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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Saturday, January 31, 2004
Telling the UN Where to Get Off
A further suggestion following this post, Ray Phelps writes via e-mail to suggest:
I don't know if anyone has mentioned it but I think a great candidate for UN relocation would be Tel Aviv. Let the worldly diplomats see just what their policies have wrought on Israel.
It's something to think about. One could hope that it would result in the hoped-for "attitude adjustment".
Of course none of these posibilities will ever come to pass, they're more thought-experiments than anything else, and also serve to illustrate that the fellowship of the "International Community" for the world's poor and disorder-wracked regions only goes so far.
Julie Cleeveley writes via e-mail in reaction to yesterday's post as follows:
Your correspondent David Preiser got it dead right. I am British, pro Bush and pro War on Terror. The BBC has whipped up a level of anti-Americanism and hysteria that has knocked me sideways. I find it very alarming to see how powerful propaganda is, how it can warp ordinary, generally intelligent laid back Brits. Last week was a good week, with Gavyn Davies, Greg Dyke and Andrew Gilligan all resigning. It was the best news since Saddam's capture. Through Hutton, the British establishment has sent a message to the BBC to clean up it's act, or risk losing the charter, and with it 2.8 billion of citizen's money. Any Americans e-mail you with tales of anti-Americanism in London-believe them, and please give them my apologies. Too many British people are possessed with this mob hysteria. I am convinced that half the BBC are stoned most of the time; this is the only way I can explain the arrogance, the irresponsibility, the rudeness and the ignorance. Forget SARS and bird flu, this anti-Americanism is the real danger to health. It is like a plague.
One of the reasons I've listened to the BBC World Radio News reports regularly is to keep up with how things are being reported. There is a steady, day-by-day theme to their reportage to the point that I can see how it would seem normal and form the picture of reality regarding the U.S. for much of the British population.
Even so I think that if anything I may have underestimated its impact. The mail, like Julie's, certainly emphasizes the point. I think that makes it all the more important for those of us on the "pro" side of the argument to be aware of and do what we can to tackle this. I also hope that policy makers are aware of the dangers. Given some of the speeches Blair has given, he seems to be, but perhaps he's not the right man to tackle this phenomenon credibly, given the undercurrent of distrust of him that seems prevalent in Britain.
The "We Don't Get It post generated some well-considered responses.
Jeff at Caerdroia has a post worth reading on the whole matter and the wider war. Of course, it's the fact that there is a wider war which makes fallout - both positive and negative - so important. If it were just a closed episode, that would be one thing. But the fact that all parties, friend and enemy, pro and against, know that it's a piece of the whole rather than the whole enhances the significance of everything related to it. The battle for "hearts and minds", not only outside the West, in the Islamic World, but within the Western World itself, is one part of the war. As I've noted in posts related to the "Humanities" the need to comprehend and value what makes our society relatively successful so those things can be implanted elsewhere is an important aspect of the war. Whether we like it or not, episodes like this fuels the movement that insidiously eats away at that, and at the confidence needed to defend ourselves: The belief that what we have is worth defending.
We're all familiar with aspects of "The Litany", anti-Western and ant-American interpretations of history that fairly or unfairly paint us as the bearers of a tradition worthy only of contempt. The problem here is that there is a high chance at the moment that fairly or unfairly, this will be added to the list. It's already being done. That's what I'm concerned about, because it does affect how people view our efforts.
M. Simon writes, via e-mail:
No WMDs?
Good. There were programs. We got to them before they could complete anything.
No WMDs?
There is great danger. They were working with other countries in a distributed system. Each had a piece of the puzzle so that none could be proved directly responsible. This is in fact David Kay's line.
Those are good points and I suppose my point is that we need to be as indefatigable in raising points like these, counter arguments, as the other side will be in promoting the "Bush Lied!" meme and its variants. Some have been blase about it, or seemed to be. Others would rather just move on to what were always, for many, stronger reasons for fighting the war.
I think we should stress those strong reasons, but always take the time to rebut this, lest it become the Official History that "everyone knows" is true. M. Simon goes on:
It would be a shame to lose the Brits in this war. The American people get it. For whatever reason (no Bali, 9/11?) the Brits don't. A shame but we can carry the load ourselves.
My answer to those who object to American policy? Do it your own way before we do it our way and we won't bother. Otherwise sit down and STFU.
