Steven Den Beste takes Amnesty International to task for what I shall summarize as practicing "the soft bigotry of low expectations", and hosts a guest entry has by an anonymous retired military officer, who gives a sober commentary on where the campaign stands at this stage; Tom Paine has an absolutely hilarious story about the young Robert Fisk, which he claims is true; but Bill Whittle's essay on History (the latest installment in a book in progress) takes the cake. posted by Former Belgian at 8:32 PM
Pop pundit and lifelong leftist Julie Burchill gives a tongue-lashing to the NIONists ("Not in my name"-ists) worthy of Whacking Day. It is especially noteworthy for appearing in the al-Ghardiyan (a.k.a. The Daily Wanker):
I've always thought that the last place you'd see the vanity of depression in action would be on a protest march, especially one against war in a foreign country, but I do believe that many of the anti-war antics currently taking place are totally egotistical. Those who demonstrated against US aggression in Vietnam and Cuba did so because they believed that those people should have more freedom, not less. But does the most hardened peacenik really believe that Iraqis currently enjoy more liberty and delight than they would if Saddam were brought down? If so, fair enough; if not, then they are marching about one thing - themselves. That's why so many luvvies are involved; this is simply showing off on a grand scale.
I've just heard a snippet of the most disgustingly me-me-me anti-war advert by Susan Sarandon, in which she intones, "Before our kids start coming home from Iraq in body bags, and women and children start dying in Baghdad, I need to know - what did Iraq do to us?" Well, if you mean what did Saddam do to [America's entertainment elite], not an awful lot - but to millions of his own people, torture and murder for a start. Don't they count?
[...]
Surely this is the most self-obsessed anti-war protest ever. NOT IN MY NAME! That's the giveaway. Who gives a stuff about their wet, white, western names? [...] We don't know the precious names of the countless numbers Saddam has killed. We're talking about a people - lots of them parents - subjected to an endless vista of death and torture, a country in which freedom can never be won without help from outside.
Contrasting British servicemen and women with the appeasers, it is hard not to laugh. Are these two sides even the same species, let alone the same nationality? On one hand the selflessness and internationalism of the soldiers; on the other the Whites-First isolationism of the protesters. Excuse me, who are the idealists here? And is it a total coincidence that those stars most prominent in the anti-war movement are the most notoriously "difficult"and vain - [Barbara] Streisand, Albarn, [George] Michael, Madonna, Sean Penn? And Robin Cook! Why might anyone believe world peace can be secured by this motley bunch?
Anti-war nuts suffer from the usual mixture of egotism and self-loathing that often characterises recreational depression - an unholy alliance of Oprahism and Meldrewism in which you think you're scum, but also that you're terribly important, too. [... T]here are [also] the human shields - now limping homewards after being shocked to discover, bless 'em, that Saddam wanted to stick them in front of military installations as opposed to the hospitals and petting zoos that they'd fondly imagined they were going to defend.
What these supreme egotists achieve by putting themselves at the centre of every crisis is to make the Iraqi people effectively disappear. NOT IN MY NAME! is western imperialism of the sneakiest sort, putting our clean hands before the freedom of an enslaved people. But even those whose anti-war protests started in good faith now know that when Saddam's regime comes tumbling down, thousands of Iraqis will dance and sing with joy before the TV cameras, and thank our armed forces for giving them back their lives.
(Hat tip: Instapundit, although Julie Burchill's "dissent" from the al-Ghardiyan editorial line was first spotted by Tom Paine.) posted by Former Belgian at 8:12 PM
Richard Dawkins, the brilliant geneticist and author of the seminal books "The selfish gene" and "The blind watchmaker", occasionally startles friend and foe with screeds like this anti-American rant in al-Ghardiyan. Jonathan Davis fisks him to within an inch of his life (long but very much worth reading).
Karl Zinsmeister, chairman of the American Enterprise Institute, spent two weeks with the 82nd Airborne Division in Kuwait. He has some observations on the cultural gap between journalists and soldiers which go a long way to explain the mutual distrust.
In The new anti-Semitism, Melanie Phillips examples the phenomenon of "antisemitism on the left". Of course the phenomenon itself is not exactly new: think of Karl Marx himself, as well as the early social democrat leader August Bebel's memorable definition of antisemitism as "the socialism of fools". But the present inverted situation, where antisemitism is primarily associated with the "anti-racist" "left" and some of the staunchest opposition to it is to be found on the conservative side of the political spectrum (or plane), has no real precedent.
Anti-Semitism is protean, mutating over the centuries into new forms. Now it has changed again, into a shape which requires a new way of thinking and a new vocabulary. The new anti-Semitism does not discriminate against Jews as individuals on account of their race. Instead, it is centred on Israel, and the denial to the Jewish people alone of the right of self-determination.
This is nothing to do with the settlements or the West Bank. Indeed, the language being used exposes as a cruel delusion the common belief that the Middle East crisis would be solved by the creation of a Palestinian state.
