I blogged on this earlier this evening with an observation about an amazingly bullshit statement about this I heard when spending two minutes glancing at how Fox (more or less a sponsor of the war, after all) was covering the war.
In a point of utter trivia, the list is actually 44 "nations," such as they are, plus the US. It's awfully reassuring that Palau's might stands with us. In fact, much of the South Pacific seems to be with us. Has Pitcairn Island been heard from?
It would be sufficiently tangential to not mention, were it not for Patrick's comment that the "preconditions for a distinctly American fascism have in fact been put in place," that one of those people who has busily devoted time to setting up theose pre-conditions is a guy named "Justin Raimondo" who gave the nominating speech for Patrick Buchanan for the Reform Party nomination for President. I've quoted some of the other chipper quotations from these "anti-war" (unless it's in defense of Serbian fascists) paleo-conservatives. Pay attention, or not, as you wish.
I have no disagreement with what Raimondo said that Patrick quoted, of course; far from it. But it's good of Raimondo to take time off from writing his book about how Israel is responsible for September 11th. This, too, seems possibly worth mentioning while commending his words. Or possibly not.
"The rest of it is bait I'm declining to take." The rest of it is sincere attempt to communicate and be corrected and told where I am wrong, and to engage in real communication.
As you know, I've never had the slightest problem being honestly told where I'm wrong or misjudging or fucking up. Same as it ever was. I screw up, but I'm honestly out there willing to make errors and screw up in hopes of learning, and not minding, but, indeed, politely seeking, correction and learning.
So: liberal internationalist hawks who are tentively pro-war are welcome although there belief in this war is "nuts." The upcoming war is "nuts," but people who believe in it are welcome. By having their beliefs called "nuts."
I'll work this out, probably after I've had more sleep.
Mwanwhile, I wish us all well, and the best. and that we may all grant each other good faith and a willingness to listen to each other in good faith.
Add Mark Kleiman as favoring military action, it occurs to me. I continue to have the greatest respect for those protesting the war out of their conscience, by the way, as I said, again, here.
I'm reasonably comfortable identifying as a "liberal internationalist hawk," and perhaps I'm not following clearly on what the "This" in "This Is Nuts" is intended to refer to, but if it's the war, then I'm unclear how my highly tentative, rather frightened and pessimistic, support for war -- which has nothing to do with any support for the Administration, per se, since I don't have any -- can be reconciled with being not made to "feel unwelcome" by people who tell me that what I think is "nuts."
I may be entirely misunderstanding, in which case I'd be delighted to be politely corrected.
Regardless, I can point to an extremely long list of leftist (which I am) anti-war (which I'm not quite, in this case, though I'm not exactly full of gung-ho confidence, either) bloggers, who most definitely make me "feel unwelcome."
(Note: I am certainly not saying that a blogger makes me feel unwelcome by being either left-wing or anti-war, since many folks of either or both flavors manage to be quite fair-minded and polite to people with somewhat differing views such as a somewhat lefty, somewhat pro-this-war person such as myself.)
I don't think Timothy Burke is arguing just against dimwitted people on campus. I see him as arguing against plenty of people I read online. At risk of being challenged to point them out -- which I'm not going to do, because I have no desire to make this about personalities, and I don't care if anyone wants to call me a coward for that -- a number of them are on Patrick's blogroll, which makes this clearly a difference of perception.
Wait, I can surely point to an awful lot -- though of course, not all -- posters to "Stand Down." Some are highly respectable. Many are... not. (In my subjective view, of course, and regarding only their arguments, not their personhood.)
(Just as, of course, there are endless flaming idiot pro-war bloggers who are lunatics about people on the left or who are anti-war, and who certainly make them "feel unwelcome" -- and who certainly make me feel "unwelcome," too.)
Incidentally, I'm not familiar with all the blogs on Patrick's blogroll, but of the ones that I am, I see two, maybe three, bloggers that are pro-war. (Specifically, Matthew Yglesias and Bruce Rolston; there are one or two others I'm unsure about.) I'm not sure what to make of that, other than to hope that the observation isn't offensive.
After holding my tongue after reading all these posts -- and this makes it distinctly difficult to type, let me tell you -- my discipline gives way and I murmur that while it's entirely likely someone spoke of it before him, one Vladimir Illich Lenin is generally credited with advocating the philosophy of "heightening the contradictions."
Um, the connections between al Queda and Iraq are minimal. I think everyone grasps that.
Um, that link fails. Context? Source?
Sylvia Li says: "If you use that as an excuse to go across town and kill the children of some other person who might possibly be that murderer's second cousin, or might only happen to have the same surname, or maybe just looked at you funny last week, then you are a murderer too."
