The Western Phalanx

What Went Wrong with Islam

2006-01-30T08:47:00.000-08:00

Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong, Interview with Brian Lamb 11/18/01, C-Span.org.

Notes:

Starts with historical Islam, from center of culture and innovation to being roundly defeated. This absolute defeat in 1699 started a debate, which has gone on ever since. "Hitherto we have defeated the infidels, now they are defeating us." Defeat on the battlefield preceeded defeat in market place, and defeat politically and scientifically.

Tried to emulate economy, political systems, militaries of West. Nothing has worked. Situation has gotten worse and worse. Have come to be dominated by the West.

A debate which has been going on for three centuries, getting more ramified lately.

Lewis was in His Majesty's Service during WWII, saw much of the Middle East.

Two articles were his biggest initial contributions: "Root of Muslim Rage", 1990, he had come to realize more and more that there was a hostility towards the West and the US in particular.

Second article appeared in 1998, on Osama's Declaration of War on the US.

"Old enough to believe that history consists of facts supported by evidence."

Analyzes the phrase, "That's history", implying that something in the past is unimportant. Says Americans are generally ignorant of history. A major difference between the US and the cultures in the Middle East, where they have a very keen awareness of history and the narrative they fit into.

For example, in the Iraq Iran war, the war propaganda made frequent allusions to events of the seventh century, in the secure knowledge that the listeners and readers on both sides would pick up these allusions and understand them. When Osama, in one of his recent pronouncements, says "we have suffered this shame and humiliation for 80 years...", his audience understood him. He was, of course, referring to the fall of the Ottoman empire, the occupation and partition of that empire, ultimate point of degradation and humiliation of the Muslim world. At its height, extended from the suburbs of Vienna to the east of Iran. Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk" led an uprising and reeoccupied Anatolia, led a secular revolution and set up secular military state. From a Muslim point of view, this was the worst that could happen, eliminated the Caliphate.

The Caliphate is the head of Islam. Theirs is a religion subdivided into nations, not nation subdivided into religion. They do not define themselves in national terms, but in religious identities and political allegiance.

Koran was revealed by the Archangel Gabriel to Mohammed, Koran is "divine and uncreated." Exile and return is a theme in Muslim history. Mecca to Medina and back again.

Non-Muslims are not allowed to go to Mecca. "Only one religion in Arabia" is the maxim, which caused Osama so much grief when America based troops there. Important difference between Mohammed and his "predecessors" was that Mohammed was successful during his lifetime. Was not he that was put to death but his enemies. Put together a state, conquered with the Sword, made peace and war, all things a head of state does. Forms part of the core of memories that all Muslims share. Therefore, Islam is political in a sense that Christianity and Judaism are not.

Mohammed was not divine, but he was a prophet, chosen to deliver God's message. They also revere Jesus as a prophet, but consider it blasphemy to consider him son of God.

Modern history of Middle East begins in 1798. The French Republic sent expeditionary force to Egypt under Bonaparte. Taught the first "appalling lesson" that even a small European army could enter, occupy, and govern the Middle East at their leisure. The departure of the French was second lesson: only another European power can get them out (driven out by Sir Horatio Nelson of Great Britain). Departure was not achieved by Egypt.

Middle East was more or less passive object of greater power games from outside the region. In the final phase it was the US v. USSR. But this was the end of it. Bush I and Gorbachev ended this Imperial rivalry over the Middle East. America because they wouldn't, Soviets because they couldn't.

When it comes to defining American interests in the Middle East, two big topics: 1) Oil, and 2) Israel.

Oil. Oil was found in the first part of the 20th century. The development of oil made a tremendous difference in every respect: the radical Islam originated in Arabia as far back in 18th century, but it would have remained there if not for oil. The unlimited wealth allowed them to set up schools and colleges all over the world to spread their ideology, their brand of fanatical, extremist Islam. Without oil money, this type of Islam would have remained on the fringe. By buying oil, we are indirectly contributing to the continuation of this problem.

Oil has been a curse to the Arab world. Provided vast wealth to an otherwise pastoral system. "No representation without taxation." Didn't need the people and their taxes to govern. Traditional Muslim government is authoritarian, but it wasn't dictatorial or tyrannical. Only recently has the power of the ruler been augmented by oil. Either they will run out of oil, or it will be superceded by some other tech. Oil has strengthened autocratic government, made it more effective in its oppression. Inhibited the development of other forms of gainful economic effort.

Came to Princeton because they "made me an offer I couldn't refuse, a New Jersey expression." There was a difference between the students at Princeton and in London. Undergraduate education is better in England, but graduate education is more rigorous here.

Israel. Israel/Palestine question is not really of primary importance. That and anti-Americanism are the only grievances that are allowed to be freely expressed in the Middle East. So it is of secondary importance, the primary factor being political oppression and the general feeling of Muslim discontent.

"Either get tough, or get out"

Kind of wishy-washy policies are not going to work. Why do they hate us is the wrong question, they've been hating us for centuries. You can't be rich, strong, successful...and loved, especially not by those who have nothing. The question should be why do they not fear and respect us. There has always been a struggle between these religions, and now the wrong one seems to be winning. The hatred is axiomatic.

Something that comes out in writings of bin Laden. There were always rival powers before, if they were unhappy with US they could turn to the Soviets. Can't do that anymore. It has concentrated their minds towards us, and they think they destroyed the Soviet Union. Saw this as stage one on the road to victory, were scared of the Soviets, thought they were the worst.

They thought dealing with the US would be comparatively easy. Litany is always repeated: Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, etc. They say that we were there to install Imperial Somalia, and were driven away by a few casualties. How do we get tough?

Continue good work we've started in Afghanistan, then deal with other countries and terrorist groups that are supported by them. The only other alternative is to get out completely. He prefers getting tough to getting out. Getting bullied then retreating is not a good idea.

People's goodwill is inverse to who the governments support. Divide Middle East into three regions. 1)Governments support America -- these countries have rabidly anti-American population. Notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia. "It's no accident" that a great majority of the hijackers come from these countries. Regard governments as American puppets. 2)Governments are anti-American -- people are very pro-American. Remarkable demonstrations in Iran after 9/11. If you have an unpopular government, and the government tells you America is bad, you will assume America is good.

He hopes that what has happened in Afghanistan continues into Iraq and Iran. He's been told that after seeing the scenes of rejoicing in Afghanistan, it would look like a funeral compared to what the celebrations would be in Iraq and Iran were they liberated from their present rulers.

The desire for freedom is very natural. Contitutional democracy is a Western idea, freedom as a political ideal is a Western idea. However, in Muslim world, the ideal government is one of justice, mean what we largely mean by justice, enough room to squeeze in the idea of freedom under this rubric.

Third group: where both government and people are friendly to US. Only two states, both democracies (oddly enough!), Israel and Turkey, where the government can be thrown out by the people if it becomes unpopular. This eliminates the inverse relationship between the opinions and assumptions of the people, and that of the government.

On media: much information that we get here is trivial. Is devoid of context, presented bare and naked, and therefore meaningless. Media is supposed to be intellectually useful. The paradigm has shifted to being one of stimulation. We are prodded with electricity and diverted by red meat. We are no longer educated. Sheep are treated such.

He speaks briefly of the role of women, and how Ataturk focused on the issue of women's rights. Quotes Muslim philosopher, "Society that eliminates the contribution of one half of its citizens is like a human body that is paralyzed on one side."

Quantum Morality

2006-01-01T15:14:00.000-08:00

I think good and evil are helpful constructs, but they must be contextualized to have true meaning.

Killing, without context, is an amoral concept. Killing in war can be a good, likewise killing to protect your family. Were those imperatives universalized, without dilution, the world would be a better place. Even Kant could be convinced of their moral worth.

