Roundup: Historian's Take
This is where we place excerpts by historians writing about the news. On occasion this page also includes political scientists, economists, and law professors who write about history. We may from time to time even include English profs.
SOURCE: NYT (12-25-07)
ST. NICHOLAS was a super-saint with an immense cult for most of the Christian past. There may be more icons surviving for Nicholas alone than for all the other saints of Christendom put together. So what happened to him? Where’s the fourth-century Anatolian bishop who presided over gift-giving to poor children? And how did we get the new icon of mass consumerism in his place?
Well, it’s a New York story.
In all innocence, the morphing began with the Dutch Christians of New Amsterdam, who remembered St. Nicholas from the old country and called him Sinte Klaas. They had kept alive an old memory — that a kindly old cleric brought little gifts to the poor in the weeks leading up to the Feast of the Nativity. While the gifts were important, they were never meant to overshadow the message of Jesus’s humble birth.
But today’s chubby Santa is not about giving to the poor. He has had his saintly garb stripped away. The filling out of the figure, the loss of the vestments, and his transformation into a beery fellow smoking a pipe combined to form a caricature of Dutch peasant culture. Eventually this Magic Santa (a suitable patron saint if there ever was one for the burgeoning capitalist machinery of the city) was of course popularized by the Manhattanite Clement Clarke Moore published in “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” in The Troy (New York) Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823.
The newly created deity Santa soon attracted a school of iconographers: notable among them were Thomas Nast, whose 1863 image of a red-suited giant in Harper’s Weekly set the tone, and Haddon Sundblom, who drew up the archetypal image we know today on behalf of the Coca-Cola Company in the 1930s. This Santa was regularly accompanied by the flying reindeer: godlike in his majesty and presiding over the winter darkness like Odin the sky god returned....
Posted on: Monday, December 31, 2007 - 19:45
SOURCE: New York Review of Books (12-19-07)
But theology is not what bothers most of those who feel uneasy about Mormonism. They object to its unfamiliarity. Mormons are a small minority in the country (1.3 percent), with what seem to be odd ideas and practices. There are only fifteen Mormons in Congress, far fewer than women or blacks. Of these, five come from Utah and none from east of the Mississippi. In most of the country, few people think they know any Mormons. People are not comfortable with what they feel they do not know about or understand. To fight this "weirdo factor," Romney stresses his mainstream appearance and conduct. With a hit at Rudolph Giuliani's multiple marriages and estranged children, he has offered his own family as a symbol of the values his faith upholds: "You can witness them in Ann and my marriage and in our family."
The only objection to Mormons on political grounds would be their record of polygamy and racism, both of which have been officially abjured. But Kennedy's problem was precisely political. Catholics were familiar enough to Americans—there was no weirdo factor. (People wearing white hoods over their heads had little right to call others weird.) And Kennedy's opponents were not interested in theological questions like transubstantiation. But there were solid grounds for political doubts about Catholics. The Vatican had not, in 1960, formally renounced its condemnation of American pluralism and democracy. In fact, one of Kennedy's advisers on his Houston speech, the Jesuit John Courtney Murray, had recently been silenced by the Vatican for defending religious pluralism....
Kennedy said that the democratic values of America are "the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe." Romney and his strapping sons never wore the uniform—they think running for president is their way of waging a war they support in Iraq. But Romney invoked the war service of George H.W. Bush, who introduced him in Texas. It was heroism by proxy.
Has Romney been able to "do a Kennedy," as his speech was billed in the press? Far from it. Kennedy was on the side of the future. He defied the Vatican's ban on American-style democracy, which was rescinded in the Second Vatican Council, convened after his election. Romney—looking to the past, and specifically to the current Bush administration's position—kowtowed to the religious right. Saying that he opposes religious tests, he passed that one.
Posted on: Monday, December 31, 2007 - 19:31
SOURCE: Gloria Center (12-30-07)
Much will be said about Benazir Bhutto's assassination; little will be understood about what it truly means. I'm not speaking here about Pakistan, of course, as important as is that country. But rather the lesson--as if we need any more--for that broad Middle East which begins in Pakistan and ends on the Atlantic Ocean coast.
This is a true story. Back in 1946, an American diplomat asked an Iranian editor why his newspaper angrily criticized the United States but never the Soviet Union. The Iranian said that it was obvious. "The Russians," he said, "they kill people."
A dozen years earlier, in 1933, the Iraqi official Sami Shawkat, gave a talk which became one of the most famous texts of Arab nationalism. "There is something more important than money and learning for preserving the honor of a nation and for keeping humiliation at bay," he stated. "That is strength....Strength, as I use the word here, means to excel in the Profession of Death."
What, you might ask, was Shawkat's own profession? He was director-general of Iraq's ministry of education. This was how young people were to be taught and directed; this is where Saddam Hussein came from. Seventy-five years later the subsequent history of Iraq and the rest of the Arab world show just how well Shawkat did his job.
September 11 in the United States; the Bali bombing for Australia; the tube bombing for Britain; the commuter train bombing for Spain, these were all merely byproducts of this pathology. The pathology in question is not Western policy toward the Middle East but rather Middle Eastern policy toward the Middle East.
Ever since I read Shawkat's words as a student, the phrase, "Profession of Death," which gave his article its title, struck me as a pun. On one hand, the word "profession" meant "career."
To be a killer--note well that Shawkat was not talking specifically about soldiers, those who fight, but rather those who murder--was the highest calling of all. It was more important than being a teacher, who forms character; more important than a businessperson, who enriches his country; more important than a doctor who preserves the life of fellow citizens. Destruction was a higher calling than construction. And for sure in the Arabic-speaking world what has been reaped is what has been sowed.
But also the word "profession" here reminds me of "to profess," "to preach." What is of greatest value is for an educator to preach and glorify death. What kind of ideology, what kind of society, what kind of values, does such a priority produce? Look and see.
Like children playing with dynamite, Western intellectuals, journalists, and diplomats fantasize that they are achieving results in the Middle East with their words, promises, apologies, money, and concessions. Yet how can such innocents cope despite--or perhaps because of--all their good intentions with polities and societies whose basic ruling ethos is that of the serial killer?
And what can be achieved when those most forward-looking and most creative, those who want to break with the ideas and methods creating a disastrous mess, the stagnant system which characterizes so much of the Middle East, are systematically murdered? Read the roll: King Abdallah of Jordan, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri of Lebanon, the bold author Farouq Fawda in Egypt, Iraqi Sunnis who dare seek compromise, Palestinian moderates, Algerian modernists, and thousands of women who seek a moderate degree of freedom.
The radicals are right: dying is a disincentive. And for every one killed how many thousands give in; and for every one threatened how many hundreds give in?
Seventy-five years after Shawkat, Hamas television teaches Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip that their highest aspiration should be to become a suicide bomber, with success measured by how many Jews are killed. And, by the way, the Palestinian Authority's television in the West Bank sends a similar message, albeit not quite as often.
Will billions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) change anything when the men with the guns take what they want? Are PA chief Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, respectively a timid bureaucrat and a well-meaning economist, going to take a bullet for lifting one finger to get a compromise peace with Israel?
How are you going to get a government of national conciliation in Iraq when the insurgents have shown they can gun down any Sunni politician or cleric who steps out of line?
The current supporters of the Lebanese government are probably the bravest politicians in the Arabic-speaking world, men willing to defy death. But how can they stand firm when Western governments rush to engage with the Syrian government that murdered them, and Western media proclaim the moderation of a Damascus ruler who systematically kills those who oppose him?
Can anyone really expect a stable society capable of progress in Pakistan when a large majority of the population expresses admiration for bin Ladin? And what about the Saudi system where, as one local writer put it, the big Usama put into practice what the little Usama learned in a Saudi school.
Don't you get it? The radical forces in the region are not expecting to retain or gain power by negotiating, compromising, or being better understood. They believe they are going to shoot their way into power or, just as good, accept the surrender of those they have intimidated.
That is why so much of the Western analysis and strategies for dealing with the region are a bad joke. Usama bin Ladin understands that, as he once said, people are going to back the strongest horse in the race.
According to all too many people in the Western elites, the way to win is to be the nicest horse.
But doesn't this assessment sound terribly depressing and hopeless? Well, yes and no.
Radical Islamists like to proclaim that they will triumph because they love death while their enemies--that is, soon-to-be-victims--love life.
Be careful what you wish for, though, because you probably will get it. For those who love death the reward is...death.
For those who love life, the outcomes include decent educational systems, living standards, individual rights, and strong economic systems.
All these things, and others that go along with them, are what really produce strength. And isn't it interesting that, contrary to Shawkat, the nations that put the priority on these things enjoy far more honor and suffer far less humiliation than happens with his model.
The profession of death has wrecked most Middle Eastern societies. But it has never succeeded in defeating a free society. It is not an effective tactic for destroying others but only for devastating one's own people.
Who killed Benazir Bhutto? The Sami Shawkat philosophy: alike in its Arab nationalist, Islamist, and Pakistani authoritarian versions which dominate Middle East politics.