"There is no issue of self-defense, here. Your children are dead. Do you call the cops and help them track down the guy who did it, or do you go on a Rambo-like rampage?"
a) This analogy fails because there is no comparable structure to a democratic polity's domestic consensus of law enforcement with supranational law enforcement that provides for an international force to, according to law, kick down the door of a criminal country and arrest the regime. Well, there is somewhat, but Sylvia Li is objecting to that route being followed, because it is "a Rambo-like rampage." Reversing this analogy, it would appear that if your local police find a murdered family in a house, they must not go across town to where the murderer lives, kick in the door, and arrest him, because "there is no issue of self-defense" involved in that, and it would be a Rambo-like rampage.
(Incidentally, in the movies, Rambo is, you know, the good guy. I realize this runs across a stereotype because it's Sylvester Stallone, but Rambo is actually a character desperate to find peace, who is forced against his will to fight, and does good -- so presumably Sylvia Li is saying using that as praise.)
Which international police force does Sylvia Li suggest should the world call to deal with Saddam Hussein, and what should they do? That's beyond "self-defense," that is?
b) If "self-defense" is all that is right and proper, presumably the North should never have invaded the South in the Civil War, the US should never have sent troops to fight in WWI, and the US should never have invaded Europe in WWII, nor defended South Korea and invaded North Korea. No direct "self-defense" in any of that, is there? Could Sylvia explain whether or not this is what she means?
Lastly, more or less stating that the US is planning, as a strategy, to go kill children -- well, again, lots of children died in the wars I mention above. Does that means we should have engaged in pacificism? Is it useful to discussion to reduce understanding of current events to "you're child-murderers!" Perhaps so, but what about stopping the child-murderer across town?
I'd rather discuss Michael Walzer's work on just war, and whether this war meets the test, which would present more relevant issues to chew over.
Has everyone read what Leon Weiseltier has said about this being a liberal's war? And E. J. Dionne on patriotic liberalism?
I blogged this around 1 a.m. Saturday night, though I blogged the memo, not the Grauniad story, since I thought the memo was of interest, and the Grauniad labeling (twice, so no one would miss it) survelliance as "dirty tricks" an interesting deliberate distortion of what "dirty tricks" are considered (such as, say, leaking a phony forged memo).
I'm actually inclined to give the memo's possible authenticity the benefit of the doubt, and I suggest comparing -- so far -- the debunking of it to the similar "proof" of Laurie Garrett's Davos memo being a fake (professionals would never misuse jargon or make errors!; that proves it's a fake!).
Jim MacDonald and others who note that of course diplomats are kept under surveillance by governments the world over are, to be sure, entirely correct.
If the memo were about, say, blackmailing a diplomat with a honey pot scam, or indulging in forgeries, it could fairly be labeled as revealing "dirty tricks." But, then, the NSA isn't supposed to do that as part of their job (that they admit, anyway). They're supposed to do signals intelligence, and if they weren't doing so to fulfill what the National Command Authority tells them is in the US interest, they wouldn't be doing their job.
I'd be pretty surprised if anyone in the Angolan, Cameroon, etc., or any UN delegation were surprised.
If anyone thinks that France and Russia and China, for instance, aren't doing the same thing, well, for a change I can offer shares in the Verrazano Bridge....
Jim's citing of Stimson's famous remark is apt.
Because it will take you through the stratosphere
And check out the planets there and then take you down Deep where it's hot, hot in Arabia, babia, then cool, cold fields of snow And we'll roll, dream, roll, dream, roll, roll, dream, dream.
I'm just saying.
"In this particular case, I just don't see any way to charge that the left is being soft on terrorism by opposing the war without saying x, y, or z, and not in making that charge serve the purposes of people with whom you probably don't agree."
And that's precisely what's wrong with part of the left: the idea that self-criticism mustn't be made in public (or at all), that "solidarity" is more important than truth, and that truth is best not looked at or spoken, but must be done only by halves. That's not Chomsky; that's a popular notion in many circles, on many blogs, and served up, piping hot, for this comment thread.
The same logic would suggest that it is right and proper for sensible rightists to not reflect in public on the foolishness of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, Name-Your-Choice, because it is right and proper for them to be concerned as to who might make use of that and what use might be made. Anyone want to sign on for that?
This is all part of what one gets when one signs on to view politics and policy primarily through a prism and as a team cheerleader, rather than to get at what makes the most sense and is the best analysis, and let the chips fall where they may, to then be picked up and used to build tools with.
It's sufficient to argue that Timothy Burke, say, is not, one thinks, describing one's self or acquaintances; to argue that what he describes is not real or important, just as real and important as the many other loci of political/policy perspective, is to deny a chunk of reality. It stops analysis from moving on.
I call attention to the latest from the estimable Michael Walzer. He addresses the right and wrong way to argue against this war. I find his solution, alas, unlikely, and I partially base that on how few people are arguing for it on the base he lays out, which I agree is necessary.