Murder, contextualized by its definition, is evil except at the extreme margins--where the victim, in life, had been a greater evil. (Of course, this leads into second order problems of who gets to decide who should be murdered. The answer, historically, has been to grant the authority to the State. Of course, the addition of "the State" into our matrix changes the context of the act, so the moral worth of the act changes. State "murder" becomes State-sanctioned execution.)

Good is that which is life-affirming. In any situation, it is defined by a matrix of contextualized data points.

Unfortunately, some of those data points exist in the future, as things that have not yet happened. Our knowledge of context is imperfect. Worse, we don't know if the unforeseen change in context will change the moral valuation--the good or evil of the act.

But the past is our glimpse of the future, and after a while certain patterns begin to form. With humans, these patterns became statistically sound maxims and moral rules of thumb: in other words, they became our Newtonian Ethics and Newtonian Morality.

But life is more complex than we can imagine, and at extreme pressures, Newtonian Morality breaks apart. Laws get flipped and turned upside down. Actions, amoral in nature, are rapidly reevaluated for moral worth. Murder becomes self-defense.

It is in the search for an underlying order in the chaos of high pressure where mankind cannot seem to find good answers. Until we get a statistical theory of morality, we never will.

Newtonian Ethics have worth, there is no doubt about it. It is just that they are shorthand for something else.

Where are the Savior Groups?

2005-12-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-11T09:41:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-10T11:45:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-12-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

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

2005-12-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

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.

Thanksgiving

2005-11-26T16:29:00.000-08:00

Ben Bernanke is unworried about the American trade deficit. The core cause of such lop-sidedness is the sophisticated, post-industrial, and healthy consumerism of the US in contradistinction to the neo-industrial, wage-controlled "workers-hell" in China. We have a copious amount of discretionary income. They don't. We bought into the information economy. They haven't.

China and the Middle East are in the same dilemma. Their survival and relevance are dependent on the attentions of the United States and the particular type of market we help support. Our dependency on them is inextricably linked with the aged and dying paradigm of Industry. As the latter goes the way of the dinosaur, and as the United States gets richer, a single imperative will ring true with the Industrial nations of the world: evolve, or die.

They are in a precarious position, these niche players. The top of the food chain is moving skyward, as the ground falls away beneath their feet. As citizens around the world become more sophisticated due to cultural cross-pollination (internet, media), the universal question asked of government will soon become, "Where's the beef?" Without a compelling answer, national brain-drain to the US will proceed apace (see latest Economist).

Information is the new oil. And we (post-industrial nations) own all the refinaries.

On a side note, our national defense posture has shifted from retaliatory (pre-911), to preemptive (post-911), to preventative (post-OIF) in the space of five years. This means that any prospective enemy of the US will have to draw its followers and know-how from an ether filled with sentinels and guard dogs. Worse for them, once they find what they need, assembly--and speed--will be required.

A decentralized entry-barrier for our times. As we get richer and more powerful, outside threats diminish. Inside threats, however...

The Constitution is the Aegis that shields us from ourselves. On this Thanksgiving, it is something to be truly thankful for.

Loathing our Leaders

2005-11-20T19:46:00.000-08:00

As we struggle to classify, categorize, and incorporate the lessons of Iraq into our institutional memory, our enemies grow emboldened by our doubt and inertia.

I use to think the joke was on them. The joke, it seems, is on those who must clean up the cafeteria after the children stop the food fight. Unfortunately, when the chaos dies down, there will be bodies amongst the foul and rotten debris.

When the histories are written, they will record that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and Americans masturbated.

Flotsam and Jetsam

2005-11-17T13:44:00.000-08:00

The difficulties of attempting to persuade an undiscerning public are indirectly correlated to the collapsibility of the issue at hand. Bush lied, people died is at least 50% right. It's implication, however, is 100% wrong.

The only thing worse than being wrong is being right, and alone.

The worlds we create in cinema now will be worlds to visit in our minds later. This turnabout will be here shortly, and it will not be relegated to the world of metaphor.

We don't realize it yet, but the inadvertent expressions of freedom that we take for granted will shine through to later generations in their moments of doubt and darkness. Seinfeld and Star Wars will last much longer than we. If poets are the unofficial legislators, we can take comfort in the worth of the laws we have passed. So long as they are remembered and recorded, we shall be free.

There is a growing suspicion in my mind that we must wait, and prepare. Leave precipitous action to the enemy. We must never lose our myth of virtue.

Many people who are not culturally mature will soon be granted an undeserved respite from nature's fury. Blame technology, but hold accountable the people, or our own Frankenstein's monster we will have made.

White flight will follow the space elevator out of the atmosphere.

We are building ourselves a world of distraction. Perhaps the alchemy of the senses is our last resort in our long, bloody fight against envy, and despair. If so, good riddance, and God help us.

Perhaps a machine can do better. Perhaps we will let it.

Response to Den Beste's media analysis

2005-11-14T15:20:00.000-08:00

Steven Den Beste posts on Redstate.org an analysis of Al'Qaeda's inherent weaknesses in a propaganda campaign that depends on headlines, on the one hand, and the support of fellow travelers on the other. My response:

Your analysis is correct that headline fatigue and revulsion work against the Islamists in the majority, but Al'Qaeda is not necessarily playing to the majority. Zawahiri expressly states that the goal of the "propaganda by deed" is to reach a mere 5% of the Muslim youth. Comparing this objective to reality seems to indicate that Zawahiri is succeeding in what he and Osama set out to do.

Whether 5% is sufficient and whether propaganda by deed is a good strategy are valid questions and deserve a systematic inquiry. Nevertheless, one might concede your analysis of Al'Qaeda's informational weakness and still hold the opinion that they will not be determinative in Al'Qaeda's defeat.

The underlying problem, for which we have relatively few answers, is the increasing self-identification of young men according to their Muslimness, and the corollary universalization of grievances as Muslim grievances. This phenomenon is most prevalent in young Muslim men who have some level of interaction with the West (see Sayed Qutb's rejection of the West after his visit to America). This interaction heightens their awareness of global status (comparative failure), which then reinforces the jihadi imperative.

5%, linked and reinforced through the internet, is a formidable force. Al'Qaeda's influence overall may wax and wane with the media cycle, but the resolve of this group will not.

Which means the arm of decision is predominantly a Western arm. The danger is an admixture of Al'Qaeda's propaganda by deed with the feeling of Western guilt propagated by a cannabalistic media. Our narcissism is unusual in that, while we cannot pull ourselves away from the looking glass, it is a self-immolating fascination with abomination that keeps us rooted. Such self-disgust and guilt, which are reinforced by a media and academia that trade in it, are the only factors that can create the necessary environment for Western defeat. We may be periodically disturbed from our trance, through rioting or the occasional attack, and we may lash out in annoyance, but pulling ourselves away from our self-obsession for any length of time is now almost impossible. How long before the roots take hold permanently? How long before our guilt--and the timid intertia it causes--transitions into decline?

Islamist terror is but one manifestation of rejectionist ideology--the most obvious and most visible (and therefore the least problematic). The real danger comes from within. To withstand the viral assaults on our society that will inevitably come, we need to be bolstered by self-confidence and purpose. Unfortunately, these are the virtues that are slowly being stripped away by our elite.

The cause in fact of a potential decline will be our academia, but the proximate cause will be an irresponsible and undiscerning media. Therefore, the media is a clear and present danger and must be engaged.

[Den Beste responded that 5% is an impotent mass]

Your points are well taken: that 5% cannot succeed against a motivated 95%, and that headline fatigue causes a flight to the macabre which then attrits the support of the fellow-traveler--a support necessary for a robust terrorist movement.

We should then fear not the macabre, but acts of ostensible revolution couched in language sure to hypnotize a vast segment of the disaffected, Marxist Left (riots in France, perhaps?). Islamists might not be nimble enough to manage this, though there are those in the West who try on their behalf (CAIR, e.g.).