Posted on: Monday, December 31, 2007 - 19:07
SOURCE: Progressive Historians (blog) (12-31-07)
The following article was published in Le Monde on December 27. It seemed to me, when I read it, that it needed to be seen by a lot more people, especially in the United States. Americans are famous for knowing little of the world, and our scattershot, drive-by media do nothing to correct the situation. Turkey, we are told, is a very important country, a great customer for our weapons merchants, and a "bridge between Europe and Asia." They are alleged to be a democracy, and Western in outlook. But I have yet to see an article in the American press which fully portrays the mad chauvinist police-state reality of modern Turkey. The following article by Guillaume Perrier begins to do that. Begins. Much more could be added, reams of material so damning to the Turkish state that the very rocks would cry out in despair. But the point which needs to be made is this: Turkey is not, cannot, will not be a truly viable candidate for membership in the EU as long as its government continues in its present form. And there is no power, domestic or foreign, that can change that government in any substantial way for the foreseeable future. Turkey is what it is: a place where the politicians pretend to govern and armed bullies pretend to let them, a land where the average liberal has more courage than a thousand Americans. Those like me who cherish their memories of this land need to start speaking out. The years of diplomacy and forbearance, of hope for democratic change, have left us with ruined villages, imprisoned journalists, and good people murdered while their killers are congratulated by the police. With that kind of record we may as well try truth.
[Following article translated by Gordon Taylor, who is responsible for all errors herein. All material in brackets [ ] added by the translator.]
Separatist Paranoia in Turkey
Guillaume Perrier
Le Monde
27 December 2007
“Happy is he who calls himself a Turk,” proclaims the national slogan, first enunciated by Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk]. But in Turkey who really has access to this “happiness”?
Officially, it’s everybody in the land, without reference to race or creed. Yet in fact, members of religious minorities and certain ethnic categories remain second-class citizens. Remnants of Christian populations (Greeks, Armenians, or Syriacs), 15 million Kurds, and 10 million Muslim Alevis are regularly stigmatized. A part of the population continues to be perceived as a menace to national unity, eighty-four years after the foundation of the Republic. For in the collective mind, the “happiness of being a Turk” refers not to a territorial idea but to an ethnic definition based on race.
The repeated judicial harassment, the agression, indeed the murders committed against “internal enemies”, the “non-Turks”, bear witness to a climate of fear. [In 2007]First Italian priest Andrea Santoro, then Armenian journalist Hrant Dink were assassinated. In Malatya three evangelical Christian missionaries had their throats cut. More recently, on December 16, another Italian priest, Father Adriano Francini, was stabbed and critically wounded in Izmir. Furthermore, galvanized by the government’s anti-PKK campaign, groups of the extreme right have launched punitive expeditions targeting Kurds in Istanbul and Bursa. A series of racist crimes, by young indoctrinated ultranationalists, have been committed in the name of Turkish blood. And not for the first time in the country’s history. In 1955, for example, in the middle of the Cyprus crisis, rumor of an assault on the childhood home of Ataturk, in Thessaloniki, unleashed the “pogroms of September 6”. In Istanbul, businesses owned by Orthodox Greeks, also by Jews and Armenians, were sacked by the mob....
Posted on: Monday, December 31, 2007 - 19:00
SOURCE: Britannica Blog (12-31-07)
With five Republican and three Democratic presidential hopefuls in double digits in the national polls of their respective parties and with dozens of issues ranging from gay marriage to the war in Iraq, the decisions that voters will be asked to make in the next several weeks might appear quite complicated. But it shouldn’t be. Voters should take only one consideration into account in deciding who to support in their party’s upcoming caucus or primary. That consideration is which of the party’s set of possible candidates is most electable next November.
Electability.
Electability is always a consideration in a nomination contest, but it ought to knock out any other consideration this year. There are three reasons why electability should trump everything else. First, the parties are quite polarized. Whoever the Democrats nominate will be far to more liberal than whoever the Republicans nominate. Big fights over who is the slightly more conservative Republican or the slightly more liberal Democrat look like splitting hairs from the broader perspective of the differences between the parties. Though cynics and extremists like to think of the parties as the Republicrats, the ideological differences between the parties have grown in the last couple of decades and ideological differences within each party have declined.
The second reason that electability ought to rule decisions this year is that the parties are quite competitively balanced. The 2000 and 2004 elections were quite close, party identifications of voters have been quite evenly divided in recent years, and divisions in the House and Senate are quite close as well. Neither party has a lock on the White House. Each needs every edge it can get.
The third reason is that uncertainty is especially great in an open seat election. While Democrats appear to have an edge at this point, they don’t know how strong a race the Republican candidate is likely to run next fall and Republicans have less of an idea than usual about the strength of their likely Democratic opponent. While either party might win the election without running its most electable candidate, taking less than their best shot is running a huge risk.
Two things should be made clear about electability. First, it does not mean that each party should necessarily nominate its most centrist candidate. To win the election, a candidate needs both to build enthusiasm and turnout from his or her base AND reach out to the centrist swing voters. You can’t win without doing both better than the other party’s candidate. Second, preference polls with head-to-head match-ups of the candidates in the two parties do not mean anything at this point in the election year. Even by June, when both nominations have been sewn-up, the frontrunner in the polls is about as likely to lose as win the November election.
If electability should be the key to each primary or caucus vote, who should each party’s voters support? Let’s size up the Republicans here and hold off on the Democrats until the next blog entry.
Who the Republicans Should Nominate.
First, I cannot imagine Mitt Romney being anything but a disaster for the Republicans. The debate with Ted Kennedy video alone in which Romney took outright liberal positions on a number of social issues would smother support in the base and paint him as untrustworthy for centrists. Any Republican wanting to win in November should jump off the Romney ship now.
That leaves four. Rudy Giuliani has a number of strengths, but will have problems with the base on social issues and these are only reinforced by having too many ex-wives hanging around. In family values, the values are plural, but family is singular. He also is very unlikely to even carry his home state of New York.
That leaves three. Mike Huckabee has developed a good deal of momentum in recent weeks. He is conservative on social issues and has a very pleasant communication style. He exudes optimism. On the down-side, he is too closely tied to the Christian Right to effectively reach out to centrists. He has made several intemperate statements, regarding the role of women and also about the Bush administration’s foreign policy, that will haunt a general election campaign. He has even had a run in with Rush Limbaugh. In short, there are a number of signs that he is not a “big tent” conservative.
And then there were two—John McCain and Fred Thompson. McCain certainly has an appeal to centrists and a good deal of respect among Republicans. The record suggests, however, that the Republican base does not trust McCain. Where he has done well in the past is largely in primaries that have allowed non-Republicans to participate. His stands on illegal immigration and on the so-called “nuclear option” on Senate voting on judicial appointments have done nothing to mend these fences.
This leaves Fred Thompson as the Republican presidential candidate who may be most electable. He entered the race late and is fifth in the national polls, but my sense is that he would be more acceptable to the base than either Giuliani or McCain and better among centrist swing voters than Huckabee. He also has a more consistently conservative record than Romney, Huckabee, or Giuliani and is far more acceptable to conservatives on the immigration issue than McCain. Though some have written Thompson off at this point, if he can hold on and the field thins a bit, Republicans should give him a second look and move in his direction.
Next blog, who is the most electable Democrat?….
Posted on: Monday, December 31, 2007 - 18:28
SOURCE: Informed Comment (Blog) (12-31-07)
10. Helping broker a deal in Lebanon between the March 14 Movement and the Shiites so that a new president can be elected and a national unity government can be formed.
Lebanon's economy was badly damaged by the Israeli war on the poor little country in summer of 2006. Tourism is a big part of that economy, and is being hurt by the continued political instability. Given historically high oil prices, Iran will probably make $56 billion from petroleum sales this year. That gives it lots of carrots to hand out in Lebanon. If the Lebanese were better off, foreign oil money would not be as important to them. Likewise, the country's poverty breeds social ills. Hizbullah militiamen might be harder to find if there was well-paying work for young men in the south. The dire poverty of Palestinians in camps such as Nahr al-Bared near Tripoli has made them open to predations by Mafia-like groups linked to al-Qaeda. Just a couple of weeks ago, Lebanese security broke up a plot to blow up churches in Zahle on the part of a small group of jihadis. An economically flourishing Lebanon would be less likely to be beset by these ills. The Levant is not that far away from the US or its major interests, and it is very unwise to allow the pathological situation in Lebanon to fester. A prosperous, healthy Lebanon is good for US security and is less likely to become the cat's paw of regional powers hostile to US interests.
9. The US should exercise its good offices to encourage continued dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The capture of Baghdad by the Shiites and the ethnic cleansing of most Sunnis from it have set the stage for a big Sunni-Shiite battle for the capital as soon as the US troops get out of the way. It is absolutely essential to Gulf security, and to American energy security, that Saudi Arabia and Iran not be drawn into a proxy Sunni-Shiite war in Iraq. Keeping in close contact with each other and with Iraqis of the other sect is the best way for them to avoid a replay of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Those in the Bush administration who dream of an Israeli-Saudi alliance against Iran are playing with fire, a fire that is likely to boomerang on the US. If the Persian Gulf goes up any further in flames, the resulting unprecedentedly high petroleum prices will likely finally produce a bad impact on the US economy. Instead, the US should be attempting to bring Iran in from the cold, now that the NIE has absolved it of nuclear-weapons ambitions.
8. Congress should expand funding for, and guarantee the future of, the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. Its researchers do among the very best jobs of analyzing the writings and activities of the Salafi Jihadis, and so of combatting them. Few government institutions are as effective. If the US government were serious about the threat of terrorism, I would not even have to make this plea. Of course, if Bush and Cheney had really cared about the threat of al-Qaeda, they would have gone after it and gotten Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri rather than rushing off on a fool's errand in Iraq.