It's an answer. I guess it's not mine, but it's an answer and ultimately, in the end, it'd be my answer too. It's not my preferred one and I think it will be a lot harder to succeed on our own than it will with at least some support. As the Caerdroia post points out, this isn't entirely a foreign problem. There are plenty of Americans with similar attitudes, and a danger that proportion could grow if we flag in waging the battle of ideas.
If anything, things are worse than I presented them. Some of the reaction I got to the post dealt specifically with the subject of anti-Americanism in Britain. None of the feedback argued that there was less than I thought. David Galway wrote from Ontario, Canada, via e-mail:
you wrote:
While I disagree with some of the specific points made in the piece, this one I believe is accurate. Oh, sure, one will find anti-Americanism in Britain among the usual suspects.
I'm not so sure I'd be so quick there ... perhaps things have changed, but when I attended the equivalent of high school in England I found anti-Americanism to be more or less systemic. The teachers, the kids, their parents, the media ... everyone seemed to hate the USA. [Of course those were the Contra years, the Central American adventuring that was seriously underreported in North America (I am Canadian, a pro-war Canadian, I might add) and very heavily covered in England (gosh, by the BBC do you think??? heh ...) ]
It infected me too ... like most Canadians my age and education in the early 80s, I thought America was out of control. (I felt for sure we were headed for nuclear war when I saw that footage of Reagan leaving the Reykjavik conference; that dark stormy look frightened me. Now of course I have changed my mind, and if that story of him walking up behind Gorbachev and whispering "nyet" in his ear is true ... ) A couple of months-long road trips through the Continental US cured me of any ill feeling I had towards the USA and her citizens, and of course 9/11 has made me believe that we are all Americans, or rather, the threat is not just to America but Western civilization in general.
Joe Katzman at Winds of Change is a pro-War Canadian who feels the same way. So they are out there, but I get your point that it's a minority. At least in populous Ontario & Quebec. Probably the Prairie Provinces are less like that - that's my general impression of Canada.
I do know all about the attitudes the BBC EUBC presenters convey. David Preiser wrote from New York via e-mail emphasizing the point:
I, too, read Robin Harris' article with dismay. You are quite right to point out the flaws in his argument; I am currently formulating a letter to the editor myself on this. The logic in this article is so hopelessly whacked, it is easy to poke a stick through the large holes.
I use some of the same arguments you've made, plus a couple of others about the "lapdog" issue, and, more importantly, the Anti-American angle, which is why I'm writing you. What's really sad about this article is the total contempt with which Harris seems to hold the American public. He contradicts himself in his own article, then shrugs at the end as if to say, "Never mind. The Americans are too slow-witted and closed-minded to understand. They'll still love Blair". Thus the rabid Blair hatred which has really become pervasive at the Spectator rears its ugly head.
Yes, I know the Spectator's slant. But it's not alone in that slant. I didn't agree with Harris but to me he was expressing an attitude that is distressing not because it is one man's, or one magazine's, or even one political movement's attitude in Britain: it's becoming a pervasive attitide. From what I can tell, when he talks about how the British people are seeing Blair and how this hasn't helped Anglo-American relations but instead threatens to weaken them, on that he's right. Precisely because the view of things that he expresses is so widespread and crosses political and ideological boundaries. The letter goes on:
In my experience, especially recently, there is in fact quite a bit of the teeth-gnashing, angry Anti-American sentiment that we are seeing on the Continent. The vast majority of BBC presenters demonstrate this quite well, when they sneer and sigh at every mention of anything to do with the US, whether Bush is involved or not. This attitude is even more overt on British popular TV shows than it has ever been, lining up very nicely with our own Hollywood Hatemongers. I have experienced blind devotion to the Anti-Bush memes in London pubs and public gathering places. Every single one of my British friends - even the ones that aren't already brain-dead Socialists - has said things in recent conversations that tell me that these ideas are becoming more and more accepted as reality, rather than political opinions. Last month I spent a long evening in a lovely old country pub explaining to a friend (in fact a conservative Speccie reader in his early '30s) that everything he was being told by his newspapers and TV newscasts was very much like the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": much of it is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate. Intelligent, educated, discriminating people are buying into this garbage because now that's all there is over there in the public forum. These voices are getting much louder in the UK, and the ideas are rapidly embedding themselves in the greater public consciousness. This is the real reason why Dyke and Davies had to go.
This whole thing is very sad.
Yes, it is. One of my British friends who I talk to via ICQ notes that it wasn't always quite as bad as it has become (much like the NYT) and also wants to emphasize that not all the BBC is the same as the News Division. Some of it is very good in his opinion, including the Documentary Division.