The key motif is a kind of Holocaust inversion, with the Israelis being demonised as Nazis and the Palestinians being regarded as the new Jews. Israel and the Jews are being systematically delegitimised and dehumanised — a necessary prelude to their destruction — with both Islamists and the Western media using anti-Zionism as a fig-leaf for prejudices rooted in both mediaeval Christian and Nazi demonology.
This has produced an Orwellian situation in which hatred of the Jews now marches behind the Left’s banner of anti-racism and human rights, giving rise not merely to distortions, fabrications and slander about Israel in the media but also to mainstream articles discussing the malign power of the Jews over American and world policy.
She describes her attendance at a conference over the subject, and discusses at length the virulent nature of Arab antisemitism. She is at pains to distinguish between legitimate criticism of specific Israeli government policies from the delegitimization and vilification of Israel and of the Jewish people qua people.
She then moves on to the role played by the British media:
[...] Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982 [...] marked the beginning of the media’s systematic inversion of Israeli self-defence as aggression, along with double-standards and malicious fabrications, which have nothing to do with legitimate (and necessary) criticism of Israel and everything to do with delegitimising the Jewish state altogether in readiness for its dismantling.
[...The conference]
heard that in France Jews were vilified and excluded from public debate if they challenged the lies being told about Israel. It was shown a devastating French film Décryptage (Decoding) — which has been playing to packed houses in Paris — about the obsessive malevolence towards Israel displayed by the French media. It was told about the way the British media described Israel’s ‘death squads’, ‘killing fields’ and ‘executioners’ while sanitising Palestinian human bombs as ‘gentle’, ‘religious’ and ‘kind’. It heard about the cartoon in the Italian newspaper La Stampa during the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, depicting an Israeli tank pointing a gun at the baby Jesus who is saying, ‘Surely they are not going to kill me again.’
And of course there was Jenin, the so-called ‘massacre’ or ‘genocide’ reported as such by virtually the entire media, where in fact 52 Palestinians died, of whom more than half were terrorists, while Israel sustained (for it) the huge loss of 45 of its soldiers. This astonishing media distortion was conceded at the conference by the (extraordinarily brave) Palestinian politics professor Mohammad Dajani, who also observed that a distraught Palestinian public was — on this and other occasions — whipped up by biased and emotional Palestinian reporting which showed little concern for the truth. But the big lie of the Jenin massacre is now believed as fact, contributing to the belief that Israel is a criminal state.
Europeans have thus made themselves accomplices to an explicitly genocidal programme. But an even more striking feature is that, while the old anti-Semitism still festers away among neo-Nazis, the new anti-Semitism is a phenomenon of their sworn enemies on the political Left. So, as the Canadian law professor Irwin Cotler observed, we now have the mind-twisting situation where anti-Jewish hatred is harnessed to the cause of anti-racism and human rights, with Israel being compared to both Nazism and apartheid by those who define themselves against these ideologies. Such a travesty of the facts involves, of course, the implicit denial of the truth of those terrible regimes, quite apart from the prelude to annihilation created by such a lethal defamation of Israel. And even more counterintuitively, many Jews and Israelis on the Left also subscribe to this analysis — and even to the demonology of Israeli Nazism and apartheid — handing an effective weapon to those who dismiss the claim of a new anti-Semitism as Jewish paranoia or Islamophobia.
So what is the explanation for the Left’s position? Partly, it’s the old anti-imperialist and anti-West prejudice. Partly, it’s the view that only the powerless can be victims; so Third World people can never be murderers, and any self-defence by Western societies such as Israel must instead be aggression. Partly, it’s the post-modern destruction of objectivity and truth, which has ushered in the hegemony of lies. And partly, as the Left takes an axe to morality and self-restraint, it’s a golden opportunity to pulverise the very people who invented the damn rules in the first place.
A left-wing Polish journalist at the conference, Konstanty Gebert, got the real point. The Left, he said, could not face the fact that they had totally misconstrued the Middle East because this would undermine their whole philosophy. This was founded on the premise that reason could reconcile all differences; all that was needed in Israel was an enlightened government for reason to prevail. The evidence that we are facing a phenomenon which is not susceptible to reason would destroy that world view. It would also give credibility to the hated Sharon, whose demonisation is absolutely vital to the Left as a protection against the implosion of its whole ideological position.
Arafat's Fatah faction dispatched hundreds of suicide bombers to Iraq. This presumably in response to Bush Jr. holding out the prospect of a Palestinian state ;-) I am sure that this gesture will be "appreciated" in the White House ;-) posted by Former Belgian at 11:44 PM
In the "you can't make this stuff up" category: BBC Chief denies bias while speaking to Media Workers Against The War (what's next, David Duke denies racism while speaking to the KKK?), and Eugene Volokh, Professor of Constitutional Law at UCLA, summarizing an "anti-war" "teach-in" at Columbia University that is so over the top that I briefly wondered whether it was a hoax. After having read very similar reports elsewhere, I figured it must be for real. Go read it, but take Prozac first if you still believe the Humanities should be about scholarship rather than agitprop.