7. The US must repair its tattered relations with Turkey. Turkey has been a NATO ally for decades and Turkish troops fought alongside American ones in the Korean War. Turkey stood with the US in the Cold War and gave the US bases on its soil. As a secular country, it is an ally in the struggle against the Salafi Jihadis, for which even religious Turks have contempt. Turkey has among the more promising economies in the Middle East, among non-oil states, and is attracting billions in foreign investment. The US has for some strange reason stiffed Turkey several times in the past decade. The Clinton administration promised Turkey a billion dollars in restitution for the monies it lost during the Gulf War, and then Congress refused to appropriate the money. More recently, the US has unleashed a virulent and violent Kurdish nationalism by allying with Massoud Barzani in Iraq. Barzani in turn has given safe harbor to guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who have been going over the border and killing Turks, then retreating to Iraq. The Bush administration has tried to resolve this probably by helping the Turks bombard PKK positions inside Iraq, but that is not ideal. Instead, the US should put economic and other pressure on Barzani to expel the PKK from Iraq.
6. The US must keep the pressure on Pervez Musharraf to hold free and fair, early elections in Pakistan. The elections probably cannot be held on Jan. 8, as planned, because of the extensive turmoil and destruction of polling stations and ballots during the past few days. But they should not be postponed past March 1. Musharraf's own legitimacy has collapsed, and he is in danger of becoming a Shah of Iran figure, hated by his own people and driven from office. Such a scenario could be very bad for the United States. That is why Joe Biden is right and John McCain is wrong when the latter warns against dumping Musharraf. Why cannot the American Right learn that backing the wrong horse is often worse than not having a horse in the first place?
5. The US and NATO have to stop doing search and destroy missions in Afghanistan. The Pushtun tribespeople are never going to put up with tens of thousands of foreign troops in their country, and, indeed, in their underwear drawers. Search and destroy missions just multiply feuds with local people. The NATO and US military missions in Afghanistan have to be redefined so that they are not simply putting down tribes for the central government. The best Afghan central governments have ruled by playing the tribes off against one another, not by trying to crush them. The solutions in Afghanistan are political and economic. More reconstruction needs to be done. Farmers need aid to be weaned off poppies. Forced eradication of poppy crops appears to be behind a lot of the"Taliban resurgence," which actually often looks to me from a distance like angry farmers taking revenge for the destruction of their livelihoods.
4. The US must facilitate provincial elections in Iraq. They are arguably more important than any other step. They would solve a number of important problems.
The Sunni Arab provinces of Al-Anbar, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Diyala have unrepresentative governments (Diyalah, 60% Sunni, is ruled by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a hard line Shiite group!) The Sunni Arab parties declined to run in January, 2005, and there have been no subsequent provincial elections. Representative Sunni provincial governments could negotiate from a greater position of strength with the federal government of Shiite Dawa Party leader and prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. Some of the Awakening Councils members, who are self-appointed, might get elected and so gain greater legitimacy.
Without legitimate provincial governments in the Sunni Arab provinces, it is hard to see how the US can hope to withdraw troops and turn over security to locals, as Gen. Petraeus had planned to do in Mosul this year.
In the south, Basra needs new elections because its provincial government saw a major division this year, leading to an ISCI-led vote of no confidence in the governor, who is from the Islamic Virtue Party. But then the governor refused to step down! Ineffective governance in oil-rich Basra, which contains the country's only major ports, is bad for the whole country. In some other southern provinces, such as Diwaniya, a more representative provincial government might make for more social peace.
What I am saying now is not new, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. Petraeus have repeatedly called for such elections. I am saying, now is the time to make a big push for them. If the US starts drawing down troops this year, it will make it harder to hold elections, since the Iraqi security forces probably cannot keep the voters dafe. If the US leaves behind the current provincial governments, as with Diyala, Diwaniya and Basra in particular, it is probably leaving behind provincial civil wars.
3. The US Congress must allocate substantial funds, on the order of $1 billion or more, for Iraqi refugee relief in Syria and Jordan. UNO relief funds are running out. Iraqis' own savings are running out. Children are not in school and are going hungry. People are being exploited, including young girls forced into prostitution. A majority of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria went there in 2007, and almost all of them have been forced out of Baghdad and other areas because of the political instability that the United States unleashed in their country. The surge is being touted as a victory in the US press, but it seems to have displaced 700,000 Iraqi civilians! The US is spending $15 billion a month on the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars. It can afford $1 billion a year for refugee relief. This is our responsibility. How future generations of Iraqis view the United States will in part depend on whether we do this. I ask all Americans to write your congressional representatives and press them on this humanitarian issue.
2. The Bush administration should expend all of its remaining political capital in the region to have the Israelis return the Golan Heights to Syria. The Golan was captured in 1967. By the United Nations Charter, countries may not permanently grab the territory of their neighbors. The Syrians will have to agree to keep the Golan a demilitarized zone, with UNO blue helmets patrolling as a safeguard. In return, Syria would have to agree to cease backing Palestinian militants and would have to play a positive role in creating a Palestinian state. Damascus would also have to work to restore social peace in Lebanon. Such a deal might help to detach Syria from its alliance with Iran. That in turn would weaken Hizbullah. This deal would be good for Israeli security, and if it helped speed up the creation of a Palestinian state, might even keep Israel from falling into the Apartheid situation that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said he fears.
1. The US must insist that the Israeli siege of Gaza must be lifted. A third of Palestinians killed by Israel this year were innocent civilians. The agricultural sector is being destroyed because farmers cannot export their goods owing to the Israeli blockade. Food, water, essential medicines are all being denied to civilian populations, including children. If Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is so worried about Israel being seen as an Apartheid state, he should release Gazans from their penitentiary and stop deploying collective punishment against civilians.
Posted on: Monday, December 31, 2007 - 17:25
SOURCE: WaPo (12-23-07)
The historically correct answer, then, is that Washington would not have a clue. It's tempting to believe that the political wisdom of our Founding Fathers can travel across the centuries in a time capsule, land among us intact, then release its insights into our atmosphere -- and as we breathed in that enriched air, our perspective on Iraq, global warming, immigration and the other hot-button issues of the day would be informed by what we might call "founders' genius." (Come to think of it, at least two Supreme Court justices who embrace the literal version of "original intent" believe that this is possible.) But there are no time capsules, except in science fiction. The gap between the founders' time and ours is non-negotiable, and any direct linkage between them and now is intellectually problematic.
This conclusion is not just irrefutable; it's also unacceptable to many of us, because it suggests that the past is an eternally lost world that has nothing to teach us. And if history has nothing to teach us, why in heaven's name should we study it?
One answer, I suppose, is for the sheer satisfaction of understanding those who have preceded us on this earthly trail. In that sense, history, like virtue, really is its own reward. But that answer doesn't really work for me. Nor does it explain the rather extraordinary surge of interest over the past decade in the men mythologized and capitalized as our Founding Fathers. Readers are buying books on the founders in unprecedented numbers because they think the founders have something to teach them. And they do. If we come to know them and listen hard enough, they will speak to us.
Suppose, then, that we rephrase the question. It is not "What would George Washington do about Iraq?" Rather, it is "How are your own views of Iraq affected by your study of Washington's experience leading a rebellion against a British military occupation?" The answer on this score is pretty clear. Washington eventually realized -- and it took him three years to have this epiphany -- that the only way he could lose the Revolutionary War was to try to win it. The British army and navy could win all the major battles, and with a few exceptions they did; but they faced the intractable problem of trying to establish control over a vast continent whose population resented and resisted military occupation. As the old counterinsurgency mantra goes, Washington won by not losing, and the British lost by not winning. Our dilemma in Iraq is analogous to the British dilemma in North America -- and is likely to yield the same outcome....
Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 19:55
SOURCE: NYT (12-30-07)
Coming of age in the 1960s, I heard the word “fascist” all the time. College presidents were fascists, Vietnam War supporters were fascists, policemen who tangled with protesters were fascists, on and on. To some, the word smacked of Hitler and genocide. To others, it meant the oppression of the masses by the privileged few. But one point was crystal clear: the word belonged to those on the political left. It was their verbal weapon, and they used it every chance they got.
Forty years have passed and not much has changed, complains Jonah Goldberg, a conservative columnist and contributing editor for National Review. Leftists still drop the “f word” to taint their opponents, be they global warming skeptics or members of the Moral Majority. The sad result, Goldberg says, is that Americans have come to equate fascism with right-wing political movements in the United States when, in fact, the reverse is true. To his mind, it is liberalism, not conservatism, that embraces what he claims is the fascist ideal of perfecting society through a powerful state run by omniscient leaders. And it is liberals, not conservatives, who see government coercion as the key to getting things done.
“Liberal Fascism” is less an exposé of left-wing hypocrisy than a chance to exact political revenge. Yet the title of his book aside, what distinguishes Goldberg from the Sean Hannitys and Michael Savages is a witty intelligence that deals in ideas as well as insults — no mean feat in the nasty world of the culture wars.
According to Goldberg, fascism in America predated the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. He believes that Woodrow Wilson turned the United States into a “fascist country, albeit temporarily” during World War I...
Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 19:38
A former student's appeal to "own up to" the racial baggage we all carry has inspired me to go public with my thoughts about the manslaughter conviction of John White, a black Long Island father who was defending his son from a mob of angry white teenagers who had come to his home shouting racial epithets
There are many things about this incident which should give pause to anyone who thinks we live in a color blind society and have comfortably left our tragic racial history behind. First of all, let's look at Mr. White's actions. Here is an African American man, successful in his work, loved and respected by his coworkers, who buys a house in a white suburb, seems to get along with his neighbors and yet keeps an arsenal of guns in his houses, waiting for the moment for someone to rob him or for a mob of angry whites to come to his house to do harm to him and his family.
There is something profoundly sad here, not only about the father's actions that fateful night, but by the racial fantasies and fears that led up to it. In the deepest level of his consciousness, this successful, well adjusted, highly integrated black man still believed that whites were out to get him. Where did this belief come from? Was it something implanted in him from his years growing up in the Jim Crow South and remained there thirty years later--a remnant of what some scholars call "Post Slave Syndrome-- or was it continuosly reinforced and reaffirmed by his daily interactions with whites in the New York metropolitan area. Something happened to make this highly assimilated black man believe that whites were out to get him, physcially as well as psychically, and to make sure that if they did, they were not going to escape without consequence
Was this an irrational observation? We may disapprove of his method of dealing with those feelings- the stockpiling of loaded weapons- but were the feelings themselves divorced from reality?. Did this man understand, better than we do, that whites, even seemingly liberal whites, are filled with fear and rage and contempt towards blacks, probably in ways they themselves don't understand or acknowledge, and are capable of great cruelty and violence toward their black neighbors in a moment of crisis.
By all accounts, this was a man who was WAITING for the very moment that arrived that tragic evening, he was EXPECTING it. To me, that is a very sad commentary on the racial atmosphere in our nation Have we really left our tragic history behind, or do many people- of all races- still see Black people as responsible for everything wrong in American society, and have fantasies and fears about Blackness and Black people planted deep in their imagination
A look at the mob of white teenagers who came to the house that evening to call out the man's son offers us little grounds for reassurance. They went to an integrated high school, had black teachers and teammates, and didn't see themselves as "racists." Yet when a black kid they knew got angry at a white girl one of them was dating, they racialized an interpersonal conflict so powerfully that they turned themseves into a mob shouting racial epithets and became, in that moment, exactly the avenging force that the young man's father had armed himself against.
How did this happen?. How did a group of young men turn themselves into the embodiment of their black neighbor's fears and fantasies?
Could it be that they had the same fears and fantasies, only in reverse? Did they see black people, even the black people they interacted with every day, even their black friends, as the carriers of a fatal character flaw--a permanent stain, if you will-- that could instantly turn them into rapists and murderers, people who would destroy every community they were part of? Was their hatred and fear of back people so deep, and so hidden in their subconcious, that it came out in a moment of crisis in ways that they never could have predicted, and didn't understand? Although I wasn't there, and didn't know the people involved, I would have to say "Yes"
What makes the Long Island incident so tragic is that it took place among people who publicly would say they had worked through their racial attitudes well enough to live together peacefully and harmoniously. And maybe, for the most part, they had. But lurking beneath the surface was a dangerous and corrosive brew of racial feelings, something many Black people sense is deeply implanted in their white neighbors because they have internalized it themselves.
If we don't acknowlege these feelings, and try to loosen their hold on our imaginations as well as our conscious actions, they will come back to haunt us, even to destroy us, in moments when we let our guard down.
Our laws may be color blind, but our fantasies, fears and imagination most emphatically are not.
Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 17:12
SOURCE: National Review Online (12-29-07)
The result is that we have forgotten why we invaded Iraq in long-ago 2003. We cannot agree why we had problems after the stunning removal of Saddam Hussein. And we are not sure either whether we are winning — or why we even should.
Why We Invaded
After the victory of the 1991 Gulf War, a bipartisan consensus had emerged that Saddam Hussein had to be contained — by both arms and sanctions. Our government wanted to prevent him from using oil revenues to obtain more dangerous weapons, destroying more of his own people, and from attacking or invading yet a fifth nearby country. Few, if any, disagreed.
But after September 11, and the realization that state-sponsored terrorists from the Middle East had the desire to destroy the United States and the capability to do it great harm, the decade-long containment of Saddam Hussein, in light also of his serial violations of both armistice and U.N. accords, was considered inadequate. Few disagreed.
So both houses of Congress, backed by an overwhelming majority of the American people, authorized the use of military force to remove Saddam Hussein, at the vigorous request of the President.
The WMD Debacle
Though the Congress in October 2002 formulated 23 different reasons why Saddam posed a threat to our security, the administration — in easy hindsight, quite wrongly — mostly privileged and exaggerated just one writ: Saddam's arsenals of weapons of mass destruction might enhance Middle East terrorist operations enough to trump even what we had witnessed on 9/11.
Supporters of a narrow war to remove WMDs relied on a past, though false consensus of such an existential threat; it was one, however, that had nevertheless prompted embargoes, sanctions, no-fly zones, and periodic bombing. Perhaps they were sure of such a WMD danger because it had been formulated at home in the 1990s and echoed abroad by both European and Middle Eastern agencies — and alone would galvanize the public in a way the other sanctioned casus belli might not.
Nevertheless, when such weapons were not found in Iraq, and the insurgency imperiled the brilliant three-week victory, the case for the war, in the eyes of many, collapsed. It did so on both moral and practical grounds. For some reason, no one cared that the other twenty-some Congressional causes were still as valid as when they had been first approved in October 2002.
The Victory over Saddam
We now argue over the requisite number of troops necessary in the aftermath of Iraq. Few, however, complain about the three-week victory of March and April 2003, in which U.S. military and coalition forces, at very little loss, destroyed the Baathist government and removed Saddam Hussein with about 250,000 troops. Someone did something right, though exactly who and what is now forgotten.
The War Over the War
The real controversy arose, however, over the subsequent four-year occupation and reconstruction, in which nearly 4,000 American lives were lost and over a half a billion dollars were spent to stabilize the fragile postwar democracy.
The debate, since 2003, has hinged on our own culpability, and postfacto, on our reasons for going into Iraq in the first place. It has focused almost solely on American lapses, not recognition of either the capability, or zeal, or brutality of the enemy. Acrimony instead arose over our inability to stop the looting, the dissolution of the Iraqi army, the laxity in patrolling ammunition dumps and borders, the first pull-back from Fallujah, and our naiveté in allowing Shiite militias, particularly those under the control of Moqtada Sadr, to act as destructive surrogates for an ascendant Iran.
The Taboo Considerations
Rarely did anyone remind the American people — nor would they have desired to hear — that in all of America's major wars such tragic errors of commission and judgment were commonplace, or that our present lapses were not in that regard at all unique. The initial victory had raised expectations so high that such reflection would have been seen as little more than morbid fatalism.
Rarely also did we hear that our missteps were not only correctable (as for example the recapture of Fallujah or the reconstitution of the Iraqi army attest), but also did not imperil the ultimate goal of stabilizing the Iraqi government. And almost none suggested that in a televised war of the postmodern age, it is difficult for a liberal Western society to defeat and humiliate an enemy — at least to the degree necessary for it to accept a radical change of heart.
Also forgotten was any appreciation of the magnitude of the undertaking — going 7,000 miles into the ancient caliphate to foster constitutional government where it had never taken root, among outright enemies like Iran and Syria, and duplicitous allies such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. In that regard, to suggest the tragic loss of lives and money in Iraq were, by standards of our past major wars, a reflection of American competence and concern was paramount to blasphemy....
Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 16:59
SOURCE: Martin Kramer at his blog: Sandbox (12-29-07)
Orwell said when someone calls Smith a fascist, what he means is, "I hate Smith." By calling Smith a fascist, you force Smith to deny he’s a sympathizer of Hitler and Mussolini.... Since the 1930s, “fascist” has been a term of hate and abuse used by the Left against the Right, as in the Harry Truman campaign. In 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. claimed to see in the Goldwater campaign “dangerous signs of Hitlerism.” Twin the words, “Reagan, fascism” in Google and 1,800,000 references pop up.The loose use of the fascist analogy, claimed Buchanan, was a trademark of the far left, so that those who identified the enemy as "Islamofascism" simply betrayed their intellectual origins:
Unsurprisingly, it is neoconservatives, whose roots are in the Trotskyist-Social Democratic Left, who are promoting use of the term. Their goal is to have Bush stuff al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran into an “Islamofascist” kill box, then let SAC do the rest. The term represents the same lazy, shallow thinking that got us into Iraq, where Americans were persuaded that by dumping over Saddam, we were avenging 9/11.
Having read Buchanan's denunciation of fascist-name-calling as a far-left and neo-con rhetorical device--on the pages of The American Conservative--I almost fell over when I saw the cover of the current issue of The American Conservative:
A few bloggers have commented that Giuliani is cast here as a Mussolini figure. No he isn't. He's being portrayed as a Nazi. It's not just the armband, it's the pose and the fine details of dress, all of which refer back to this iconic image, from the poster for the 1933 Nazi film, S.A.-Mann Brand ("Storm-Trooper Brand"):
So you get the picture. Pat Buchanan gets himself into a righteous lather if you dare to compare Osama bin Laden to a fascist. But on the cover of the very magazine where he does that, it's perfectly legitimate to compare Rudy Giuliani to a Nazi. The cover of The American Conservative seems to have been concocted by someone steeped in the tradition of... well, the Trotskyite-Social Democratic Left. But here's another irony: the cover article it illustrates, criticizing Giuliani's foreign policy vision, is by Michael Desch, who's well-known for his belief that the civilian leaders of this country exercise too much control over the professional military.