Related to Andrew Sullivan's post on the Hutton Report backlash in Britain is this piece in the Spectator asserting that far from being a hero, Tony Blair has damaged Anglo-American relations:
Yet a powerful case can be made that this Prime Minister has done great harm to the Anglo-American relationship. He has undermined this country’s trust in America’s motives. He has made the British public reluctant to contemplate any further action to bring rogue states to heel. He has planted the bacillus of Euro-pacifism in the only major European state hitherto immune from it.
Arguing that Blair has undermined trust in America's motives when he has been an eloquent spokesman in defense of them seems to go a bit far. Arguably the fallout of the war and not finding WMD has done that, regardless of the fact that it was based on intelligence that not only was not disputed by any Western intelligence agency but was shared by them all. Despite revisionism now, which Blair tackled here, before the war not one government in any Western country seriously disputed the intelligence assessments regarding Saddam's WMD programs, the debate was on how best to handle it. Never the less, this remains true even if it is not "fair":
The Prime Minister has no credibility as a war leader in any quarter now. Saddam Hussein may have been found, but weapons of mass destruction have not, and (in any quantities at least) clearly will not be. That may not matter much in the United States, but it is politically fatal in the United Kingdom.
I think a lot of us on the "pro-war" side have been less concerned about the consequences of this than we should be, myself included. Beyond a correct insistence that more should be done to clean house and undertake reforms in the intelligence agencies, we've shown less attention to this than we should. I believe in aggressively arguing the point while also acknowledging the problem. I'm certainly not saying we should give credence to the "Bush Lied!" meme - indeed, we should continue to present the facts that rebut it, and have to do that because the stakes are high in exactly this way. I wrote about the importance of finding WMD in Iraq as early as last June, and I'm not certain people took those points as seriously as they should have.
Sure, there were many good reasons for fighting the war and removing Saddam. All these were argued by various people, including members of the Bush Administration, in the run up to it. Many of us thought these other reasons were more important than the WMD justification, a justification that only became central to the argument when, at the prompting of war skeptics and opponents, the debate was shifted to the UN and thus carried out in a way that the debate on intervention in Bosnia or Kosovo never had to be: legalistic, technical. But even there the UN Resolutions mention more than just WMD programs, but an entire array of violations by Saddam Hussein that have been swept out of the post-war debate, at least for some.
The Spectator piece highlights the importance of engaging in this debate and winning it. Indeed, it highlights that one of the reasons we went through the UN was not just war skeptics at home, but at the urging of Blair:
He proffered a stream of bad advice to President Bush, some of which was unfortunately taken. Thus he confidently persuaded the President to resort to the UN Security Council to authorise war. Despite protracted diplomatic wrangling, these initiatives totally failed. Mr Blair urged the Americans to build a wide coalition, including Muslim powers: high hopes were entertained by the British Foreign Office of the mullahs of Iran and even of the preposterous ruler of Syria. That diversion failed too. Mr Blair finally pressed the President, against the latter’s better judgment, to embark upon a new Middle East initiative in the form of a ‘road map’. The suicide bombers and Ariel Sharon together, quite predictably, tore it up.
Americans such as myself who admire Tony Blair's fortitude - a fortitude I didn't believe he had - in unwavering support of the effort, should remember the miscalculations along the way, just as we remember Bush's.
The Spectator piece then launches into one of the common criticisms of the war: the argument that because there were multiple good reasons for removing Saddam, arguing them was "inconsistent". All these reasons were arguably good ones. But the point isn't that the Spectator piece is wrong so much that whether it is right or wrong matters somewhat less than the fact that it expresses what is becoming the conventional wisdom, the widespread interpretation of the Iraq war. This bodes ill not just for the now, but for any future efforts in the larger war. For those who want to dismiss it as just an expression of the rash of anti-Americanism, Robin Harris writes:
Unfortunately, such nuances are lost when viewed from across the Atlantic. Tony Blair’s travails will convince many Americans that he is the victim of anti-Americanism. Every opinion poll suggests that he is not. Britain suffers from none of that embittered envy of American great-power status that affects much of continental Europe.
While I disagree with some of the specific points made in the piece, this one I believe is accurate. Oh, sure, one will find anti-Americanism in Britain among the usual suspects. But it certainly hasn't been either as virulent or as widespread as on the Continent. However, it could become so if the view that America's motives are not to be trusted mentioned in the quote at the top of this post, spread unchecked. We need to take this a lot more seriously than we have been.