I am not convinced that 5% is impotent against an undermotivated 95%, and I believe that is what we face for the foreseeable future.

New York Times, again...(sheesh)

2005-11-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

The New York Times once again misleads the American people about the war. This from today's article on Bush's speech:

The president has been consistent in saying American troops would remain in Iraq until the job is done, since he said otherwise during the campaign, when Matt Lauer of NBC asked Mr. Bush in a televised interview in August 2004 about the war.

"I don't think you can win it," Mr. Bush said, a remark Democrats immediately seized on as defeatist.

Reading this one could be forgiven for thinking that Bush was saying he didn't think we could win in Iraq. In fact, that's what Richard Stevenson wants you to believe. The problem, unfortunately for Mr. Stevenson, is that Bush never said that about the War in Iraq. Here is the context for Bush's statement to Matt Lauer, as reported in the Washington Post:

President Bush said in an interview broadcast Monday that the war on terrorism cannot be won in the traditional sense of victory, one in a series of statements he has made in the past few days to lower public expectations and mitigate political problems before he reintroduces himself to the nation Thursday night.

Bush has given a spate of interviews in the run-up to this week's Republican National Convention in New York, and he was asked by Matt Lauer of NBC's "Today" show, in an interview taped Saturday in Ohio and shown on the convention's opening day, if the war on terrorism can be won.

"I don't think you can win it," Bush said. "But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world. Let's put it that way."

There is a huge difference between saying the war in Iraq can't be won, and saying the War on Terror (a war on a tactic) can't be won. This is either incredibly sloppy reporting, or it is an underhanded attempt to sell the subversive, anti-war propaganda the Times has come to specialize in. I report, you decide.

One Giant Leap for Mankind

2005-11-08T10:50:00.000-08:00

Every so often I revisit the issue of the war on drugs, and every time I do I get more frustrated. Since I am once again mulling over all the bad consequences of such an ill-advised "war", I thought I would post an excellent analysis by William F. Buckley et al. that I read a while ago. I read this shortly after September 11, when the seriousness of that attack and the persuasiveness of these articles fused together into an everlasting opposition to victimless crime in general, and the war on drugs in particular. Here is an excerpt:

WE ARE speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen -- yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect...

I HAVE spared you, even as I spared myself, an arithmetical consummation of my inquiry, but the data here cited instruct us that the cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs. We have seen a substantial reduction in the use of tobacco over the last thirty years, and this is not because tobacco became illegal but because a sentient community began, in substantial numbers, to apprehend the high cost of tobacco to human health, even as, we can assume, a growing number of Americans desist from practicing unsafe sex and using polluted needles in this age of AIDS. If 80 million Americans can experiment with drugs and resist addiction using information publicly available, we can reasonably hope that approximately the same number would resist the temptation to purchase such drugs even if they were available at a federal drugstore at the mere cost of production.

And added to the above is the point of civil justice. Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority.

I have not spoken of the cost to our society of the astonishing legal weapons available now to policemen and prosecutors; of the penalty of forfeiture of one's home and property for violation of laws which, though designed to advance the war against drugs, could legally be used -- I am told by learned counsel -- as penalties for the neglect of one's pets. I leave it at this, that it is outrageous to live in a society whose laws tolerate sending young people to life in prison because they grew, or distributed, a dozen ounces of marijuana. I would hope that the good offices of your vital profession would mobilize at least to protest such excesses of wartime zeal, the legal equivalent of a My Lai massacre. And perhaps proceed to recommend the legalization of the sale of most drugs, except to minors.

Ending the drug war would be a giant step forward in our domestic and foreign policy. There must come a point when policy initiatives are revisited, measured for success, and finally thrown out if they have been unmitigated failures. The War on Drugs is such a failure.

By any metric, this pseudo-war has been a disaster (except in the feel-good, I'm-a-politician-and-I'm-on-a-soapbox metric). Drug use has not declined, drug crime has not declined, drug supply has not declined, and drug potency has not declined. This after unprecedented effort by the government over a span of several decades. A substantial amount of our prison population were incarcerated because of drug possession or sale. The removal of drugs from the white market has caused an immense growth in the black, which leads to gangs and turf-wars and terrorist groups like the ELN and FARC.

One of the first uses of the Patriot Act was by the DEA. In an age of global terrorism, can we afford to expend such manpower and assets trying to keep citizens from deciding what to put into their own bodies?

The only argument for the drug war is a moral one. All the utilitarian arguments have been invalidated by facts. Its supporters say that a society that allows drug use is a rotten society. This is an interesting formulation since, while we don't currently allow drug use, we have quite a bit of it, and since it is illegal, instead of worrying just about use we must also worry about gangs, crime, murder, terrorism, and dysfunctional states. I'd rather have a society with legal access, where the private sector can control use through drug tests for jobs, than a society with all the other problems listed above that, despite such heavy-handed laws, still has drug use.

Not that it's likely to end anytime soon. Any politician that puts forward such an agenda would be labeled "pro-drug", instead of pro-order and pro-freedom and pro-personal-responsibility. It's too bad. The crimewave that spawned from Prohibition is revisited in spades by the ill-advised war on drugs.

Riots in Paris

2005-11-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

Wretchard, over at the Belmont Club, is trying to figure out the causes of the Parisian rights, and the question seems to turn on whether these riots are racial/sociological or racial/religious in origin.

I don't think the composition of race riots and Muslim riots is really that different. Both depend on group instead of individual identity, both use awareness of ostensible status as a foundation for grievances, a status that is conferred to the group and therefore transmuted to the individual. Segregation heightens this perception of collective grievance, and also reinforces the group identity at the expense of the individual's.

Sociologically, the conditions are the same for both types of unrests. It is dangerous to combine group identity, segregation, descrimination, and grievances within walking distance of their causes. The determinative variables, if one starts with the premise that a group is in fact subject to the above situations, are the strength of that particular group identification and the immediacy or primacy of the catalyzing injury.

Islam is unique because it is so successful at supplanted the self with the ideas and loyalties of "Muslimness," which, as Wretchard points out, provides a reckless vitality to Islamic mass movements. It is a lesson worth learning, because if one has a Muslim minority exposed to the sociological tripwires mentioned above, the admixture is uniquely toxic and flammable and might be uncontainable once ignited.

So the answer is that the riots are sociological in their origins, but specifically Muslim in the intensity of their manifestations.

Obstacles and Solutions

2005-11-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

In my previous post I posited that, if one starts with the premise that the long war is predominantly fought in the heart and mind, the enemy we are fighting is human despair, what Kierkegaard called the sickness unto death. My thesis is that radical Islamism, nihilism, perhaps even subversive faiths like orientalism and socialism, are all particular manifestations of an underlying cancer. Kierkegaard lays much of the ground work for my thesis in his philosophical treatises on the self, and all I did was extrapolate his dialectical paradigm to cover and explain the current evils and obstacles that humanity now faces in the world.

Kierkegaard writes, "The ever increasing intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to this increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intensive the despair." I think we must at least look at the possibility that Islamism is in fact a reaction to Islam's reemergence as a globally conscious ideology. Such a global consciousness, such a vivid awareness of how one "fits" into the overall dynamic, must weigh heavily upon one whose first observations, after gaining consciousness, are of failure and defeat. Muslims are especially vulnerable to a heightened "intensity of despair", because they hold in their mind a vision of absolute authority and superiority that is irreconcilable with what they see every day.

Connectivity cuts both ways, and it may be said that with Muslims, both cuts are deeper. This from Theodore Dalrymple:

Even if for no other reason, then (and there are in fact other reasons), young Muslim males have a strong motive for maintaining an identity apart. And since people rarely like to admit low motives for their behavior, such as the wish to maintain a self-gratifying dominance, these young Muslims need a more elevated justification for their conduct toward women. They find it, of course, in a residual Islam: not the Islam of onerous duties, rituals, and prohibitions, which interferes so insistently in day-to-day life, but in an Islam of residual feeling, which allows them a sense of moral superiority to everything around them, including women, without in any way cramping their style.