Is this bizarre convergence of far left and far right either American or conservative? I don't know, but I do know that its graphic rhetoric is crude and tasteless.Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 16:05
SOURCE: Informed Comment (Blog) (12-29-07)
The dark side of Huckabee, the anti-science and anti-gay side of Huckabee, and the anti-Palestinian genocidal side of Huckabee, are all much more dangerous than the incompetent fool side of Huckabee, but the latter is pretty dangerous, too.
The incompetent fool side was on full display in his remarks, apparently provoked by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, about the alleged threat of illegal Pakistani immigration into the United States. He actually thundered about 660 persons, claiming that the Pakistanis came right after Latinos in the ranks of illegals. He also seemed to think that building a wall around Mexico would keep out Pakistanis (the illegals among whom likely mostly just overstayed their visas and landed at LaGuardia).
He actually repeated his gaffe when questioned by reporters:
'"I am making the observation that we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities except those immediately south of the border," he said, repeating the assertion he made to his audience earlier."And in light of what is happening in Pakistan it ought to give us pause as to why are so many illegals coming across these borders." '
There are an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US. AP writes,"the Pew Hispanic Center said Mexicans make up 56 percent of illegal immigrants. An additional 22 percent come from other Latin American countries, mainly in Central America. About 13 percent are from Asia, and Europe and Canada combine for 6 percent." Even among the 1.5 million or so illegals from Asia, Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, Vietnamese and others predominate. Pakistanis must be a vanishingly small proportion. Why even bring them up? Is it possible that our country preacher is bigotted against Muslims?
Huckabee's first response to Benazir's assassination was to ask whether"martial law" would be"lifted." Martial law had not been declared, rather a constitutionally permissible"state of emergency" had been declared by Musharraf. He lifted it some time before Huckabee's remark.
Huckabee is a narrow-minded, bigotted and ignorant person, and I am quite sure that the American people have had enough of that sort of thing in the White House for a while. On the other hand, I certainly hope that he emerges as the Republican standard-bearer, because I think any Democratic candidate could make mincemeat of him once his bizarre views become public.
You contrast the absolute nonsensical drivel coming out of Huckabee's mouth with the following interview of Hillary Clinton by Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Situation Room on Friday, and Clinton's mature experience and careful, knowledgeable phrasing are like a silk purse to Huckabee's sow's ear:
' Wolf Blitzer: There are conflicting reports coming in from the Pakistani government right now about the cause of death, who may have been responsible; perhaps al Qaeda, maybe not. The bottom line: do you trust the Pakistani government right now to conduct a fair and full investigation so that all of us around the world will know who killed this woman and how she was killed?
Hillary Clinton: I don't think the Pakistani government at this time under President Musharraf has any credibility at all. They have disbanded an independent judiciary, they have oppressed a free press. Therefore, I’m calling for a full, independent, international investigation, perhaps along the lines of what the United Nations has been doing with respect to the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri in Lebanon. I think it is critically important that we get answers and really those are due first and foremost to the people of Pakistan, not only those who were supportive of Benazir Bhutto and her party, but every Pakistani because we cannot expect to move toward stability without some reckoning as to who was responsible for this assassination.
Therefore, I call on President Musharraf and the Pakistani government to realize that this is in the interests of Pakistan to understand whether or not it was al Qaeda or some other offshoot extremist group that is attempting to further destabilize and even overthrow the Pakistani government, or whether it came from within, either explicitly or implicitly, the security forces or the military in Pakistan. The thing I’ve not been able to understand, Wolf - I have met with President Musharraf, I obviously knew Benazir Bhutto and admired her leadership – is that President Musharraf, in every meeting I have had with him, the elites in Pakistan who still wield tremendous power plus the leadership of the military act as though they can destabilize Pakistan and retain their positions; their positions of privilege, their positions of authority. That is not the way it will work. I am really calling on them to recognize that the world deserves the answer; the Bhutto family deserves the answer, but this is in the best interest of the Pakistani people and the state of Pakistan.
Blitzer: Senator, just to be precise; you want a United Nations international tribunal, or commission of inquiry, whatever you want to call it, along the lines of the investigation into the assassination of Rafik Hariri?
HRC: There are other institutions that are international that have credibility, like INTERPOL and others. It doesn’t have to be the exact model of the Hariri investigation but it needs to be international, it needs to be independent, it needs to have credibility and nothing that would happen inside of Pakistan would. I’m reluctant to say it should be an American investigation where we send our law enforcement personnel, because I’m not sure that would have credibility for a different reason. So that’s why I’m calling for an independent international investigation.
Blitzer: This is a damning indictment of President Pervez Musharraf. Some are calling on him to step down, do you believe he should step down?
Clinton: What I believe is that he should meet certain conditions and quickly. We should immediately move to free and fair elections. Obviously, it’s going to take some time for Benazir Bhutto’s party to choose a successor. Nawaz Sharif has said that he won’t participate at this time. I believe again some kind of international support for free and fair elections in a timely manner would be incredibly important. If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election, then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow. We also want to see a resumption of the move toward an independent judiciary. I think that was a terrible mistake. This is an odd situation, Wolf. The people in the streets are wearing suits and ties, they are lawyers, they are professionals, they are the middle class of Pakistan, which really offers the very best hope for a stable, democratic country and that is in America’s interest, but more importantly, it is in the interest of the Pakistani people.
Blitzer: I think I understood what you were implying when you said a U.S. investigation probably wouldn’t have credibility for different reasons but explain to our viewers out there why you’re suggesting a U.S. investigation into the death of Benazir Bhutto probably wouldn’t have credibility either.
Clinton: I think it would politicize it at a time when what we want to do is, as much as possible, support the continuing move toward democracy. We need, frankly, an international tribunal to look into this where there can be a broad base of experts who are not aligned with any one country. Obviously I would certainly offer our expertise through the FBI and others to assist that tribunal. But I think it would be much better for it to be independent and impartial and be seen as that. Part of what our challenge here is, is to convince the Pakistani people themselves and particularly the business elite, the feudal elite, the military elite that they are going down a very dangerous path. That this path leads to their losing their positions, their authority, their obvious leadership now. Therefore we need to help them understand what is in their interest and that of course includes President Musharraf.
Blitzer: Over the years, since 9/11, the United States has provided the Pakistani military with some $10 billion. Will you as a United States Senator continue to vote for funding of these billions of dollars going to the Pakistani military?
Clinton: No, and I’m very pleased that finally the Congress began to put some conditions on the aid. I do not think that we should be giving the Musharraf government a blank check and that’s exactly what the Bush Administration has done. Even after Musharraf cracked down on the judiciary and the press and the pro-democracy movement in Pakistan, President Bush was saying he was a reliable ally. Well, I don’t think he’s a reliable ally when he undermines democracy and when he has failed to reign in the Al Qaeda Islamist elements in his own country.
So I think we do need to condition aid. I would do it differently. I would say, look, we want to know very specifically what accountability you’re going to offer to us for the military aid that we believe should be going in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Department of Defense is equally unaccountable with the money that passes through them.
I’d like to see more of our aid shifted toward building civil society. I’ve been calling for this. I have legislation that is bi-partisan, Education for All that is particularly aimed -- I’ve talked to President Musharraf about the necessity for us to raise the literacy rate, to reach out with health care and education that would help the Pakistani people to really concentrate on civil society.
We should be working with these rather heroic lawyers and others who are in the streets demanding democracy instead of giving the Bush blank check to President Musharraf and the military.
Blitzer: But aren’t you afraid, Senator, that as imperfect and as flawed as President Musharraf is, there’s a possibility whoever comes to replace him in this large Muslim country with a nuclear arsenal already, heavy al Qaeda presence, a resurgent Taliban - that the alternative could be even worse from the U.S. perspective?
Clinton: Of course. We all fear that and that’s why we need to take remedial action immediately. When I came back from my last meeting with President Musharraf in January of this year, I called the White House, I asked that they appoint an American envoy, a presidential envoy. I suggested that a retired military leader who could relate to President Musharraf on a one-to-one basis and could shuttle back and forth between President Musharraf and President Karzai because there were a lot of tensions.
And also perhaps serve as a kind of support to President Musharraf, military man to military man, about what it takes to really move toward democracy that President Musharraf in every conversation I’ve ever had with him has given lip-service to. But I don’t think the Bush Administration has frankly asked enough of President Musharraf, has provided the right kind of assistance, has given the support needed.
We have this difficult problem in the military. We have a lot of the senior leadership that we have relationships with, we don’t have those relationships for a lot of reasons with the junior leadership. I just think we have given a blank check under President Bush to President Musharraf and the results are frankly not in the interests of the United States, they are not in the interest of Pakistan and they are certainly not in the interest of the region. We should begin to try to have an ongoing process that includes India and Afghanistan. A lot of what you see happening in Pakistan is driven by the very strong concern coming out of the Pakistani government toward Afghanistan, toward India.