Update: Jeff at Caerdroia has some thoughts and there is more reaction here.
So far it hasn't been so great. Early this month the way I handled something cost me an online friendship that was important to me. Yesterday afternoon, I lost my job.
People have sometimes wondered how I found the time to blog so much. Work had gotten slooooow. So in that sense, I should have seen the handwriting on the wall. Internet use became the rationale for ending my employment but at bottom there just wasn't enough work to justify keeping me on staff. We got done unpacking from the show I mentioned in an earlier post on Wednesday, the last really "busy" thing for the foreseeable future, and Thursday afternoon I was let go.
Anyhow, if any of my readers knows someone who is looking for an efficient, intelligent, competent worker and doesn't mind hiring a blogger as long as he gets his work done in a timely manner, please get me in touch with them. I won't mind moving if I have to.
Till I find a job blogging will probably be sporadic and posts made at different times.
Regarding this post from yesterday on getting the UN out of the U.S., Dr. Weevil reminds me that he's way ahead in recommending sites for the new UNHQ, suggesting Khartoum as an even better alternative than Kinshasa. Since UN and UN-related offices are spread out all over, I'm sure we could find a way to make sure neither is "excluded" or "disenfranchised" from having a central role in lodging the institutions of the International Communitytm.
After all, why is the ICC in Europe and using European models of jurisprudence? doesn't perpetuate a Eurocentric outlook in a world that needs to be more multicultural?
I'm not so sure that I really like the idea of passing laws by referendums either, or at least when it comes to substantive measures. I have, however, toyed in my mind with the idea of the anti-referendum, which I think would be a good thing. Simply put, have a mechanism whereby referendums can be used only for the purpose of repealing unpopular laws, or for unseating politicians who have demonstrated incompetence or utter disdain for the wishes of their constituents. That's the kind of populism I could get behind.
Maybe. Used to be that was what elections were for. Now, with politicians choosing who can vote for them rather than voters choosing who will represent them, well things are changing. But recall won't work there.
Within recent memory, that was also what public pressure was for. I still have vivid memories of Dan Rostenkowski (D-Il) in a car surrounded by old people beating on it and calling him a "murderer". They repealed the Catastrophic Care measure they had just added to Medicare so fast it made one's head spin (and somewhere in a Democratic political consultant's mind, the idea of using "mediscare" tactics against Republicans was born. . .)
Of course, in some ways that episode demonstrates that "popular" isn't always the same as "good policy" and unpopular not identical to "bad policy". Why were these codgers calling Rosty a murdering scumbag? Because the catastrophic care benefit wasn't entirely "free" for them - that is, it wasn't entirely paid for by people like me. The old cusses were being asked to chip in some ducats of their own to pay for the benefit - not all, but some. That was an outrage, it Would Not Stand, and it didn't. Rostenkowski never forgot the episode.
And really, I do like what happened to Gray Davis. I do think the voters should have the option to "fire" their elected representatives. It doesn't happen that often, but when it does I think it gives a great big wake-up call to the other folks in office who have assumed attitudes similar to the bureaucrats in the EU. There are consequences involved when you break your promises or you abuse your power. I think the political class would be much improved if they always had the vision of a sword over their head ready to strike them at any time should they be treacherous to those who elected them. But maybe that's just me.
This is as good a time as any for me to eat a small portion of crow regarding my opposition to the Recall.
Not an entire plate, mind. Much of what I was concerned about still stands. But not all of it. The Democrats in the State House are showing more cooperation than I thought they would. That doesn't mean they're agreeing with Arnold on everything, but they aren't obviously out to sabotage him and scapegoat him for the State's problems and leave him holding the bag-o-blame as I thought they would. It's looking like I over-estimated their partisanship.
I do still think the Recall had problems. After all, Davis wasn't Ruling-by-Decree. The Assembly members who passed the measures he signed will still escape the consequences of their behavior. But the nightmare scenario I feared definitely didn't come to pass, and it may well be that the people who favored the Recall of Davis not only as a means of getting rid of him but "sending a message" to the rest of the Pols were right, and the message was received.
In any case there doesn't seem to be more than the usual level of disagreement between a Governor of one party and a legislature controlled by the other. So I guess now I agree with Terry Cobb: used rarely and appropriately they aren't so bad. Like I said in my screed on referendums linked to above, I can understand why voters resort to it in the face of unresponsive representatives.