This Islam contains little that is theological, spiritual, or even religious, but it nevertheless exists in the mental economy as what anatomists call a “potential space.” A potential space occurs where two tissues or organs are separated by smooth membranes that are normally close together, but that can be separated by an accumulation of fluid such as pus if infection or inflammation occurs.

The other side is represented by Muslims in exile like Salman Rushdie and Hirsi Ali. These Muslims have avoided the pitfall of despair by, ironically, being subject to constant, withering, and sometimes murderous persecution from other Muslims. They have avoided, or rather supplanted, the bedrock identity of "I am Muslim" and the consciousness that attends it. They have walked that final step and embraced the self, embraced the primacy of the self, and in doing so inoculated it against the erosion of despair.

Rushdie and Ali have avoided despair because they do not despair of themselves; they do not will themselves to change. Instead, they will the world to change and keep for themselves a rock-solid identity that is inviolable. Therefore, whatever their trials and tribulations, Muslims like these succeed because they avoid the vicious feedback loop that conquers their contemporaries; by refusing a group identity that, in its current iteration, hawks grievances and victimhood in the present while promising conquest and glory in the future, they have sidestepped most of the radical pathologies.

Nevertheless, anxiety in the face of freedom yields more anxiety, and group-identity Muslims have a considerable amount of anxiety to bring to the table.

Dalrymple demonstrates this anxiety in his essay, particularly in his talk to a would-be suicide bomber:

Suicide was a mortal sin, according to the tenets of the Islamic faith. No, when he got out of prison he would not kill himself; he would make himself a martyr, and be rewarded eternally, by making himself into a bomb and taking as many enemies with him as he could.

Enemies, I asked; what enemies? How could he know that the people he killed at random would be enemies? They were enemies, he said, because they lived happily in our rotten and unjust society. Therefore, by definition, they were enemies—enemies in the objective sense, as Stalin might have put it—and hence were legitimate targets.

I asked him whether he thought that, in order to deter him from his course of action, it would be right for the state to threaten to kill his mother and his brothers and sisters—and to carry out this threat if he carried out his, in order to deter others like him.

The idea appalled him, not because it was yet another example of the wickedness of a Western democratic state, but because he could not conceive of such a state acting in this unprincipled way. In other words, he assumed a high degree of moral restraint on the part of the very organism that he wanted to attack and destroy.

We are his enemies because he is unhappy. We are his enemies because he despairs, and we do not.

This dynamic, the misrelation of the self, is aggravated for another reason. Kierkegaard writes, "Despair is intensified in relation to the consciousness of the self, but the self is intensified in relation to the criterion for the self, infinitely when God is the criterion." The young Muslim sees the world as ungodly, sees his place in it as a farce, or a cruelty, and wills himself to be other than who he is. He rejects his role as an immigrant, as a student, as a lower-middle class, ordinary boy, and becomes something more, and something less. His rejection of himself creates a void where the "idea of being a Muslim" can grow, filling his being and becoming his sole identity. The self subsumed, the world becomes Manichean, grievances become universal, and he takes up the cause of his God. His consciousness of his own despair and his intimate relationship with the infinite God lead the young Westernized Muslim to deny, and then defy, the world as he sees it:

First comes despair over the earthly or over something earthly, then despair of the eternal, over oneself. Then comes defiance, which is really despair through the aid of the eternal, the despairing misuse of the eternal within the self to will in despair to be oneself.... In this form of despair, there is a rise in the consciousness of the self, and therefore a greater consciousness of what despair is and that one's state is despair. Here the despair is conscious of itself as an act.... In order to despair to will to be oneself, there must be consciousness of an infinite self. This infinite self, however, is really only the most abstract form, the most abstract possibility of the self. And this is the self that a person in despair wills to be.

The story of Sayyid Qutb is enlightening:

Qutb's special ability as a writer came from the fact that, as a young boy, he received a traditional Muslim education -- he committed the Koran to memory by the age of 10 -- yet he went on, at a college in Cairo, to receive a modern, secular education. He was born in 1906, and in the 1920's and 30's he took up socialism and literature. He wrote novels, poems and a book that is still said to be well regarded called ''Literary Criticism: Its Principles and Methodology.'' His writings reflected -- here I quote one of his admirers and translators, Hamid Algar of the University of California at Berkeley -- a ''Western-tinged outlook on cultural and literary questions.'' Qutb displayed ''traces of individualism and existentialism.'' He even traveled to the United States in the late 1940's, enrolled at the Colorado State College of Education and earned a master's degree. In some of the accounts of Qutb's life, this trip to America is pictured as a ghastly trauma, mostly because of America's sexual freedoms, which sent him reeling back to Egypt in a mood of hatred and fear.

Qutb was the epitome of the Westernized Muslim. His education and experience in Western Culture and dominance forced him to make a choice early on. Either he would subsume his Muslim identity into the self, or his self would be subsumed into his Muslim identity. The former takes much more courage because, in a world of free individuals, failure is one's own fault. The latter's message is quite different, and takes much less bravery.

More on Qutb:

The Islamists and the Pan-Arabists tried to cooperate with one another in Egypt in those days, and there was some basis for doing so. Both movements dreamed of rescuing the Arab world from the legacies of European imperialism. Both groups dreamed of crushing Zionism and the brand-new Jewish state. Both groups dreamed of fashioning a new kind of modernity, which was not going to be liberal and freethinking in the Western style but, even so, was going to be up-to-date on economic and scientific issues. And both movements dreamed of doing all this by returning in some fashion to the glories of the Arab past. Both movements wanted to resurrect, in a modern version, the ancient Islamic caliphate of the seventh century, when the Arabs were conquering the world.

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To deny freedom, to deny the primacy of the individual, is to deny the self, which leads us to a solution.

Muslims must embrace individuality, must embrace the primacy and inviolability of the self for both men and women, if they are to survive this war. As Kierkegaard would say, they must become men of this world, and happy with the self as it relates to it, if they are to avoid despair. Muslims must also develop the bravery to be introspective and self-critical while still accepting and loving the self. It is no accident that cultures and people who have the courage to look inside themselves are the most successful and the least prone to despair.

Freedom, and the concepts of possiblity and necessity that adhere to it, can lead to self-denial, self-guilt, and ultimately to despair. To deal with these currents, the self must rest firmly between the finite and the infinite. It must become the relationship between the two, and then relate that relationship back and forth between the finite world and the infinite. In doing so, the perfection of the infinite and the imperfection of the finite play out their differences through the medium of the self. Happiness can only be found in the interaction between the two. Embracing too fully one at the expense of the other can lead to emptiness, anxiety, and ultimately to despair.

The final question is one of metaphysics, and perhaps theology: what is the infinite? I posit that the infinite is Truth. Part of that Truth, a subset of it, is the answer to the question "How can humans live together and survive?". The answer to that question is morality, or virtue, as the art of living together. But that is truth on the macro scale.

Luckily for us, societal happiness and individual happiness have the same cause. Embracing virtue--a way of behaving, but using it as a way of defining oneself--guards against the sickness of despair. The virtuous man does not will himself to be different, and he interacts in the world confidently, knowing that the world is imperfect, but he less so.

Individuality (enlightened selfishness), freedom, and virtue. That is how we win the war. In other words, we will win when everyone becomes, in their mind, the ideal American.

"First they came for the mannequins..."

2005-11-01T09:07:00.000-08:00

From Regime Change Iran:

Police in Iran have launched a new crackdown on alluring mannequins rounding up 65 feminine mannequins.

What the hell can you say about that?