Beyond left and right? My main annoyance with the "left-right" classification of political opinions (or its US counterpart, the "liberal-conservative" spectrum) is twofold. First of all, there is its one-dimensional character which in my opinion is no longer descriptive of the political playing field nowadays (if it ever was in the first place). Secondly, the overuse of "left extremist" and "right extremist" as rethorical bludgeons for political opponents has largely robbed these terms of their stable meaning.
So did anybody ever come up with alternatives? The Wikipedia gives a (not totally accurate) summary with links.
The terms "left-wing" and "right-wing" originally derive from the pre-revolutionary French National Assembly, where the representatives of the nobility and clergy (the First and Second Estates) would be seated on the right and the representatives of "the rest of us" (the Third Estate) on the left. Thus, the division reflected both a socio-economic distinction, as well as, generally, a tendency to conserve the established order on the part of those sitting on the Right and a desire to change or overthrow it on the part of those sitting on the Left.
Over time, the meaning of these terms transfigured: for instance, laissez-faire economics is now supposedly a "rightist" policy while it originally was associated with the "left" (with what some call "classical liberalism").
An early alternative to the left-right scale gained currency in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War (for reasons which will be obvious): it placed political opinions on a circle rather than a line. Thus, Communism (nominally "extreme left") and Fascism (nominally "extreme right") both found themselves at 12 o'clock as "totalitarian" ideologies. The opposite of totalitarianism on this scale would be political democratic centrism at 6 o'clock, with social democracy at the 3 o'clock and conservatism at the 9 o'clock positions, respectively.
An elaboration of this concept led to a two-dimensional scale, where political opinions are rated on two axes. One variant, the World's Shortest Political Quiz, was popularized by a Libertarian group. Its two axes are degree of state regulation/control in (1) economic matters (left-right, or liberal-conservative) and (2) personal matters (up-down, or libertarian-autoritarian). The quiz divides people in five categories, four of which represent extreme positions on one of the two axes, and the fifth of which, "Centrist", represents those taking middle-of-the-road positions on both axes.
Rightly or wrongly, the WSPQ came under considerable criticism as being designed to recruit voters for the Libertarian Party. Its general principle was considerably refined by The Political Compass, which uses a similar two-axis classification but employs more questions and more qualified answers. It also maps present and past politicians on the basis of their policy positions. Contrary to the WSPQ, the Political Compass authors distinguish between Left Libertarianism (which they identify with anarcho-syndicalism) and Right Libertarianism.
I am aware of only one attempt at a three-dimensional scale. It was proposed by
The Friesian School: following Isaiah Berlin, it distinguishes between the two "negative freedoms" (freedom from control) of the Political Compass (which determine their x and y coordinates), and the "positive freedom" of input in the governing process, which is their z coordinate and spans a scale going from tyranny over oligarchy, representative democracy, and direct democracy to anarchism (i.e. equal distribution of decision power).
Finally, let me mention the Quizilla Which Political Stereotype Are You quiz that has gained some popularity in the blogosphere. It classifies people among eight political stereotypes (each with a paradigmatic politician): (1) fascist (Hitler); (2) communist (Stalin); (3) Democrat (FDRoosevelt); (4) Republican (Reagan); (5) Socialist (Eugene Debs); (6) Libertarian (Thomas Jefferson); (7) Green (Ralph Nader); (8) Anarcho-syndicalist (Noam Chomsky). One thing that annoyed me about this quiz is the stereotypical character of the answers: I tended to agree with part of one answer and part of another. Depending on which combination I picked, I ended up as either Roosevelt or Reagan :-) (On both the WSPQ and the Political Compass, I came out as a Centrist.)
Da Instaman draws my attention to a very interesting essay by Lee Harris on the cosmopolitan ideal and its limitations. I shall return to this at length later. posted by Former Belgian at 7:03 PM
Speaking of which, I am always somewhat amused by the utter disdain in which self-anointed "intellectuals" hold people who actually make things --- whether it's an idiotarian dissing Steven Den Beste as "somebody who thinks the whole world is a cellular phone"> (15 minutes of reading Den Beste will convince you that the guy, well, just knows how to use his brain), or culinary writer and restaurant critic Daniel Rogov poking fun at TIME magazine's "Person of the Century" contest for having awarded 13th place to Linus Torvalds, "a guy who knows something about computers". Conversely, I personally know one engineer for whom the most deadly insult was (and is) not accusing somebody of nonhuman ancestry or incestuous relations, but to call him/her a "French intellectual"... posted by Former Belgian at 3:59 PM
Friday, March 28, 2003
French author Pascal Bruckner (PB) gave an interview in Le Figaro (LF) that, well, is very "un-French" :-) Cinderella Bloggerfeller has a translation. A few choice excerpts:
LF:Is Europe currently in the process of leaving history, as Robert Kagan, a man close to the American administration, claims?
PB: Europe is characterized by the desire to leave history for good, including its own history. One of the most obvious signs was its passivity in the face of the Yugoslavian crisis, which it only emerged from in 1995, in Sarajevo, then in 1999, in Kosovo, thanks to American intervention. In 1999, in the Kosovo affair, Europe was so insistent that NATO strikes on Serbia and Montenegro should be kept to a minimum that the American general responsible for operations exclaimed: “No more interventions with partners like this!”