We have really had a hands-off approach. We have said, okay, fine, you be our partner in going after Al Qaeda, we’ll turn a blind eye to everything else. That has undermined our position. I believe Pakistan is in a weaker position to combat terrorism today then they were after 9/11, in large measure because of the failed policies of George Bush. '
Barack Obama objected to Clinton's call for a UNO special inquiry, saying that"It is important to us to not give the idea that Pakistan is unable to handle its own affairs." While Obama's concern for Pakistani sovereignty is admirable, Clinton's suggestion of a United Nations commission would, I think, be quite popular in Pakistan except in military circles. So it isn't about national sovereignty. And it is certainly the case that the Pakistani public would be more likely to believe a UNO commission than it would to believe Pervez Musharraf on this issue.
John Edwards said much the same things as Clinton with less detail. But lets face it, she had actually been to Pakistan and her remarks show that having been First Lady really does count for foreign policy experience, since it allowed her to address this crisis with aplomb and perspicuity. Obama's campaign came off looking tacky when it tried to suggest that Clinton's Iraq vote somehow got Benazir killed.
Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 15:58
While I like Ron Paul as my candidate, he is simply wrong on the Civil War.
There is no indication the South wanted to end Slavery in the way it had ended in other nations; on the contrary, radical leaders there wanted to expand it into the American West (Bloody Kansas), and to create a Slave Empire in the Caribbean, especially Cuba. Lincoln and Alexander Stephens, in the 1840s opposed the illegalities of the aggressive Mexican War proponents, a fact never mentioned in diatribes by Tom DiLorenzo.
Is Ron, as a Texan, unaware a major reason Texas broke from Mexico, was because the Mexican Const. had ended Slavery, and the Texan-Americans there wanted to keep it?
Intellectually, the South was falling behind in Science, etc., just as it is today, especially Texas, under the sway of textbook committees that deny Evolution. In that regard, it may be that Dr. Lynn Cheney is a greater long term threat to Liberty than even her husband.
There is no doubt Freedom of Thought is in danger today, but it was equally, if not more so, the case in the Old South as documented by such books as Clement Eaton's classic, Freedom of Thought in the Old South.
In a geopolitical sense, I cannot imagine a United States, even a decentralized, anti-empire one as I prefer, that would allow another nation such as the Confederacy, to control the mouth of the Mississippi River System, which drains the entire central portion of the continent from mountain chain to mountain chain.
Grant said it all, after his victory at Vicksburg, the key battle of the War, in his telegram to Lincoln, "the Father of Waters flows once again, uninterrupted, to the sea," and commerce came flowing out to demonstrate that Cotton was not King.
It is a great tragedy that Lincoln was a mercantilist, centralizer, but that cannot be changed by falsifying History! What Ron Paul neglects to mention is that the South, unlike other nations, such as Brazil, that freed their slaves, was much more deeply racist, then and afterwards, a fact that is traced in Bruce Bartlett's new book, due out Jan. 8th: http://www.opinionjournal.com
Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 14:43
SOURCE: Informed Comment (Blog) (12-27-07)
Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the Pakistan People's Party, has been assassinated at a rally held Thursday evening near Islamabad. She appears to have been shot by the assassin, who was wearing a suicide bomb belt, which he then detonated to make sure he had finished the job. The Bhuttos are sort of the Kennedys of Pakistan, marked by wealth, power and tragedy, and central to the country's politics for the past four decades.
The Pakistani authorities are blaming Muslim militants for the assassination. That is possible, but everyone in Pakistan remembers that it was the military intelligence, or Inter-Services Intelligence, that promoted Muslim militancy in the two decades before September 11 as a wedge against India in Afghanistan and Kashmir. The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) faithful will almost certainly blame Pervez Musharraf, and sentiment here is more important than reality, whatever the reality may be. The PPP is one of two very large, long-standing grassroots political parties in Pakistan, and if its followers are radicalized by this event, it could lead to severe turmoil. Just a day before her assassination Benazir had pledged that the PPP would not allow the military to rig the upcoming January 8 parliamentary elections.
Pakistan is important to US security. It is a nuclear power. Its military fostered, then partially turned on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which have bases in the lawless tribal areas of the northern part of the country. And Pakistan is key to the future of its neighbor, Afghanistan. Pakistan is also a key transit route for any energy pipelines built between Iran or Central Asia and India, and so central to the energy security of the United States.
The military government of Pervez Musharraf was shaken by two big crises in 2007, one urban and one rural. The urban crisis was his interference in the rule of law and his dismissal of the supreme court chief justice. The Pakistani middle class has greatly expanded in the last seven years, as others have noted, and educated white collar people need a rule of law to conduct their business. Last June 50,000 protesters came out to defend the supreme court, even though the military had banned rallies. The rural crisis was the attempt of a Neo-Deobandi cult made up of Pushtuns and Baluch from the north to establish themselves in the heart of the capital, Islamabad, at the Red Mosque seminary. They then attempted to impose rural, puritan values on the cosmopolitan city dwellers. When they kidnapped Chinese acupuncturists, accusing them of prostitution, they went too far. Pakistan depends deeply on its alliance with China, and the Islamabad middle classes despise Talibanism. Musharraf ham-fistedly had the military mount a frontal assault on the Red Mosque and its seminary, leaving many dead and his legitimacy in shreds. Most Pakistanis did not rally in favor of the Neo-Deobandi cultists, but to see a military invasion of a mosque was not pleasant (the militants inside turned out to be heavily armed and quite sinister).
The NYT reported that US Secretary of State Condi Rice tried to fix Musharraf's subsequent dwindling legitimacy by arranging for Benazir to return to Pakistan to run for prime minister, with Musharraf agreeing to resign from the military and become a civilian president. When the supreme court seemed likely to interfere with his remaining president, he arrested the justices, dismissed them, and replaced them with more pliant jurists. This move threatened to scuttle the Rice Plan, since Benazir now faced the prospect of serving a dictator as his grand vizier, rather than being a proper prime minister.
With Benazir's assassination, the Rice Plan is in tatters and Bush administration policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan is tottering.
Benazir is from a major Pakistani political dynasty. (See the obituary here and the photographs here. Her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was prime minister in the 1970s but was overthrown by a military coup in 1977 and subsequently hanged by military dictator Zia ul-Huq. Benazir helped lead the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in the 1980s, and was often under house arrest. When Zia died in an airplane accident in 1988, Benazir won the subsequent elections and served as prime minister 1988-1990. Zia had put in place mechanisms to limit popular sovereignty, and the then 'president' removed Benazir from office in 1990. She served again as PM, 1993-1996 but was again deposed, being accused of corruption. After the 1999 military coup of Pervez Musharraf, she was in a state of permanent exile, since he said he would have her arrested if she tried to come back. He relented because of his own collapsing position and because of US pressure, and allowed her to return in October. She was almost assassinated at that time by a huge bomb when she landed in Karachi.
See also the comments of Manan Ahmad at our Global Affairs blog, where there are several recent important entries.
Related Links
Juan Cole: With Bhutto gone, does Bush have a Plan B?
Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 14:39
SOURCE: WSJ (12-27-07)
Few subjects matter as much as oil, the Persian Gulf and American foreign policy. But few subjects are less well understood. Even relatively sophisticated observers will attribute American interest in the Persian Gulf to Uncle Sam's insatiable thirst for crude, combined with an effort to gain lucrative contracts for American oil firms. The U.S. on this view is something like a global Count Dracula, roaming the earth in search of fresh bodies, hoping to suck them dry.
True, the security of America's oil supply has been an element in national strategic thinking at least since Franklin Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz in the waning days of World War II. And true, the U.S. government has never been indifferent to the concerns of the major oil concerns. But the security of our domestic energy supplies plays a relatively small role in America's Persian Gulf policy, and the purely commercial interests of American companies do not drive American grand strategy.
The U.S. today depends on the Middle East for only a small portion of its energy supplies. Still the world's third largest oil producer and holding large coal reserves, America is significantly less dependent on foreign energy sources than the other great economies. Imports account for 35% of U.S. energy consumption versus 56% for the European Union and 80% for Japan. Nearly half the oil and all the natural gas imported by the U.S. comes from the Western Hemisphere; sub-Saharan Africa supplies most of the balance. Only 17% of U.S. oil imports and less than 0.5% of our natural gas come from the Persian Gulf; 80% of Japan's imports come from the Gulf, and by 2015 70% of China's oil will come from the same source.
While U.S. import needs are projected to grow significantly, U.S. dependence on Persian Gulf energy is not, thanks largely to expected production increases in the Western Hemisphere and sub-Saharan Africa. U.S. energy imports from the Persian Gulf are expected to remain below 20% of total consumption. The oil market, of course, is global, and if something were to happen to the Middle Eastern supplies, prices would rise world-wide, and the U.S. economy would be seriously disrupted. But domestic supply is not the key to American interest in the Gulf.
For the past few centuries, a global economic and political system has been slowly taking shape under first British and then American leadership. As a vital element of that system, the leading global power -- with help from allies and other parties -- maintains the security of world trade over the seas and air while also ensuring that international economic transactions take place in an orderly way. Thanks to the American umbrella, Germany, Japan, China, Korea and India do not need to maintain the military strength to project forces into the Middle East to defend their access to energy. Nor must each country's navy protect the supertankers carrying oil and liquefied national gas (LNG).