The Sickness Unto Death

2005-11-01T06:11:00.000-08:00

Wretchard posts a provocative essay on The Long War, what Newt Gingrich describes as "an inherently offensive war in which we have to actively defeat our opponents. Furthermore this war resembles the Reformation-era wars of religion in which fellow nationals may be traitors serving the other side (examine Elizabethan England and the origins of the English secret service as an example)."

I think there is something deeper--something more primal--that we are fighting for, and fighting against. Our enemy is more than the "irreconcilable wing of Islam", though it is that, too. It is more than terrorism--which is nothing but a particular manifestation of our enemy--and it is more than nihilism, though nihilism is a direct consequence and a dangerous ideological iteration of our underlying foe.

In the year 2005 of the common era, we find ourselves in a state of flux. We are witnessing a shift in the human condition, one that is global and fraught with...unknowns. That there are so many unknowns gives rise to caution, perhaps even fear and trembling, for in our depths we know that chaos, chance, dynamism--these things bring storms as often as they bring light.

We are in the twilight of an era. Many of us, if we are observant, can see the sun setting on a vast array of ideas and a previously-powerful set of ideologies. Memes that are as old as man and thoughts only recently born are giving way to a new order, one not yet consumated but brimming with its own potential energy. Some ideas will carry over, and some will perish in the night. That we know not which is cause for some concern.

Peggy Noonan senses the twilight in her recent essay:

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national political culture right now. In fact I think it's a subtext to our society. I think that a lot of people are carrying around in their heads, unarticulated and even in some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels are coming off the trolley and the trolley off the tracks. That in some deep and fundamental way things have broken down and can't be fixed, or won't be fixed any time soon...

I'm not talking about "Plamegate." As I write no indictments have come up. I'm not talking about "Miers." I mean . . . the whole ball of wax. Everything. Cloning, nuts with nukes, epidemics; the growing knowledge that there's no such thing as homeland security; the fact that we're leaving our kids with a bill no one can pay. A sense of unreality in our courts so deep that they think they can seize grandma's house to build a strip mall; our media institutions imploding--the spectacle of a great American newspaper, the New York Times, hurtling off its own tracks, as did CBS. The fear of parents that their children will wind up disturbed, and their souls actually imperiled, by the popular culture in which we are raising them...

I have wondered if it hasn't all gotten too big, too complicated, too crucial, too many-fronted, too . . . impossible...

Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they're living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they're going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley's off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.

I suspect that history, including great historical novelists of the future, will look back and see that many of our elites simply decided to enjoy their lives while they waited for the next chapter of trouble. And that they consciously, or unconsciously, took grim comfort in this thought: I got mine. Which is what the separate peace comes down to, "I got mine, you get yours."

Cicero, at Winds of Change, also senses a shift:

And there we have the Old Order, nursing their drinks and watching the sunset. "Who knows about the coming sunrise," they lament, looking confused. And so it is confusing -- none of us see the sunrise to come. We only see the sunset. We remember the warmth of the long day. We knit together pleasant memories and the certainty of past convictions, admiring the clarity we once had.

I think both 'sides' within the West -- left and right, European and American -- really are after the same thing: to preserve what they have.

Cicero speaks of this shift as a law of nature, and our reaction to it a law of man:

I think that's where Ms. Noonan's at. She's from a generation that saw great things in itself, and in its nation. What comes next is beyond comprehension. We're in flux -- change only seems to bring about more change, over and over again. Older people want to hang on to what they have, perhaps more so than keep up with the times. I empathize -- I know that none of us on the cutting edge should be so smug as to think we're past getting cut by it ourselves. Compounding innovation exacts a heavy toll, and can leave many people behind. None of us can say what the outcome will be.

Ms. Noonan is witnessing and lamenting the passage of an era -- one that needs to pass by. It's hard, because we are a part of that era. Looking to a waning era's elite for consolation is understandable, but it will not ease the bewilderment. New worlds are being built, while old ones fall. Somehow, we have to be brave, put away the photo albums, and engage this flux.

Cicero speaks of the way forward, but his analysis also implies a destination of sorts. A physical destination it is not, nor is it stationary, but it is a place we must get to nonetheless. Our lives--our survival--depend on it.

The goal--the destination--is elusive, and it cannot be held down nor spoken of in precise terms. As Marcus Aurelius said of Rome, it is but a whisper, an idea so fragile that to speak it causes it to vanish. It is drastically vulnerable to invasion and subversion. Enemies, it may be said, are all around.

What I speak of is a posture, an outlook and a direction to look out. I would call it truth, for it is that, but that is not enough. Bravery and courage are elements of it; goodness and virtue define it. Compassion, rigor, vitality, decency; patience, hope, temperance, and faith--how many coordinates must be given before the constellation begins to take shape?

The name of the constellation is elusive, but as Shakespeare said, by any name it smells as sweet. Like many things, it exists as relation. More specifically, it is a relation that relates to itself:

The human self is such a derived, established relation, a relation that relates itself to itself and in relating itself to itself relates itself to another.

That is a quote from Soren Kierkegaard, taken from his book "The Sickness Unto Death." Enigmatic? Maybe, but it is not impermeably so. One can approach it, weigh it, taste it even, and its truth, like a kernel, is there to find if one looks hard enough. It is the truth of who we are, who we can be, who we should be. The disconnect between those concepts is our danger--our bane of existence. It is the sickness that afflicts many, a nothingness that spreads everyday. It is despair:

Despair is the misrelation in the relation of a synthesis that relates itself to itself...

An individual in despair despairs over something. So it seems for a moment, but only for a moment; in the same moment the true despair or despair in its true form shows itself. In despairing over something, he really despaired over himself, and now he wants to get rid of himself. For example, when the ambitious man whose slogan is "Either Caesar or nothing" does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself. Consequently he does not despair because he did not get to be Caesar but despairs over himself because he did not get to be Caesar.... Consequently, to despair over something is still not despair proper.... To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself—this is the formula for all despair.

Our enemy, the one we fight in this long war, is despair. Our problem, and perhaps our contradiction, is the freedom we are spreading, wittingly and unwittingly, across the entire world. Let me explain.

A man who cannot be Caesar, who has no hope of being Caesar, does not despair when he remains himself. A man who is born, lives, and dies with a knowledge of place, of status, of inevitability does not despair over unrequited dreams of conquest and glory, fame and fortune. A man who is chained, who understands the inevitability of those chains, looks upon his condition with resignation, perhaps with hatred, perhaps with indignation--he does not, however, regret...and he does not despair. It is not himself he wishes to be rid of. It is the world that abuses him so violently and unapologetically that he finds disgusting, and unworthy. He wills himself, as himself, a better life. But he does not despair; he does not will to be rid of himself.

Freedom is defined by Kierkegaard as "the dialectical aspect of the categories possibility and necessity." It is the relation of these two concepts that defines freedom--possibility and chance pulling one side while necessity and determination pull the other. The self, when thrown into this violent vortex, can be ripped apart by the competing currents, and that is where you can find despair.

Our problem--our test--is that we are building a world that is eminently likable, an existence of perfect malleability that at once seduces and taunts our passions, and our soul. We are building a world of freedom and prosperity unlike any that has ever been seen, yet we are blind to the implications and dangers that lie beneath the surface. When the world is perfect, the self suffers in comparison. When you can be Caesar, when the world opens that door, it is the self that is hated for not walking through. The self despairs, and wills away its existence.