LF: What is France’s position in this Europe of renunciation?
PB: France is a concentrate of all the European contradictions – the wish to appear a great power on the one hand and not to get its hands dirty on the other. I’m really astonished that Jacques Chirac, so lucid when it comes to internal security problems – when faced with gangs and hooligans only force pays- shows himself so Rousseauist in the domain of international relations which, as Raymond Aron saw in 1948, remain marked by the law of the jungle. It would be a pity if the French executive succumbs to a belief in angelism. Only recourse to military action can bring a tyranny to heel. There comes a moment when a population is so permeated and crushed by a dictatorship that it is no longer able to revolt. It must wait for outside help.
LF:In your opinion, why is it that it is America that has shown itself to be “Aronian?”
PB: America, the home of capitalism, paradoxically knows how to spend colossal sums (as in the case of the Iraqi expedition) on taking care of the world. Europe, which now has no more than a market definition of itself, believes with Adam Smith that commerce and exchange will guarantee the peace of nations forever.
LF: Where does this paradox come from?
PB: Europe behaves towards the rest of the world just as the Fifteen [members of the EU] do amongst themselves, without raising its voice and valuing negotiation and courtesy above all. Europe can only afford itself this luxury – living in the middle of a storm zone as if it were in a sanatorium – because it is protected by the American nuclear umbrella. We are endlessly protesting against this state of dependence. Europe is speeding towards “Helvetization” [i.e. turning into Switzerland, a multi-lingual, neutral state], it lives first and foremost in a perpetual remorse for its own history and tends to consider its own past as nothing but a series of crimes and abominations. The ideology of “the tears of a white man” dominates not only the recent pacifist demonstrations, but it thoroughly permeates our surrounding culture. It is blended with the twilight philosophy of disillusion, the certainty that we will never recover our power again and that in future we will always be the wise and good ones in the great arena of history, in other words, inactive.
The New York Review of Books has a very long essay by prominent author Doris Lessing about Zimbabwe and what Chiraq's pal Robert Mugabe turned it into. A must-read. Here are the opening paragraphs
"You have the jewel of Africa in your hands," said President Samora Machel of Mozambique and President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania to Robert Mugabe, at the moment of independence, in 1980. "Now look after it."
Twenty-three years later, the "jewel" is ruined, dishonored, disgraced.
One man is associated with the calamity, Robert Mugabe. For a while I wondered if the word "tragedy" could be applied here, greatness brought low, but Mugabe, despite his early reputation, was never great; he was always a frightened little man. There is a tragedy, all right, but it is Zimbabwe's.
Mugabe is now widely execrated, and rightly, but blame for him began late. Nothing is more astonishing than the silence about him for so many years among liberals and well-wishers—the politically correct. What crimes have been committed in the name of political correctness. A man may get away with murder, if he is black. Mugabe did, for many years.
Go read it all. And see how "the soft bigotry of low expectations" is quite literally a 'kindness' that can kill.
In Gaulish Gall, Steven Den Beste comments on Dominique de Villepin "conciliatory" speech in London (coverage of NYT and Daily Telegraph):
A few days ago I quipped that there was no French word for chutzpah because a fish has no word for water. Another reason we can't use that word is that it is inadequate; it's like describing an ocean as a "really big puddle". The latest diplomatic moves by the French demonstrate truly unmitigated and unprecedented gall.
[...]
France is not only willing to forgive the US, France is also willing to forgive the UK, as long as it, too, apologizes and stops misbehaving. All that the UK has to do is to stop striking out on its own, toe the "European" line, and let the French speak on behalf of Europe, and everything will be hunky-dory. His speech made clear that European unity was vital, and also made clear that the French were right in all of this, which implies that the only way for European unity to be regained is for everyone to acknowledge the superior wisdom and morality of France's point of view.
I can't decide if this means that de Villepin is deluded, desperate, or utterly contemptuous of our mental processes. Likely it's a bit of all three, actually, but there's a strong strain of desperation here. France is in deep trouble.
[...]
The new theory is that the US and UK will fight the war, and will spend the money to pay for it (upwards of $70 billion), and that once the war is over we'll happily turn post-war administration of Iraq over to the UN [while footing the bill].
[...]
So in an address delivered in London, Monsieur de Villepin has offered the US an olive branch, after a fashion. All we have to do is apologize and repent, and France won't hold our misbehavior against us. They'll let bygones be bygones. After all, given that France considers the US such a deep and valuable friend of long standing, it certainly can't hold our recent misbehavior against us, as long as we acknowledge the error of our ways and promise not to do it again.
[...]
France is not only willing to forgive the US, France is also willing to forgive the UK, as long as it, too, apologizes and stops misbehaving. All that the UK has to do is to stop striking out on its own, toe the "European" line, and let the French speak on behalf of Europe, and everything will be hunky-dory. His speech made clear that European unity was vital, and also made clear that the French were right in all of this, which implies that the only way for European unity to be regained is for everyone to acknowledge the superior wisdom and morality of France's point of view.
[...]
