Where are the Savior Groups?

Wretchard posts on China and environmentalism.

There are many reasons why human rights and environmentalist groups focus on America to the near exclusion of China, and all of them have to do with economics.

China is ignored because it is impervious to attack. In normal circumstances, success creates visibility, and visibility brings in donations. In a world of opportunity cost, one cannot expect many people to expend resources on ventures with zero returns. The Savior Groups, knowing this, spend their time in greener pastures.

Attacking America is ubiquitous because returns on investment are so high. The entry barrier is low, and success is not even required to gain visibility. There is a constant, unwavering spotlight over here, a spotlight that has its own gravity on the annointed.

Also, one must look to the economics of ego. Success, or alternatively visibility, vindicates feelings of self-importance, and nothing is so dependent on sustenance as self-importance.

No Crisis of Knowledge Here

Cedarford, a commenter over at the Belmont Club, posted:

IN ten years, China has gone from producing less engineers and scientists to 6 times more, and have just surpassed America in producing hard science PhDs. Exceptional, too, more Asians now take those PhDs in America than native born Americans do.

I responded:

I wouldn't worry about that. Most of my complacency is based upon anecdotal evidence, but I am confident that America will not suffer a crisis of knowledge and expertise.

For instance: a Tibetan student I know who is over here getting an engineering degree. He kids us all the time about him finding an American wife to marry so he can stay here after he graduates. The earnestness in his eyes is heartbreaking when he talks about how lucky the rest of us are to be citizens in what he calls "the land of freedom."

I am not disputing the fact that many Chinese students arrive in America with nationalistic fervor and great pride in being Chinese. Many of these students are honoring their family and honoring their country by getting a first-rate education in America, and many of these students will not look back when they leave.

But many will look back. It is very similar to the greek myth of Orpheus, except these Orpheuses, these dynamos of their trade, are not leaving Hell, they are leaving heaven. The stakes are the same, though.

America is the great solvent. Once you let your guard down, once you look back in a moment of doubt, it is only a matter of time until the solvent breaks down all ties that bind. I have seen it happen. The longing starts while you are here, and it is relentless.

Iraq and the Scientific Method

Rumsfeld (Brought up by Wretchard):

For starters, it must be jarring for reporters to leave the United States, arrive in a country that is so different, where they have to worry about their personal safety, and then being rushed to a scene of a bomb, car bomb or a shooting and have little opportunity to see the rest of the country.

By contrast, the Iraqi people see things probably somewhat differently. They can compare Iraq as it is today to what it was three years ago: a brutal dictatorship, where the secret police would murder or mutilate a family member, sometimes in front of their children, and where hundreds of thousands of Iraqis disappeared into mass graves...

The situation in Iraq is terrible...and it's never been better.

The divergence in opinion on Iraq flows from a divergence in standards of observation (this only applies to honest observers--many care nothing for truth). Those who measure backwards, using history as the control group, are divided into two camps: those who use Iraq's history (either written or experienced), and those who use their personal history (either ideological or experienced). Those who use Iraq's past as the comparative standard are generally optimistic about what they see on the ground. As Rumsfeld notes, when one has knowledge of both Iraq's past and Iraq's present (e.g. Iraqis and our troops), the present looks miraculous by comparison.

On the other hand are those who choose to be less rigorous in their measurements. For these observers any standard will do, and snap-judgments abound. A misremembered past becomes the standard by which to measure a misperceived present (e.g. Snowcroft's "50 years of peace"). As has been shown, these non-Iraqis who calibrate their judgment from ego are vulnerable to the pessimism of privilege (an affliction of the affluent) and the inaccurate intuition of the ignorant.

Of course, there are those who eschew looking backwards at all, judging everything by that which has not yet arrived. These chronic discontents, whose control group is possibility, will forever be disappointed and sceptical. Untethered by amnesia and distracted by perfection, these men know nothing at all.

This is true for more issues than Iraq.

Thine Eyes Have Seen the Coming...

On Wretchard's Belmont Club, one of his posters, Ash, had this to say:

On the larger historical scale the event is really quite small. I repeat that approx. 3000 dead is not a big deal in the grand sweep of history.

I said this, and I thought it aptly represented my state of mind at the time, though it may sound like stream of consciousness when you read it:

Do you really believe that the number "3000 dead" is an exhaustive list of what happened that day? Perhaps if you narrowed the spaces in your filter, you would pick up the finer grains of truth and consequence that 9/11 came to symbolize.

Let me give you a less truncated account of that day, though it is still hopelessly abridged.

On September 11, 2001, a group of 19 terrorists boarded 4 airliners. They had nothing in their arsenal but box-cutters, hatred, and a willingness to die for their cause. These terrorists were beholden to a perverted, radical interpretation of the global region Islam, a religion that has over 1 billion adherents and not a few brainwashed radicals who dream of conquest and subjugation.