In a world of freedom and opportunity, the self can no longer look outwards for definition, though it will try. It will try to subsume itself into a group, or an ideology, or a mass movement--these efforts will manifest themselves as spasms, and they will afflict our new world most grievously:

When feeling or knowing or willing has become fantastic, the entire self can become that, whether in the most active form of plunging headlong into fantasy or in the more passive form of being carried away.... The self, then, leads a fantasized existence in abstract infinitizing or in abstract isolation, continually lacking its self, from which it moves further and further away....To lack infinitude is despairing reductionism, narrowness.... But whereas one kind of despair plunges wildly into the infinite and loses itself, another kind of despair seems to permit itself to be tricked out of its self by "the others." Surrounded by hordes of men, absorbed in all sorts of secular matters, more and more shrewd about the ways of the world—such a person forgets himself, forgets his name divinely understood, does not dare to believe in himself, finds it too hazardous to be himself, and far easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, a mass man.... When a self becomes lost in possibility...it is not merely because of a lack of energy.... What is missing is essentially the power to obey, to submit to the necessity in one's life, to what may be called one's limitations. Therefore, the tragedy is not that such a self did not amount to something in the world; no, the tragedy is that he did not become aware of himself, aware that the self he is a very definite something and thus the necessary.... The determinist, the fatalist, is in despair and as one in despair has lost his self, because for him everything has become necessary

The enemy, therefore, is within, but so is our salvation. I do not know how we can win, but win we must.

Our war is against despair. It is a melancholy joke that its forebearer is freedom.

Playing Chicken with the US of A

2005-10-31T12:37:00.000-08:00

Incredibly interesting article by Amir Taheri where we get this little gem:

The idea that the Islamic Republic faces a game of “chicken” against the West was publicized last month by Ali Larijani, the new “security czar” in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration. But the man who first came up with the analysis is Hassan Abbasi who has emerged as Ahmadinejad’s chief strategic guru.

Abbasi heads the Center for Security Doctrines Research of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (RGC). His friends call him “The Kissinger of Islam”, after Henry Kissinger who served as US secretary of state in the 1970s.

“To Iran’s new ruling elite, Abbasi is the big strategic brain,” says a European diplomat in Tehran. “More and more officials quote him in meetings with foreign diplomats.”

According to Tehran sources, Abbasi is the architect of the so-called “war preparation plan” currently under way in Iran.

Last month Abbasi presented an outline of his analysis in a lecture at the Teachers Training Faculty in Karaj, west of Tehran.

The lecture merits attention because it offers an insight into the way the new leadership in Tehran approaches issues of international politics.

According to Abbasi, the global balance of power is in a state of flux and every nation should fight for a place in a future equilibrium. The Western powers, especially the United States, still wield immense military and economic power that “looks formidable on paper.” But they are unable to use that power because their populations have become “risk-averse.”

“The Western man today has no stomach for a fight,” Abbasi says. “This phenomenon is not new: All empires produce this type of man, the self-centered, materialist, and risk-averse man.”

Read the whole article.

We are moving into the orbit of war. The strategy paper I linked to thinks we can somehow find the Lagrangian point and stabilize the descent. I am not so sure, and Iran's recent hardline posture makes me even less so. With Ahmadinejad's recent asinity, the tug of gravity grows ever stronger, and the probability of controntation rises.

Dark Times Ahead

2005-10-30T15:10:00.000-08:00

We have much to worry about.

First, I would advise everybody to read "Reassessing the Implications of a Nuclear-Armed Iran." Available here.

Second, I would keep in mind Ahmadinejad's recent statement when reading the paper's assessments of Israeli options concerning Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Third, I would remind everybody of the inevitability of Hezbollah infiltration into the US. Iran has been scared to death for four years and has been planning accordingly. There are sleepers here in the country, and they will be activated if things come to a head with Iran.

The paper's assessment of US options are bleak, and their conclusion seems to rest on the inevitability of Iranian nuclear capability and the subsequent regional containment strategy of the US. Containment and MAD may or may not work. The fact is we do not have any great insight on how the Mullahs make decisions and how sane the ones who do, are. But we could handle it if Iran existed in a vacuum. Unfortunately they do not.

If we attack Iran, we risk alienating the Iranian people and strengthening the regime's hold over a strongly nationalistic citizenry. We also risk suicide bombers in New York, or Boise, or Knoxville. We also risk further alienating our allies and strengthening China's role as the less volatile superpower. To add to the frustration, a military attack only buys time, it does not buy a guarantee that Iran will not develop nukes. (The only thing that would buy such a guarantee is if we invade and occupy Iran, but that is politically impossible now.) Any way you slice it, our military options are bleak.

Diplomacy won't work with an Iran so bent on nuclear acquisition. Even those Iranians opposed to the regime believe it is their right to have nuclear technology. Russia and China will block action at the security council. For god's sake, the EU-3 began their negotiations by taking the military option off the table. Machiavelli would be embarrassed, and insulted.

So, it looks like everything is moving towards a nuclear armed Iran. Everything, that is, except Israel.

Even assuming we could handle a nuclear armed Iran and all the cascading problems that would flow from it, we have to get there first. Israel becomes the condition precedent for the strategy of containment, and at the same time it is the condition precedent for a vast regional war. Israel is the great variable upon which everything depends.

We cannot get to containment if Israel attacks Iran. We won't get to a regional war if Israel stays her hand. Israel and Iran are dangerously unaware of each other's redlines, and as we move closer to the tipping point the danger of miscalculation from one or the other grows and compounds.

Which brings us to Ahmadinejad's statement, perhaps the most precipitous event in that region since the assassination of Hariri. I am afraid that statement moved us closer to an all out regional war. If we get pulled in, if it happens, who knows what will follow?

Worst case scenario:

1. Everybody in the region believes bin Laden's conspiracy theories and think a Zionist-American effort at domination is truly underway. Iraq turns against us, or splits completely. Regional wars and battles pop up everywhere and oil production slows to a trickle. European economies, which depend almost exclusively on Middle Eastern oil, tank, and America and Israel are seen as global pariahs by our erstwhile allies on the continent. And then the same people who hate us start to lose jobs.

2. China's economy starts to slow and, in the midst of the largest urbanization experiment in history, begins to generate countless millions of angry unemployed living in close quarters in the cities. China in such a state would be incredibly dangerous and could do anything. Taiwan could be the least of our worries as China seeks to solidify her hold on oil reserves around the world and grows her army to alleviate the unemployment pressure.

The rest I will leave up to your imagination, but this thing could turn global in a flash if Israel strikes Iran. We have no good options, and several deadly ones. And the media obsesses over Plamegate.

More (from Reuters):

Iran is permitting around 25 high-ranking al Qaeda members to roam free in the country's capital, including three sons of Osama bin Laden, a German monthly magazine reported on Wednesday.

Citing information from unnamed Western intelligence sources, the magazine Cicero said in a preview of an article appearing in its November edition that the individuals in question are from Egypt, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Europe.

They are living in houses belonging to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the report said.

"This is not incarceration or house arrest," a Western intelligence agent was quoted as saying. "They can move around as they please."

The three sons of Osama bin Laden in Iran are Saeed, Mohammad and Othman, Cicero reported. Another person enjoying the support of the Revolutionary Guards is al Qaeda spokesman Abu Ghaib, the report said.

This is all moving in slow motion, but things are coming to a head in Iran. It is a time for caution, and resolve.

UPDATE: Also read this.

Why do they hate us?

2005-10-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

I think we must resign ourselves to the negative effects of globalization. Eric Hoffer once wrote that envy and proximity are directly correlated, so that the closer you get to the top the more militant are your grievances. Someone living hand to mouth has no inclination to envy the wealthy aristocrat, for the aristocrat's life is as distant as Saturn for the pauper in the street. But let a man live in a slightly smaller house on the same street as our aristocrat, and his envy for his neighbor can become a ruinous obsession.

We see this phenomenon in racialist movements, feminist movements, socialist movements, etc. The rhetoric of liberation becomes the sophistry of powerlessness, with the latter as disingenuous as the former was sincere. A history of past gain becomes a reminder of present want. A taste of success, and an agitated addict is born.