For example, de Villepin emphasized how critically important it was for the "oil-for-food" deal to restart immediately. His claim was that this was needed for humanitarian reasons, but it is important to note that the majority of that program has been administered by French companies. TotalFinaElf has primarily been responsible for selling the oil, and other French companies have been primary sources of the food and other supplies which have been shipped in.
[...pages and pages of great stuff, which "fair use" copyright doctrine prohibits me from quoting. Just go read the whole thing...]
de Villepin's speech in London sets an all-time high for chutzpah. It breaks the Olympic medal for gall. The arrogance and contempt required to even be willing to deliver that speech goes beyond anything I think I've ever encountered. de Villepin, and his boss Chirac, are deeply in need of a rude awakening. Fortunately, there's every reason to believe that they're going to get one, very soon.
When young, I used to be a Marxist, and surely in the depth of my soul I still take seriously some of the bearded grandpa's insights. Thus, I believe that the objective, material, conditions of life have some kind of influence on the way people think. Nowadays, the European youth is as removed from any productive or creative activity as the youth in Saudi Arabia, for instance. Instead of reading the Koran, they read Le Monde and Jean Baudrillard, and instead of the Islamic green, they fight for the ecological green. But we have in both parts of the world the same explosive combination of an unproductive way of life with highly elaborate but sterile ways of thinking converging in a kind of disdain and, in the end, hatred for those people who keep material production going. Alisa will probably remember the Russian writers of the mid-19th century, like Gontcharov, Turgenev and Dostoyevsky, who wrote about the superfluous men, the unproductive petty aristocrats and state bureaucrats who, because they knew they were useless, became nihilistic and turned the hatred they felt for themselves against the wider society. I think that in the long term the only existing cure for both the Arab and the European youths is hard productive work. When you spend your day building something you won't feel by night the urge of destroying it.
Fox News is openly making fun of Hans "Clouseau" Blix as we speak, particularly his insistence that Iraq does not have the missiles beyond the allowed range that the US came under fire from.
Right now US ambassador to the United Nobheads, John Negroponte, is being interviewed. He explains why he actually walked out during the speech (demented freakazoid rant is a more accurate description) of the Iraqi ambassador (as the latter started accusing the US of planning the genocide of the Iraqi people). Perhaps Negroponte and Tex at Whacking Day could have traded places for the day? posted by Former Belgian at 7:17 PM
Turkey's refusal to let US troops cross through its territory has cost them a lot of US aid money and desperately needed loan guarantees, and definjitely necessitated rethinking the whole battle plan, and in all probability cost the Coalition forces a number of lives. But something has been under the radar: it was the islamist-led coalition that was in favor of the package deal, and the secularist opposition that was against. The latter is rather "counterintuitive" to say the least: now Michael Ledeen in the New York Sun offers the following observations
The Turkish government, which for the first time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire is based on an Islamic party, fully expected that Parliament would approve its proposal that America be given the use of Turkish air bases in the Iraqi war.The government was so confident that the party failed to demand internal discipline, and thus several deputies voted against the resolution.
But that does not account for the failure to approve the government’s proposal.
Primary blame for the defeat of the measure lies with the opposition — the secular, Kemalist parties that have governed the country since Ataturk.
Contrary to expectations, the opposition, responding to orders from party leaders, voted unanimously against the government’s position.
The leaders insisted on a disciplined "no" vote because of pressure — some would call it blackmail — from France and Germany.
The French and German governments informed the Turkish opposition parties that if they voted to help the Coalition war effort, Turkey would be locked out of Europe for a generation. As one Turkish leader put it, "there were no promises, only threats."
Need I say more? For obvious economic reasons as well as a deeply rooted desire to be regarded as "European" on the part of the Turkish elite, Turkey would do literally anything to be admitted to the EU. But if the price is becoming EUnuchs in the harem of the Western world's most contemptible politician, perhaps they ought to reconsider. "The one thing you cannot trade for your heart's desire is your heart." (Lois McMaster Bujold, "Memory".) posted by Former Belgian at 7:04 PM
Quote for the day:
"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
Thousands of Palestinians have marched to protest about the war in Iraq and urged Saddam Hussein to strike Israel with chemical weapons. In the West Bank towns of Tulkarem and Tubas, nearly 4,000 Palestinians marched through the streets, holding posters of Saddam and waving Iraqi flags.
The best allies that opponents of a Palestinian state have continue to be the Palestinians themselves.
B.L.O.G.G.E.R. .S.U.C.K.S. .E.S.K.I.M.O. N.E.L.L. posted by Former Belgian at 11:28 PM
Walid Phares, Arab-American professor comments on al-Jazeera. He warns people not to get fooled by their occasional exposure of corrupt Arab rulers (which is "shooting fish in a barrel" anyhow). Go read it all. posted by Former Belgian at 11:22 PM
Still no way to keep up with the rapidly evolving battlefield situation. But my curiosity about the lack of news from the Northern Front just got answered: Fox news reports that a 1,000 strong paratroop contingent has safely parachuted in the North. I would not be surprised if much of what is going on now has the intention of drawing as many Saddamite troops as possible to the South so a movement from the North can happen. (The hi-tech Fourth Infantry Division, which was originally supposed to go through Turkey, is now scheduled to arrive this weekend.) <br> <br>Of course, from Sod-Damn Insane's perspective, what he needs is not to <i>win</i> the war (he can't, anyhow), but to drag it out long enough that his "useful idiots" can apply enough domestic and international pressure on the US to accept some arrangement which guarantees the survival of his regime. His "Ministry of Truth" will then spin this into a 'victory' just like the whacking he received in 1991. And remember: no war crime or other Amalekite stratagem will be too vile to be used for keeping Saddam in the saddle. posted by Former Belgian at 11:22 PM
No comments necessary: (courtesy of ProtestWarrior.com. See there for details.)