For this system to work, the Americans must prevent any power from dominating the Persian Gulf while retaining the ability to protect the safe passage of ships through its waters....
Posted on: Sunday, December 30, 2007 - 14:03
SOURCE: WSJ (12-29-07)
... The murder of Bhutto was not just an attempt to derail Pakistani democracy, or prevent an enlightened Muslim woman from taking power. It was a counterattack, apparently by the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda, against a U.S.-backed transition from direct to indirect military rule in Pakistan by brokering a forced marriage of "moderates."
According to last July's National Intelligence Estimate on the al Qaeda threat, bin Laden has re-established his sanctuary in the Pakistani tribal agencies. According to a report by the United Nations mission in Afghanistan, the suicide bombers for Pakistan and Afghanistan are trained in these agencies.
Most global terrorist plots since 9/11 can be traced back to these areas. And Pakistan's military regime, not Iran, has been the main source of rogue nuclear proliferation. It is therefore the U.S. partnership with military rulers in Pakistan that has been and is the problem, not the solution.
Last September, bin Laden released a video declaring jihad on the Pakistani government. When Bhutto returned to Pakistan from exile on Oct. 18 -- as part of a U.S.-backed strategy to shore up Musharraf's power through elections -- her motorcade was bombed as it passed by several military bases in Karachi, killing over 100.
In October and November, groups allied with the Pakistani Taliban captured several districts in Swat, in the Northwest Frontier Province, not in the tribal agencies. When I was in Pakistan in early November, I was told that this offensive was part of a larger effort by the Pakistani Taliban to surround Peshawar, capital of NWFP, and put increasing pressure on nearby Islamabad, the capital. The next key step, I was told on Nov. 5, would be an attack on Charsadda, northeast of Peshawar, on the Muslim feast of 'Id al-Adha.
Sure enough, on Dec. 21 a suicide bomber killed around 50 people during 'Id worship in Charsadda. This suicide attack followed by a week the announcement that leaders of various Taliban groups had agreed to establish a common organization -- the Taliban Movement of Pakistan -- under the command of Baitullah Mahsud, the Taliban commander in the South Waziristan Tribal Agency, where the meeting took place.
But if bin Laden declared jihad against Mr. Musharraf, Pakistan's leader saw greater threats elsewhere. When he declared an emergency on Nov. 3, he was responding mainly to the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which was about to rule that his standing for president while a serving general violated the constitution. Mr. Musharraf continued the longstanding policy of the Pakistani military of putting its own power, justified by the Indian threat, ahead of all other concerns.....
Posted on: Saturday, December 29, 2007 - 19:49
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune (12-29-07)
The 1970s were beginning, and the unrivaled star of my "Introduction to the Middle East" class was "Pinkie" Bhutto. I asked her once about her given name, Benazir, and she giggled in embarrassment at its literal meaning: "incomparable." No one at Radcliffe or Harvard called her anything but Pinkie back then. But it was already apparent that her given name described her perfectly.
Radcliffe women in those days invariably wore skirts. But not Pinkie. She was one of the first to show that pants on college women were stylish, at least in Cambridge, Mass. Tall, black-haired, bright-eyed, she was ever bubbly and full of laughter. She was also the smartest student in the class, in contrast to her less-than-serious brother Murtaza, whom I later taught. She invited me to dinner at her dorm. Just a light-hearted meal with her friends. No memorable content, except for Pinkie's dominating high spirits.
More than a decade passed before I saw her again. We met at her hotel suite on Central Park South. Zahid Mahmood, a distant cousin or at least childhood chum, arranged the meeting. He was a quasi-graduate student sheltered under my protection at Columbia University. He aspired to become foreign minister in a Benazir government. Though Zahid's khutzbah was world-class, he was terrified of Benazir, his party leader. He slugged down a couple of inches of vodka as the limo he had rented made its way south. He asked me to speak well of him in front of Benazir.
When we met, the changes wrought by years of house arrest and the burdens of party leadership were apparent. Though even more beautiful than during her undergraduate years, the effervescence was gone. She spoke sweetly to the young women in her entourage but was firm, even abrasive, in addressing the two male party members who were present, ordering one not to speak unless spoken to.
She was gentler with me as her former professor. She asked me to draft a speech about Islam and politics for her to consider for an upcoming engagement in Britain. I submitted the speech a couple of days later, but I doubt she used it. Her views on the necessity of separating religion from government had become far more rigid than mine.
In the spring of 1989, she was back in Manhattan after giving a speech at Harvard as Pakistan's prime minister. Zahid Mahmood, though still a penniless graduate student, had used his wiles and social connections to organize a gala reception for her at the Plaza Hotel. Donald Trump was the host, and awaiting her in the salon were Michael Caine, Carly Simon, Irving "Swifty" Lazar, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and a host of New York celebrities. Then she was there. Resplendent in a voluminous white gown and positively glowing in the early stages of her second pregnancy. It was a true Camelot moment.
Her 550 days in office during her first term as prime minister were furiously embattled. Thanks to my friend Zahid, who became an ambassador without portfolio connected with Pakistan's UN Mission, I was treated to an official visit to Islamabad and other points of interest....
Posted on: Saturday, December 29, 2007 - 19:35
SOURCE: Jerusalem Post (12-27-07)
Western financial aid to the Palestinians has, I showed last week, the perverse and counterintuitive effect of increasing their rate of homicides, including terrorist ones. This week, I offer two pieces of perhaps even stranger news about the many billions of dollars and record-shattering per-capita donations from the West: First, these have rendered the Palestinians poorer. Second, Palestinian impoverishment is a long-term positive development.
To begin, some basic facts about the Palestinian economy, drawing on a fine survey by Ziv Hellman,"Terminal Situation," in the Dec. 24 issue of Jerusalem Report:
- Palestinian per year per-capita income has contracted by about 40 percent since its US$2,000 peak in 1992 (before the Oslo process began) to less than $1,200 now.
- Per-capita Israeli income, 10 times greater than the Palestinians' in 1967 is now 23 times greater.
- Deep poverty has increased in Gaza from 22 percent of the population in 1998 to nearly 35 percent in 2006; it would be about 67 percent if not for remittances and food aid.
- Direct foreign investment barely exists, while local capital mostly gets sent abroad or is invested in real estate or short-term trading.
- The Palestinian Authority economy, Hellman writes,"is largely based on monopolies in various industries granted by PA officials in exchange for kickbacks."
- The PA's payroll is so bloated that the cost of wages alone exceeds all revenues.
- A dysfunctional judicial system in the PA means armed gangs usually decide commercial disputes.
Unsurprisingly, Hellman characterizes the Palestinian economy as"in shambles."
Such shambles should come as no surprise, for as the late Lord Bauer and others have noted, foreign aid does not work. It corrupts and distorts an economy; and the greater the amounts involved, the greater the damage. One telling detail: at times during Yasir Arafat's reign, a third of the Palestinian Authority's budget went for"expenses of the President's office," without further explanation, auditing, or accounting. The World Bank objected, but the Israeli government and the European Union endorsed this corrupt arrangement, so it remained in place.
 The Paris conference for the"Palestinian state" raised US$7.4 billion in pledges on Dec. 17, 2007. © V.Chemla/GIN | |
Paradoxically, this error might help resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. To see why, consider the two models, hardship v. exhilaration, that explain Palestinian extremism and violence.
The hardship model, subscribed to by all Western states, attributes Palestinian actions to poverty, isolation, Israeli roadblocks, the lack of a state, etc. Mahmoud Abbas, the PA leader, summed up this viewpoint at the Annapolis conference in November:"the absence of hope and overwhelming despair … feed extremism." Eliminate those hardships and Palestinians, supposedly, would turn their attention to such constructive concerns as economic development and democracy. Trouble is, that change never comes.
The exhilaration model turns the Abbas logic on its head: the absence of despair and overwhelming hope, in fact, feed extremism. For Palestinians, hope derives from a perception of Israeli weakness, implying an optimism and excitement that the Jewish state can be eliminated. Conversely, when Palestinians cannot see a way forward against Israel, they devote themselves to the more mundane tasks of earning a living and educating their children. Note that the Palestinian economy peaked in 1992, just as, post-Soviet Union and post-Kuwait war, hopes bottomed out to eliminate Israel.
Exhilaration, not hardship, accounts for bellicose Palestinian behavior. Accordingly, whatever reduces Palestinian confidence is a good thing. A failed economy depresses the Palestinians' mood, not to speak of their military and other capabilities, and so brings resolution closer.
Palestinians must experience the bitter crucible of defeat before they will drop their foul goal of eliminating their Israeli neighbor and begin to build their own economy, polity, society, and culture. No short-cut to this happy outcome exists. Who truly cares for Palestinians must want their despair to come quickly, so that a skilled and dignified people can move beyond its current barbarism and build something decent.
The huge and wasted outpouring of Western financial aid, ironically, brings on that despair in two ways: by encouraging terrorism and by distorting the economy, both of which imply economic decline. Rarely has the law of unintended consequences worked so imaginatively.
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Dec. 27, 2007 update: Readers have taken the premise of this column - that foreign aid is counterproductive - to ask me two questions, which I thought best to reply to publicly here.
- Does this same logic apply to Israel? Yes, in my view, it does. Economics is not my subject, so I have not written on this topic but I solicited and edited an article by Joel Bainerman in the Middle East Quarterly in 1995,"End American Aid to Israel?: Yes, It Does Harm," that largely reflects my views.