For the time being we are that aristocrat on the hill, and our presence and power mocks those with lesser means. Amongst themselves the powerless vent their passions, but before their superiors the powerless are polite. We should expect and tolerate the former. If the latter should cease, if politeness should give way to open belligerence while we remain at the table, then worry we shall, and with good reason. In such a way is a Brutus born; in such a way does a Caesar fall.

Until then, vigilance should suffice. Let them believe their tropes, so long as we believe ours.

The Rest of the Story

2005-10-07T18:57:00.000-07:00

“How can the United States expect other nations to follow its lead in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal?” So asked one of America’s best and brightest—in high dudgeon and evocative self-righteousness—of America’s Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, after he delivered a speech at the prestigious Yale University. Cheers erupted on the heels of our questioner’s words, as a giddy and self-satisfied crowd let their views be known. Heads nodded and fists were raised. Everybody who was anybody knew the answer was the question, so why wait for the response? As Bolton looked on in despair, the valets of our morality threw down their gavel—a sentence cast before an apology aired. Premise assumed, conclusion foregone: game, set, match for our enlightened youth.

The assertion that Abu Ghraib renders America unfit as the world’s moral leader is often heard, yet rarely examined. We are told that a group of young American service men and women tortured and demeaned Iraqi prisoners, and we are told these actions prove that America is no better than her enemy. Abu Ghraib, we are told, was evil within embarrassment wrapped inside hypocrisy. That it occurred meant America should hide her head in shame, that it was photographed meant even worse. The existence of a bad act was, all by itself, enough to cast judgment on the global and pretentious hegemon. America, because of a crime perpetrated by a few, had relinquished the beacon of virtue and was sent into moral exile.

This is the conclusion sold by our elite. We are made to feel shame for crimes committed by a few. We are held morally responsible, as a country, for crimes that took place thousands of miles away in a gritty, unsupervised, and unscripted environment. Because evil deeds walked that prison, the society that unleashed them has been judged unworthy.

But let's back up a second. If we are to accept this conclusion—that the existence of a bad apple speaks decisively for the orchard—must we not first examine the premises of those who preach it? And what are the premises?

Well, one of the most obvious is the premise that the existence of a bad act somehow speaks poorly of the society from which the perpetrator sprang. An alternate way of saying this is that in a virtuous regime, no bad acts are possible; in a morally attractive society, there are no evil deeds. This is assumption number one.

Another assumption that flows from the first is that ultimate moral responsibility rests with society. If bad acts are possible only because of societal defect, man is no longer accountable for his immorality. Human beings are no longer morally autonomous agents—they are simply vehicles that expose the virtue, or lack thereof, of the polis. A truly virtuous society creates virtuous men; an immoral society creates immoral men. The two are inextricably linked, with the former a condition precedent of the latter.

More assumptions flow from this last: man is perfectible because society is perfectible; society corrupts man, instead of the opposite; man is a noble beast, his nature inherently good; crime can be completely eradicated; human nature is benign; utopia is possible. Etc., etc., etc.

But all of these assumptions are false. Utopia is not a place to go; utopia means literally “no place at all.” Human nature is not noble, benign, or inherently good, and neither man nor society is perfectible. Crime cannot be eradicated from the polis no matter how virtuous its people; evil deeds cannot be thoroughly purged in a society made of men. Even in the most virtuous society human frailty will remain. The most moral of worlds would see occasional crime, indecency, and inhumanity. If men are gathered together, bad acts are inevitable. It is inarguable that society can be improved and evil contained, but we must realize that human nature will always demand our attention, loudly and demonstrably. Society can limit and deter the more evil manifestations of our nature, but it cannot eliminate them. Any belief otherwise is naïve at best.

At worst, the false premises of our youthful elite are corrosive, and dangerous. The belief in perfectibility can go much further than mere moral preening over Abu Ghraib, and the idea of utopia can damage much more than America’s image and moral leadership. The belief that a perfect polis is possible—the belief that a virtuous society with no evil can truly obtain—is a pernicious and subversive faith that leads to only one place: totalitarianism. If one truly believes that evil can be eradicated, then the very presence of evil demands more regulation, more restrictions, more vigilance, and more oversight. If society is responsible for man’s corruption, society, it will be argued, should be finely tuned and heavily imposed so that corruption does not happen. Afterwards, when evil inevitably survives, the believers will argue for increased measures, and more power. Grips will be tightened, and shackles will be brought out of the attic. Evil, instead of being purged, will move up the organizational ladder, and in the void freedom will wilt and despair will reign. This is the end-game of perfectibility.

And so we arrive back at our question, but armed with truth, not with preening. Is it true that Abu Ghraib speaks to the heart of America’s worth as a moral leader? The question would be yes if the actions of Abu Ghraib were done on behalf of America—sponsored, advised, and supported by our policy—and the answer would be yes if the perpetrators were not held to account. If either of these two scenarios obtained, our moral authority would truly be lost.

But they don’t obtain. The deeds of Abu Ghraib were perpetrated independent of American sponsorship, without supervision, and in contradistinction to our policy. These were the acts of a few individual sadists, acting on their own, subsequently investigated and prosecuted by the same military that our enlightened elite decry and slander. The people that brought us Abu Ghraib are still spending time in prison, but now they are on the wrong side of the fence. When faced with the darkness of human nature, embarrassed in front of the entire world, America didn’t flinch. She investigated her own, apologized to the victims, and dispensed a painful justice on those who would perpetrate evil deeds in her name. Is this not virtue? Is this not leadership?

That Abu Ghraib happened was a terrible embarrassment for our country—that is without a doubt—and the actions of the soldiers involved were indeed despicable and immoral. But bad and evil acts will always happen, even in the most virtuous of societies, so something else must inform our analysis of a regime. Another way of saying this is that, in a society’s equation of virtue, evil is a constant, and constants don’t tell us much. Variables, however, do tell us much, for the value of their input can change the value of the output. The variable we must look to is not the existence of evil deeds, but the response of the society after they are committed. Bad acts are only part of the story, the first part, the inevitable part. It is the rest of the story where we must judge virtue.

The Media, Diet Pills, and Iraq

2005-10-04T08:59:00.000-07:00

War is hard. Nevertheless, the media think you solve a difficult problem merely by unleashing exceptionally bright people. They cannot embrace the fact that "difficult", in war, means accepting a string of failures that culminate in victory.

So, the first sign of turbulance and the media cries foul. Continued turbulance produces proclamations of failure. In our weird age of self-indulgence, easy successes are praised while hard-fought victories spawn committees.

Cesarean sections and diet pills, hard work be damned! Thus are the preferences of our effeminate elite. It was not always so.

The Provincials are Coming!

2005-10-04T07:03:00.000-07:00

It's frustrating, instead of amusing, to watch our media make fools of themselves, because their ignorance is somehow transmuted to the rest of society. In the movie Serenity, the Operative triggers River's insanity by sending subliminal messages through the TV. Our insanity is also triggered by watching television, but it is a much less subtle message that does the triggering.

Lost in the three-to-one
independently-operating Iraqi-battalion debate is whether the numerical retrogression in type I battalions is also a retrogression in effect and capability overall. The whole media focus on this number, when the entire remainder of Casey's information is positive and hopeful, is pathetic, especially when they are not even curious about it's net effect.

Yes, three is greater than one. So, going from three to one is a priori BAD, right? Actually, no, but you can see why the media grabs onto such information. It's easy. It takes no work, no study, no education to understand the concept of going from 3 to 1. And because it is so easy to understand, and therefore so easy to complain about, it is the lead story coming out of the Casey-Abizaid-Meyers-Rumsfeld interview. It's pathetic.

It's pathetic because there is no context in the complaint, nor is there curiosity in how this number fits into our strategy to win. We do want to win, remember? That is the point, isn't it? Instead, the media stands back and studies information coming out of Iraq as if it's sole importance is how it plays to the American people. The only type of campaign the media understands involves elephants and donkeys, so they project this paradigm onto campaigns involving bullets and blood. Russert asks Casey about selling the war, and the national IQ drops another point.