Walid Phares, Arab-American professor comments on al-Jazeera. He warns people not to get fooled by their occasional exposure of corrupt Arab rulers (which is "shooting fish in a barrel" anyhow). Go read it all. posted by Former Belgian at 10:52 PM
According to an AFP dispatch, the Belgian lower house of parliament voted an amendment to the controversial law that grants universal jurisdiction to the Belgian courts in war crimes cases, whether or not there is any Belgian involvement. The English is rather bizarre "reverse Franglais": by translating into French and back into standard English, I obtain:
Under the amendments passed, the lawsuit will proceed automatically if any of the following apply: (a) the alleged crime was perpetrated in Belgium; (b) the alleged perpetrator is either a Belgian subject or is physically present in Belgium; (c) any of the victims are either Belgian subjects or have resided in Belgium for at least three years.
In none of the above applies, the "public prosecutor" [Belgium's equivalent of a District Attorney] will decide on the competence of the Belgian courts. The Belgian minister of justice has the authority to pass on the case to the judiciary of the country of the accused.
The amendments will affect only cases filed after July 1, 2002 -- like the one against Bush Sr. -- and only those in which the country of the accused has war crimes legislation. [To my knowledge, the US does.]
The dispatch goes on to say:
Fears that a war crimes lawsuit over the Iraqi conflict could be brought against the current US president have further strained relations between the United States and Belgium, which has been a fierce critic of the war on Iraq and was at the center of an unprecedented crisis at NATO over the conflict last month.
The changes to the law came only a week before Belgium's parliament was due to be dissolved ahead of a general election scheduled for May 18.
According to parliamentary sources, the parties in the ruling coalition were divided over how to amend the law.
Verhofstadt's Liberals, backed by Flemish-speaking Socialists, had proposed a "diplomatic filter" allowing the government to pass on any cases to the country where the alleged crimes took place, providing it is democratic.
Francophone Socialists and Greens feared that the law would be rendered toothless if the amendments were too radical.
Read: they are afraid it would deprive them of a vehicle for judicial auto-eroticism over their favorite whipping boy (hint: born in 1928 as Ariel Schneiderman).
I continue to be amazed how a country with one of the most incompetent judiciaries in the Western world would have the chutzpah to in effect declare its courts to be the world's supreme court. (That's Lawrence Peter's "percussive sublimation" management strategy taken to absurd extremes.) But then again, the principle that "a badly crafted or unenforceable law is worse than no law at all" is as counterintuitive to the Belgian statist as it is self-evident to any American not on the political lunatic fringes.
But let's look at the half-full part of the glass: a classic piece of "Barney legislation" has just been semi-sanitized [assuming the Senate approves the amendment]. I have much less of an issue with Belgium seeking jurisdiction in cases involving Belgian citizens or territory (several other countries have such laws on the books).
Update: the vote was only in the Chamber Commission, not in the plenum. A still more restrictive version that also eliminated the "grandfather clause" was voted through the Plenum. posted by Former Belgian at 9:26 PM
President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has compared himself to Adolf Hitler.
At the state funeral of one of his cabinet ministers, Mr Mugabe said: "I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources.
"If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for."
Mugabe has wet dreams about being Hitler, Saddam of being Stalin and Salah-e-Din (Saladin) in one, Arafat will settle for Saladin alone, and their friend Chiraq harbors similar delusions of grandeur of being either the new De Gaulle or the new Louis XIV. One truly knows a man by the company he keeps. posted by Former Belgian at 4:30 PM
[Napoleon] had one prodigious advantage - he had no responsibility - he could do whatever he pleased; and no man has ever lost more armies than he did. Now with me the loss of every man told. I could not risk so much; I knew that if I ever lost five hundred men without the clearest necessity, I should be brought upon my knees to the bar of the House of the Commons.
It seems that everybody is dissing the BBC these days. Andrew Sullivan has been calling it the "Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation" for months. Now others are joining in.
[...]
Rand Simberg blames BBC snobbery on upper-middle-class sensibilities, and I think he's almost right. It's really a case of New Class sensibilities.
I can't help but notice that anti-Americanism, and the various manifestations of what some have called Transnational Progressivism, are most common among people who, well, have state-supported managerial or intellectual jobs, the people who made up what Milovan Djilas and others called the "New Class" of bureaucrats and managers in the old Communist world. Not surprisingly, the New Class was deeply concerned with matters of status and position, and deeply opposed to things that might have led to competition on merit. There's nothing new about such a view, which predated communism: As David Levy and Sandra Peart note, it's an attitude that even in the nineteenth century was characteristic of anti-capitalists and anti-semites - and, nowadays, there's a lot of overlap between anti-capitalists, anti-semites, and anti-Americans.