Incidentally, is anyone prepared to suggest that William Shawcross is a right-wing Bush supporter? Or Paul Berman?
You're also #39 on the Daypop Top Blogs at the moment.
Amusingly, I was #97 on the same Technorati list for the past three days or so, but seem to have dropped off today.
I'm #28 and you're #30, at the moment, on the Blogstreet Big 100, as well.
"All the arguments have been hashed to death and surely Kevin Drum is aware of them. I don92t propose to re-hash them here."
Maybe it's just me, but I wish you would. I very possibly missed it, but I don't recall seeing you go into any of the anti/pro-war arguments in any detail here, beyond more or less simply making various understandable statements about lack of trust in the Bush Administration (something I more or less agree with you about), and some generalizations about the war obviously being a bad idea.
I'm left to sort of guess at what reasoning you precisely follow on the various specific arguments, and I'd much prefer to not do that. And I simply value the opportunity to be able to follow your reasoning, and perhaps find flaws in my own or be persuaded that I'm wrong in some particular or generality or another.
If you'd prefer to simply give a link to some prior statements that I may have missed, if I have, that would be welcome as a substitute.
Oh, and Wilsonianism has always been rife with contradictions, as I was hyperventilating upon just yesterday in comments on another blog (Yglesias, probably; in this case on the lack of defined granularity of "self-determination"). I've been known to put people to sleep on the topic.
As for the idea that "the United States can go into any country it chooses and 'establish democracy', without paying any attention to the political debate within that society," well, I would hope no sane person would believe that. Not in any timeframe of under 50 years, anyway, and the second clause is particularly a killer.
"...framing the question in such a way as to exclude [...] makes it extremely difficult to answer."
You did a pretty good job. I just wanted to avoid getting diverted very far into theory or the understandable urge to point out the vast differences in circumstances.
I'd not disagree with your answer; it's not far from what I would have said. I could write a long paper attempting to make the counter-case as to how weak the foundations of democracy in Germany were, in any era prior to Bonn. Weimar is the strongest prior democracy, and many theses have filled shelves pointing out its structural flaws and historical general lack of success, particularly in the Stressman period. But why bother?
It does seem to me that saying "After the collapse of the Empire, representative democracy had appeared to those left in power to be the only legitimate choice for the re-founding of the state" is pretty quibble-worthy. It was more a project of the Social Democrats than not, wasn't it, and they weren't highly representative of those "left in power." What support the conservatives and industrials gave was pretty much only out of fear of success of further Bolshevik revolution, in my understanding. Then after the Kapp Putsch of 1920, there was nothing but minority coalition, increased extremism on both sides, and then Stresemann. (And the conservative /monarchical desire for an authoritarian government doesn't seem necessarily to have implied Hitlerism; after not very long, he wasn't a great hero to many of the non-Nazi conservatives who had merely hoped to use him and had underestimated him.)
But this is a quibble. Overall, I'd say that, yes, surely the US/UK built on what democratic strands survived, particularly Christian Democratic strands, and, of course, there's the lackluster nature of "de-nazification" I'll avoid going into here. But there was quite a bit of "imposition" in the formation of Bonn, nonetheless. And, after all, for a different form of imposition and results, we have the GDR as a control experiment!
For all the differences between Iraq and Germany/1946, it seems to me there's quite a lot to be built on in Iraq, as well. It is, after all, one of the most industrialized, urbanized, Arab countries, with a far deeper tradition of politics than any of the desert or Gulf Arab countries.
For that matter, people compare it to Yugoslavia, with the Lesson Learned that Iraq would "inevitably fly apart" from the "centripetal forces" of divisiveness between Shia and Sunni and Kurd and so forth, and while that's not to be sneezed at, neither, it seems to me, was the flying apart of Yugoslavia inevitable. There were considerable forces holding that creation together, as well, and many citizens who regarded themselves as "Yugoslavs," just as many Iraqis today regard themselves as "Iraqis," not members of a tribe or village alone. I'm not convinced that Yugoslavia could not have done better nor that Iraq couldn't sustain a vibrant democracy within a decade (inevitable point to the, admittedly less heterogeneous, Kurdish free area here). (Nor am I convinced that an Iraqi project would be any sort of sure success!)
Anyway, thanks muchly for an excellent and thoughtful response. You do know, by the way, that the URL you give for your "website" is not reachable due to 403 error?
aphrael notes: "I know of no branch of political theory which holds that a democracy which is imposed from without will function correctly."
Setting aside theory for the moment, and setting aside and granting absolutely a huge range of utter differences in circumstances, I'm curious what aphreal does think of the German government of today, and the West German Federal Republic as constitued in 1949, as well as of the Frankfurt Documents and the Six Power Conference of 1948?
Scott Martens, I've just blogged on me blog a paragraph of your entry. Scroll to "I'M OPEN-MINDED ABOUT THAT."
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