The chutzpah of the media--who control the information fed to the public, then use the negative coverage of the war to attack those who fight it--is astounding. But even more so is their provincialism. "3-to-1 means we've lost two!" is the extent of their analysis, and the extent of their message. Lost is any question of capability in the field, that maybe retaining American support in combat is a good thing, that maybe winning is more important than PR.

Alas, I do not expect much from our media, and I especially to not expect much of their military analysis. But every once in a while there is an episode that engenders from me complete contempt.

This is one of those moments.

The Question of Belief

2005-10-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

At the Belmont Club, a discussion arose concerning the belief in God, and how the lack thereof correlates with the weakness in Western society.

My response:

I wonder whether believing in God, is, in fact, a necessary condition for righteous action, or whether it is merely a handy mental shortcut that resembles but does not equal the truth. I've said this before, but once again it is pertinent to the discussion.

Paul Berman, in his book Terror and Liberalism, had this to say about the anti-war French Socialists of the thirties, and how they thought the true enemies of peace were the warmongers and profiteers of the French right; in their eyes, these men, not Hitler, were provoking war:

Those were the arguments on the anti-war left, the political arguments. But the political arguments rested on something deeper, too--a philosophical belief, profound, large, and attractive, which was reassuring instead of terrifying. It was the belief that, in the modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable.

The belief underlying those anti-war arguments was, in short, an unyielding faith in universal rationality...That belief was the other face of liberalism--not liberalism as the advocacy of freedom, rationality, progress, and the acceptance of uncertainty, but liberalism as blind faith in a predetermined future, liberalism as a fantasy of a strictly rational world, liberalism as denial...

The totalitarian movements arise because of failures in liberal civilization, but they flourish because of still other failures in liberal civilization, and if they go on flourishing, it is because of still more failures--one liberal failure after another.

The refusal to believe that pathological mass movements are possible--movements with no rational causes, movements that cannot be addressed with rational solutions--this is the failure of liberal society that allows evil to flourish. Is the denial a godless one, or is it merely the refusal to look at history empirically?

We look at the anti-war left, we see they are godless, and we assume causation. We look at the resolute right, we see they are devout, and we assume still more.

But how to explain someone like me? I can recognize evil, though I do not recognize a God. I believe in empiricism, but I do not have blind faith in rationality. I believe in blind physical and moral evolution, but I also believe in progress, and better. I look at history, and have no problem seeing pathology.

My eyes and my memory allow me to discern, and in that way they make me selfish, and give me the courage to discriminate. But it is an enlightened selfishness, not the drivel put forth by a novice of Nietzsche, and it is a rational discrimination, acceptance bleeding into tolerance bleeding into condemnation, and that which is condemned is that which I seek to destroy. My enlightened selfishness forces me to accept that my well-being is inextricably tied to the well-being of others; because there are masses of enemies who would destroy me, I must subsume myself into an even stronger mass. I accept any that believe likewise, that are willing to die for my freedom because I am willing to die for theirs, but in the end it is still selfishness. Without this nation of exceptional virtue, without its strength, I would be vulnerable and defenseless. And so I defend her unapologetically, and unabashedly clamor for her success.

I arrived at none of this by way of God. I know many others who feel the same, who do not need God to discern good and evil, who do not need religion to have the courage to do what needs to be done. We look around us, at the wealth, and decency, and opportunity of this land, and we simply know.

I guess a more precise statement would be that I arrived at my beliefs without also having a belief in God. I do not factor a deity into my analysis.

Whether or not God is causing me to arrive at these conclusions, or allowing me to arrive at these conclusions, is quite beyond my ability to know, though I doubt it. Descartes rejected "God the Deceiver", and I tend to doubt "God the Self-Denier".

As to why, who knows? The Anthropic Principle suggest that, in an infinite probability theater, it is unhelpful to ask why, because "why" means nothing more than "is". There is life in this universe because there is life in this universe. We can ask why because in this particular iteration of the universe we exist to ask why.

I never claim to be certain. But if an idea doesn't rise to the level of belief for lack of evidence, i.e. the existence of God, I discount it in my analyses. I could be wrong, but then again, so could you.

Being an empiricist, if I am to be intellectually honest I must defend the virtue of Judeo-Christian ethics because I celebrate the obvious results of their supremacy. I also am forced to concede that such ethics were probably a condition antecedent to our present situation.

Where I tend to disagree is on the issue of reality. That we have developed a useful mental construct to enable man to live with man does not mean that construct is true. Such ethical narratives can be necessary without being fact. But by necessary I mean necessary to get to this point, this time, not necessary metaphysically (an ethical version of the Anthropic Principle).

It is not curiosity that kills the cat, however the saying goes. It is exposure that kills the cat. Exposure to reality, exposure to phenomena for which it was defenseless or unprepared, that destroys it. Curiosity may be the proximate cause, but "reality" is always the cause-in-fact.

The same goes for belief and memes. They may be the proximate cause of ethical development or civilizational success, but the cause-in-fact is much more interesting. My belief that I can fly may make me leap from a building, but the cause-in-fact for my death must take into account neurological posture, prior experience, gravity, biology, etc.

The same principle applies to beliefs in general. Beliefs can correlate with reality without equaling reality (which is how I see Christianity--supplying the correct form without supplying the correct reason). The closer to equaling reality they are, the better they enable man to exercise power and survive. While man may have developed an unbelievably complicated mental universe, nothing can change the fact that we are mere animals, moving through and affecting reality, arbitrary in general, but precious in the particular.

A Time to Speak and a Time to Act

2005-09-29T14:24:00.000-07:00

I'm torn between two different inclinations. The first is in perfect agreement with you. We have the power to openly declare our aims, so why not go ahead and do so? Open debate is what our country is founded on, why should we be afraid or timid to proudly declare what most nations already know?

The second inclination, however, gives me caution. I do not trust the vision or fairness of whichever party is out of power, be it Democrat or Republican, but specifically I do not trust the Leftist wing of the Democratic party. Accusations of imperialism, of unilateralism and arrogance, would drown out any serious discussion of whether or not the pacification or connection strategy is a good one. For the far-Left, and I think this is beyond any doubt, America can do no good in the world. Their global paradigm only has room for the exploited, and the exploiter. Those who exercise power for self-interest, i.e. America, are prima facie exploiters, so any attempt at persuasion falls on deaf ears.

Chomsky's simplistic theory of international relations is fine-tuned and ubiquitous in this crowd, ready to tear any persuasive attempt apart. War is all about profit and power; lost in this explanation is any possibility that American self-interest can coincide with the truly oppressed (that they currently do is due to Bush and his radical foreign policy departure). America is in a tough position with her far-Left constituency, especially when their words resonate with the largest generation to ever grace the nation: the baby boomers. And especially when the Democratic Party is in thrall to their monies. Most of these fellow-travelers, schooled on Vietnam, disfavor any foreign action that utilizes the military-industrial complex for self-interest.

Luckily, this crowd is also poorly read on events not reported in the New York Times or Reuters, so much of what we do occurs under the radar. We have troops in scores of countries right now, training indigenous armies and nurturing local relations--a favorite tactic of ours is impromptu medical checkups for the locals--and this is, for the most part, going swimmingly. Robert D. Kaplan makes this point in his new book, Imperial Grunts.

The American and European Left do not like the unilateral exercise of American power on principle, regardless of what it is used for. As a fundamental tenet you can understand it, for power can corrupt even the most well-meaning of people. But as the saying goes, "All beliefs taken to the extreme are extreme." We are in an ephemeral moment of global dominance, we are probably the most virtuous society that has ever existed, we are a decent and idealistic people, and we could make a hell of a lot of difference, for our children and for the world.

9/11 was a wake up call for those who act. While we get ramped up, I'm willing to let the critics go back to sleep.