A common thread among anti-semitism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Americanism is the fear of being outdone by people willing to work harder. It's not surprising that such a fear exists among a disproportionate number of those who take state-supported jobs. It's thus not surprising, then, that New Class sensibilities are so often anti-American and anti-capitalist, and increasingly (or perhaps I should say, once again) anti-Semitic, too. The New Class, in this regard, as in many others, is like the old haut-bourgeoisie.
WHACK! (Sound of cluebat hitting my head.) I have been a "progressist" all my life, and (in consequence) a social democrat of the old school for most of it. But much of what calls itself the "new Left" these days is objectively a deeply reactionary movement posturing as "progressive". And many "progressive" ideas I have always embraced (equality of opportunity, the marketplace of ideas, scientific and technical progress as vehicles of individual and collective empowerment) have become part and parcel of "neoconservative" doctrine. Could this be the "Umwertung aller Werte" (revaluation of all values) Nietzsche was predicting?
As much as I understand the feelings and frustration behind "freedom fries", "freedom toast", French wine flushing parties, and proposals to boycott French goods, they are both a bit childish and --- the one cardinal sin of the engineerist --- ineffective. John Fund proposes hitting France where it really hurts --- with a special issue of Green Cards to fuel the "brain drain" of talented Frenchmen. I propose an amendment: extend the proposal to Belgium.
The other day at the pub, I overheard an expat Belgian being asked by an American what the prevalent political philosophy is in Belgium. He quipped "national-castrism". He hurried to explain that this was not a reference to Fidel Castro... posted by Former Belgian at 9:22 AM
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Law student and former US Military Police captain Phil Carter predicts what will happen to the "fragger":
Prediction: SGT Akbar will likely be charged with capital murder and a number of other military offenses in such a trial. He will have a right of defense counsel, a right to cross-examination, and a right to put on his defense -- all the rights that a criminal defendant would have in L.A. County. Akbar will have the right to a military jury, which at his option can include enlisted members and officers. That jury must find him guilty by unanimous verdict. If convicted, Akbar can appeal to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals, and then to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces -- both of which will be mandatory appeals if he receives the death penalty. After the CAAF, he can appeal his case to the Supreme Court. In total, he has one more court of appeal than civilian defendants do. Ultimately, I predict that Akbar will be sentenced to death and executed for his heinous crime which took the life of CPT Christopher Seifert.
He also points to an article on findlaw.com refuting some common myths about the military justice system. posted by Former Belgian at 11:20 PM
WW II historian John Keegan apparently works for the Daily Telegraph as a defense (or defence, for Tony Blair :-)) editor. See his comments yesterday and today, for instance.
TV is off the air in Iraq now, and part of Baghdad is shrouded in darkness. Something is about to happen... posted by Former Belgian at 10:16 PM
And in The New Republic, expatriate Iraqi dissident Kanan Makiya has some choice things to say:
The bombs have begun to fall on Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers have shot their officers and are giving themselves up to the Americans and the British in droves. Others, as in Nasiriyah and Umm Qasr, are fighting back, and civilians have already come under fire. Yet I find myself dismissing contemptuously all the e-mails and phone calls I get from antiwar friends who think they are commiserating with me because "their" country is bombing "mine." To be sure, I am worried. Like every other Iraqi I know, I have friends and relatives in Baghdad. I am nauseous with anxiety for their safety. But still those bombs are music to my ears. They are like bells tolling for liberation in a country that has been turned into a gigantic concentration camp. One is not supposed to say such things in the kind of liberal, pacifist, and deeply anti-American circles of academia, in which I normally live and work. The truth is jarring even to my own ears.
If you want to understand the perceptual chasm that separates how Iraqis view this second Gulf war from how the rest of the Arab-Muslim world views it--or from how these antiwar elites here in Cambridge or, dare I say, in Turtle Bay or Paris or Berlin view it--then you must begin with the war that has already been waged on the people of Iraq by their own regime. Then you will know, horribly, how the explosion of a JDAM can sound beautiful. For Iraqis, the absence of this new American-led war is not the presence of peace. Years before the first American cruise missile exploded in a "safe house" of the Iraqi leadership, the people of Iraq were living through a war. They have been living through that war since 1980, the year Saddam Hussein launched his futile war against Iran. Since then, one and a half million Iraqis have met a violent death. Between 5 and 10 percent of Iraq's population has been killed, either directly or indirectly, because of decisions made by its own leadership. The scale of such devastation on a people is impossible to imagine. Think of Germany or France after World War I. Think of the Soviet Union after World War II. The peoples that are thrust into such a meat-grinder are never the same when they emerge. Is it any wonder that we Iraqis do not look at this war the way so much of the rest of the world does?
UPDATE: Kanan Makiya is the author of "Republic of Fear", originally published under the pseudonym Samir al-Khalil.