A mere 19 men. A mere 19 did that to us. 19 men killed three thousand American civilians, on American soil, during a time of peace. 19 men, using nothing but razors and airplane tickets, murdered 157 times their number and destroyed the lives of countless more, people who would show up at ground zero for weeks, with blank stares and vacant expressions, hoping against hope that they would find a loved one's body so they could have a proper burial and be at peace.

A mere 19 men, in minutes, destroyed two giant towers that took 10 years to build; 19 men caused $700 million dollars in damage to the Pentagon, and destroyed or damaged a further 23 buildings in downtown Manhattan. 19 men, spending only $400,000 from planning to implementation, closed down our stock market for a week, something that had not happened in 75 years, and when it reopened the cost in lost stock value came in at $1,200,000,000,000. 19 men caused our country $500 billion dollars in ongoing damages, and caused a debate in a free society over how much freedom we can afford and still be safe.

A mere 19 men, Ash! And they did this with nothing. Nothing!

But that is not the scariest thing about 9/11. The scariest thing about 9/11 is the glimpse it has given us of the future.

The Tupamaros terrorized Peru until the democratic government fell and a military dictatorship took over. The Tupamaros had thousands, but our enemy has more.

19 men, willing to die for a perversion, killed 3,000 innocent Americans, shut down our country, and caused over $1.7 trillion in damages and loss. They exposed the fragility of our existence, the illusion of our safety, and the bone-deep hatred of an enemy that wants to kill or enslave every last one of us.

Those are the facts. Never in the history of mankind have 19 men accomplished so much. Their acts are are historically unprecedented--HISTORICALLY UNPRECEDENTED...for now. Only for now.

Does that not make you tremble? Ask yourself, what will the next 19 do? If you can imagine it, then you know why we must act.

9/11 was the thunder before the storm. Only a fool would stay outside after that to see if it'll rain.

The Peace Activist and the Bag of Rights

In light of the hostage-taking in Iraq of four peace activists, I decided to pay a visit to the website of a prominent member of Christians for Peace (hat tip Wretchard), a member named Joe Carr. Say it ain't so, Joe:

"I completely affirm Palestinians right to resist Israeli colonial occupation. Palestinians have the right to do much more than throw rocks at soldiers committing colonial genocide, and they must if they are to survive."

The formulation "have a right to..." always interests me, predominantly because it is used so loosely and haphazardly by people who usually have no idea what they are talking about. When these people talk of rights, they don't realize the ex nihilo assertiveness of their comment. Instead, they feel their statement has the force of empirical fact, a teleological truth of nature that, because of the stupidity of their strategic competitors, they must demean by saying aloud.

Questions that go unanswered:

What is a right? Is a right based in law, nature, or morality? Where do they come from?

How is the "right to resist" different from mere "ableness"? How is it different from a natural, or instinctive, imperative?

Is it always good to exercise a right? Is it always good to resist?

Are rights and responsibilities mutually exclusive?

Do Israelis have the same rights of resistance as the Palestinians, or does ability indirectly correlate with "rightness"?

If both have a right to resist and survive, how is it meaningful to speak of rights in the first place?

And finally, if it is not always a good to exercise a right (either it conflicts with other virtues, or causes a bad result), how should one approach the question of whether or not to do so? Should one look at the situation entire and make a rational, result-oriented decision (roll-back), or should one follow the passions and be guided by the lesser spirits of vengeance, self-gratification, and pride? (Would our friend Joe agree that there is a right of self-gratification? That is, in a sense, what he advocates for the Palestinians. Is this right universal, or only for the downtrodden?)

The Palestinians are not operating in a vacuum. Exercising a right, insofar as it exists, is not free of cost (it never is, just ask Hollywood). One of the effects of the Palestinian blind exercise of their right to violence has been to remove rationalism as an option for engagement. By doing this, Palestinians have forced the Israelis to treat them as reactionary units of a certain set program, instead of as human beings with which to negotiate for peace. Basically, the Palestinians have become mechanical automatons in their interaction with Israel, an input/output system of peculiar characteristics. The input of this tragic system is the reality of Israel--the precise state of its existence at a unit t of time--and the output is the Palestinian response, which is stuck on a singular value: the exercise of the Palestinian right to resist.

The latter changes the input value insofar as it changes the defensive posture of Israel, but the interesting part of this dynamic is the static nature of the output. Israel has tried on several occasions to redefine its reality in regards to the Palestinians, but the output of violence did not diminish. In fact, it increased.

The fact that Israeli concessions (redefinitions) have done nothing to stem the exercise of the Palestinian "right to violence" has left the Israelis with only three options: they can eliminate the input (Israel), eliminate the output, or eliminate the effectiveness of the output on the input. The first option means suicide, the second means genocide, and the last means withdrawal and a fence. I hope the last one works, because Israel is not going to commit suicide. That leaves option number two, and if it comes to that perhaps our friend Joe will lament that the Palestinian bag of rights has succeeded in killing its carrier.