- If foreign aid works perversely to erode the Palestinian sense of confidence to eliminate, should one not wish for more of it? No, because it has too many negative side-effects, starting with additional terrorism, as I pointed out in my column last week, in"Fund the Palestinians? Bad Idea."
Posted on: Saturday, December 29, 2007 - 19:31
SOURCE: Informed Comment (Blog) (12-26-07)
10. Myth: The US public no longer sees Iraq as a central issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Fact: In a recent ABC News/ Washington Post poll, Iraq and the economy were virtually tied among voters nationally, with nearly a quarter of voters in each case saying it was their number one issue. The economy had become more important to them than in previous months (in November only 14% said it was their most pressing concern), but Iraq still rivals it as an issue!
9. Myth: There have been steps toward religious and political reconciliation in Iraq in 2007.
Fact: The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has for the moment lost the support of the Sunni Arabs in parliament. The Sunnis in his cabinet have resigned. Even some Shiite parties have abandoned the government. Sunni Arabs, who are aware that under his government Sunnis have largely been ethnically cleansed from Baghdad, see al-Maliki as a sectarian politician uninterested in the welfare of Sunnis.
8. Myth: The US troop surge stopped the civil war that had been raging between Sunni Arabs and Shiites in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
Fact: The civil war in Baghdad escalated during the US troop escalation. Between January, 2007, and July, 2007, Baghdad went from 65% Shiite to 75% Shiite. UN polling among Iraqi refugees in Syria suggests that 78% are from Baghdad and that nearly a million refugees relocated to Syria from Iraq in 2007 alone. This data suggests that over 700,000 residents of Baghdad have fled this city of 6 million during the US 'surge,' or more than 10 percent of the capital's population. Among the primary effects of the 'surge' has been to turn Baghdad into an overwhelmingly Shiite city and to displace hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from the capital.
7. Myth: Iran was supplying explosively formed projectiles (a deadly form of roadside bomb) to Salafi Jihadi (radical Sunni) guerrilla groups in Iraq.
Fact: Iran has not been proved to have sent weapons to any Iraqi guerrillas at all. It certainly would not send weapons to those who have a raging hostility toward Shiites. (Iran may have supplied war materiel to its client, the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (ISCI), which was then sold off from warehouses because of graft, going on the arms market and being bought by guerrillas and militiamen.
6. Myth: The US overthrow of the Baath regime and military occupation of Iraq has helped liberate Iraqi women.
Fact: Iraqi women have suffered significant reversals of status, ability to circulate freely, and economic situation under the Bush administration.
5. Myth: Some progress has been made by the Iraqi government in meeting the"benchmarks" worked out with the Bush administration.
Fact: in the words of Democratic Senator Carl Levin,"Those legislative benchmarks include approving a hydrocarbon law, approving a debaathification law, completing the work of a constitutional review committee, and holding provincial elections. Those commitments, made 1 1/2 years ago, which were to have been completed by January of 2007, have not yet been kept by the Iraqi political leaders despite the breathing space the surge has provided."
4. Myth: The Sunni Arab"Awakening Councils," who are on the US payroll, are reconciling with the Shiite government of PM Nuri al-Maliki even as they take on al-Qaeda remnants.
Fact: In interviews with the Western press, Awakening Council tribesmen often speak of attacking the Shiites after they have polished off al-Qaeda. A major pollster working in Iraq observed,
' Most of the recent survey results he has seen about political reconciliation, Warshaw said, are "more about [Iraqis] reconciling with the United States within their own particular territory, like in Anbar. . . . But it doesn't say anything about how Sunni groups feel about Shiite groups in Baghdad." Warshaw added: "In Iraq, I just don't hear statements that come from any of the Sunni, Shiite or Kurdish groups that say 'We recognize that we need to share power with the others, that we can't truly dominate.' " ' '
The polling shows that"the Iraqi government has still made no significant progress toward its fundamental goal of national reconciliation."
3. Myth: The Iraqi north is relatively quiet and a site of economic growth.
Fact: The subterranean battle among Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs for control of the oil-rich Kirkuk province makes the Iraqi north a political mine field. Kurdistan now also hosts the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas that sneak over the border and kill Turkish troops. The north is so unstable that the Iraqi north is now undergoing regular bombing raids from Turkey.
2. Myth: Iraq has been" calm" in fall of 2007 and the Iraqi public, despite some grumbling, is not eager for the US to depart.
Fact: in the past 6 weeks, there have been an average of 600 attacks a month, or 20 a day, which has held steady since the beginning of November. About 600 civilians are being killed in direct political violence per month, but that number excludes deaths of soldiers and police. Across the board, Iraqis believe that their conflicts are mainly caused by the US military presence and they are eager for it to end.
1. Myth: The reduction in violence in Iraq is mostly because of the escalation in the number of US troops, or"surge."
Fact: Although violence has been reduced in Iraq, much of the reduction did not take place because of US troop activity. Guerrilla attacks in al-Anbar Province were reduced from 400 a week to 100 a week between July, 2006 and July, 2007. But there was no significant US troop escalation in al-Anbar. Likewise, attacks on British troops in Basra have declined precipitously since they were moved out to the airport away from population centers. But this change had nothing to do with US troops.
Posted on: Saturday, December 29, 2007 - 18:29
SOURCE: Middle East Strategy at Harvard (12-23-07)
In a recent address, UCLA historian James Gelvin compares Al Qaeda with historical anarchism (1880-1920) and, like some other recent writers, finds great significance in their common features. Such exercises are seldom wholly in vain, but how helpful are they for a better understanding of at least one of the sides in the comparison?
Gelvin dismisses the Islamofascism label as mere propaganda, and I do not think much of it either. But while comparisons between the jihadists on one hand and Nazi Germany and fascist Italy are indeed of little use, there are astonishing similarities between jihadists and some of the smaller fascist groups such as, for instance, the Romanian Legion of the Archangel Michael (also called the Iron Guard, Garda de Fier). This group, quite powerful at one time, was deeply religious in inspiration, populist and anti-capitalist in its politics, propagated a cult of death and suicide terrorism, and was second to none in denouncing corruption and the liberal West. If they still existed, they would be intensely anti-globalist. An in-depth study of the similarities between this group and the jihadists would be very illuminating and should be undertaken.
In the same way, similarities between Al Qaeda and certain anarchist factions could be found. A leading anarchist about to be executed announced that “there are no innocents,” just as the well-known Al Jazeera TV sheikh has done. Bakunin (and after him Nietzsche—not a card-carrying anarchist) declared that the passion for destruction was a creative passion.
However, on the whole, such comparisons do not take us very far, for two reasons.
First, anarchism was anything but monolithic. There were basic differences not only between anarchists at various times and places but also within each group. Some believed in terrorism, others were pacifists. There were extremists among them but they were not a majority.
Second, anarchists were not “nihilists” (an unfortunate term made popular by Turgenev’s famous novel). They did not negate all values but deeply believed in freedom. Whatever the fundamental beliefs and aims of the jihadists (who are not nihilists either), the struggle for the realm of freedom on earth is not among them. In view of such a basic difference in outlook, how much new light can be shed by comparisons between them and the anarchists?
There are two related distinctions which deserve to be explored. Gelvin comes close but does not pursue them. He believes that both anarchism and jihadism were essentially defensive in character. Territories formerly under Muslim rule, now lost as the result of a Western assault, had to be regained. If this were the sum of jihadist ideology, the obvious parallel would be with the Brezhnev doctrine. From the 1960s, it proclaimed that countries under communist rule must not be surrendered on any account, and that any retreat from this political order must be resisted by military force. By this time, the Soviet Union had given up dreams of world revolution, and its strategy was therefore “defensive.” Have jihadists really given up their hope that their beliefs will eventually prevail all over the globe, and their conviction that they are duty-bound to promote this aim? Their strategy seems to be rather more ambitious than the Brezhnev doctrine—but this certainly warrants further exploration.
There is a second crucial distinction. Nineteenth-century anarchism and terrorism adhered to a certain code of honor. There was a code of chivalry (treuga dei and pax dei) in European medieval warfare (and also in medieval Islam), not to attack and harm monks, women, children, elderly people and the poor in general. The targets of terrorist attacks were leading figures such as kings, ministers, generals, and police chiefs considered personally responsible for repression and crimes. Great care was taken not to hurt the innocent; if a Russian Grand Duke appeared unexpectedly together with his family, the attackers would abstain from throwing their bombs even if, by acting so, they endangered their own lives. More often than not, the attackers considered themselves sinners for taking a human life; it was unthinkable that they would boast of dancing on the graves of their victims or express the wish to drink their blood. There are no known cases of sadism among nineteenth-century anarchists. The indiscriminate murder which has become the rule in our days did occur but was rare and mostly unplanned.
In contrast, incidents of sadism have been frequently reported in our time—for instance, in the Algerian civil war, or in the case of Zarqawi, who was upbraided by some of his followers for cutting throats too quickly. The enemy not only has to be destroyed, he (or she) also has to suffer torment. The barbarisation of terrorism has not been limited to the jihadists, but they have been its most frequent practitioners by far. How do we account for these changes in the theory and practice of terrorism compared with the age of the anarchist militants? This seems to me a central issue which has yet to be addressed.
Posted on: Saturday, December 29, 2007 - 16:57