We're only 5 days into the war, Coalition forces are near Baghdad, ... but war doesn't happen in "Internet time", so some people are already blabbing about quagmires and the like. Steven Den Beste, David Warren, and Ralph Peters offer reality checks. SdB refers to the "fallacy of misleading vividness" from the Guide to Fallacies (errors of reasoning).
Not to mention Mark Steyn's bitingly humorous take on the situation. posted by Former Belgian at 9:44 PM
Neil Cavuto: The Shi'ite has hit the fan. It's now official: the Iraqi population rose up against the remaining Saddamites in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.
Fox also reports that Special Republican Guard units are dressing up in US (or other Coalition) uniforms, "accept" Iraqis willing to surrender, and shoot them. Iraq continues to pile one perfidy upon the next.
"Perfidy", in fact, has a very specific meaning in the context of international law. There is a common misunderstanding among Belgian journalists (see e.g. the example cited today by Live in Brussels) that disguising combatants in civilian clothes, feigning surrender,... are mere ruses of war. In fact, under international law, there is a very sharp distinction between permissible ruses of war (feints, camouflage, disinformation, decoys, interception and/or jamming of communications), and perfidy, which constitutes a gross breach of the laws of war. According to, e.g., Article III.37 of the 1977 Protocol Additional of the Geneva convention:
1. It is prohibited to kill, injure or capture an adversary by resort to perfidy. Acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, with intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy. The following acts are examples of perfidy:
(a) the feigning of an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of a surrender;
(b) the feigning of an incapacitation by wounds or sickness;
(c) the feigning of civilian, non-combatant status; and
(d) the feigning of protected status by the use of signs, emblems or uniforms of the United Nations or of neutral or other States not Parties to the conflict.
[...]
Other examples are the use of human shields, disguise in the uniform of the opposing party,... Perfidious conduct on the part of one warring party is generally considered to forfeit the abused protection (see e.g. the following analysis by international law scholar Prof. Louis Rene Beres).
Newsweek has the inside story about how the "decapitation strike" that opened the war came about. Apparently the Coalition had a top-level informer who told them where Saddam would be sleeping that night. (Hat tip: the Command Post gang.)
Incidentally, like Andrew Sullivan, I am of the opinion that the Iraqi behavior of the last day (shooting POWs, "surrendered" troops opening fire,...) may be a conscious attempt at provoking the Coalition forces into less discriminate tactics (like carpet bombing), so the Iraqis have some civilian casualties that they can trot out for emotional blackmail.
Seven in 10 said the anti-war rallies have not changed their opinion on the conflict. One in five-20 percent-said the protests have made them more likely to back the war, while 7 percent said it has increased their opposition to the conflict.
As best as I can tell, [antiwar spin] is a parody of Stalin: one person killed by America is a tragedy. A hundred thousand killed by Saddam, or a million by Pol Pot, are a statistic.
There's no way I can keep up with all the war news here by myself ;-): even Instapundit gave up. THE COMMAND POST is a new warblogger collective that has literally up-to-the-minute info around the clock. See also the button over on the left. posted by Former Belgian at 6:34 AM
Sunday, March 23, 2003
The other day I heard that old Rush favorite, "Something for Nothing" (from the album 2112). It occurred to me that the chorus is a very concise statement of my personal philosophy of life:
You don't get something for nothing
You can't have freedom for free
You won't get wise, with the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dreams may be
The first line is the most basic law of economics, also known as the TANSTAAFL ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch", Robert A. Heinlein) principle.
The second line is Thomas Paine's famous opening to "The Crisis" (see below), reduced to one line.
The third line can be read to mean: wisdom can only be acquired by checking theory against objective reality.
And this applies to all ideologies, no matter where on the political map they come from (the fourth line).
For non-American readers, here is the Paine quote:
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.
One of the longest LGF threads ever concerns the report that a sergeant of the legendary 101st Airborne Division (of D-Day fame, entre autres) threw three hand grenades at his commanding officers, killing one and wounding a dozen. The perpetrator is said to be a Black American convert to Islam, although his motivation is not clear at this stage (a psychopath nursing a grudge, or one of the political variety).
As anybody remotely familiar with people in the combat military (especially those in elite units like the 101st) can imagine, soldiers who "frag" their mates (as this type of act is known in army slang) and would be handed over to the survivors would probably beg to be put to death by firing squad instead. My prediction however is that the US Army (for image reasons) will classify this as a psychiatric case and that the perp will be bundled off to a "looney bin".
Update: several referred me to the Rudyard Kipling poem/song Danny Deever
"What are the bugles blowin' for?" said Files-on-Parade.
"To turn you out, to turn you out", the Colour-Sergeant said.
"What makes you look so white, so white?" said Files-on-Parade.
"I'm dreadin' what I've got to watch", the Colour-Sergeant said.
[...]
They are hangin' Danny Deever, you must mark 'im to 'is place,
For 'e shot a comrade sleepin' -- you must look 'im in the face;
Nine 'undred of 'is county an' the regiment's disgrace,
While they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mornin'.
posted by Former Belgian at 11:11 PM