The chemical weapons stockpile of a ruthless dictator known for killing his own people who were members of disaprooved ethnic and religious groups and invading his neighbors have been found and declared a "sleeping menace" by CNN. Even Greenpeace is concerned:
The environmental group Greenpeace says they should be recovered. . .
"This problem is not going to go away," countered Paul Johnston, principal scientist at Greenpeace research laboratories
Meanwhile, back in Iraq. Er, Bulgaria. Um, whatever.
NFL Hall of Fame reciever Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsh has died. My Grandmother went to High School with him in Wausau and he was a stand up guy in Madison when I was living (growing up) there.
May the Lord keep his soul, and comfort his family and friends.
I suppose readers can be the judge of how well I did. I would say "ok" but not great. The two I really misjudged were Clark & Edwards. I thought Clark would pancake more and believed Edwards would hold on to more of the vote than he did.
I do feel somewhat bad - though not too bad - for Joe Lieberman, who is the only one in the bunch that isn't completely full of fecal matter on the war. With respect to the others. . .well, more on that later in a post adressing the topic head on.
In a follow up to this post from yesterday, a reader writes as follows:
My 8th grade teacher said something that I will always remember. "You can decide to do nothing. If someone tells you to do something you can decide to do nothing"
In this vein, to decide not to judge is a judgement. It is part of the prioritization process we all go through to decide what is important. We can decide to think about one topic while deciding not to think about the rest.
In deciding not to judge, one is agreeing that the actions do not affect them or society and can be safely ignored. That is a judgement call.
True. I've noticed that the things people say we shouldn't judge are things that they have some sympathy for. Perhaps not quite approval, but certainly not disapproval, and many of these same people are certainly willing to express disapproval (a judgement) on other things. It is ultimately a species of Liberating Toleration: tolerance for movements of the Left but not of the Right. A pattern invariably forms that we're only to suspend judgement when it comes to mascots of the Left. For example, Pinochet is to be harshly judged, Castro's situation is to be understood. European Crusades are deplored, judgement suspended on the Islamic conquests, &tc.
I have no problem judging misbehavior engaged in by Right-Wing elements. That's not the problem with this meme. I do have a problem with being told to suspend judgement of misbehavior by Left-Wing elements and movements, cultures, people, &tc that the Left adopts as mascots.
So I finally started putting together a blogroll, at long last. It was precipitated purely for antisocial reasons: I'm superhappy to never get a Rittenhouse link, and now I'm guaranteed to never get one.
Another site got a link because purely by chance while doing something else I happened upon the perfect image for a link to that site. The last couple weekends I finally got around to coding those webpages I've been babbling about coding (which is one reason posting is down some), and I chanced upon an image that's just perfect.
I put links up to a couple other sites I favor, too. The problem with blogrolls is that people who aren't on 'em may feel unloved. I don't have a complete roll of my favorite blogs up yet. I hope to add to the roll over time (then it'll get to long. . .the other blogroll problem). In any case, if your site's not on it it may not be because I don't like it.
Some people won't get blogroll links regardless, even though they're favorite sites of mine. These are folks who are on everyone's blogroll: Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds, Steven Den Beste, to name the main ones. I link to them a lot within posts, and like I said long blogrolls are unmanagable. Why does Winds of Change get a link, then, considering I also link to them a lot? Just because.
Paul Johnson has a good suggestion. Indeed, I can't see why the UN wouldn't support it.
After all, the people involved in international institutions are always saying that more should be done for the developed world, but then they set up their own domiciles in posh cities: New York, the Hague, Geneva, &tc. I think they should move UNHQ to Kinshasa in the Congo, and redistribute the other institutions of the "world community" to poor areas. Let the diplomats, bureaucrats, and functionaries spend their dollars in places like Lagos, Nigeria. The infusion of cash would help the local economies, and the scions of the International Communitytm would be putting their money where their mouths are. Literally.
Isn't going to happen, you say? Such a pity.
Meanwhile, back in Iraq, an investigation begins into the activities of the good people, the ones who only cared about the welfare of the Iraqi people and wanted to stop the war and ultimately lift the sanctions so things could return to business as usual:
The list includes members of Arab ruling families, religious organizations, politicians and political parties from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria, France and other countries.
Organizations named include the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Communist Party, India's Congress Party and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. . . .
"These people took bribes. Sadly, the Iraqi people paid the price,"
Oh. Here I thought they were the caring people in the World Communitytm, unlike those heartless, oil-hungry Americans.
The Hutton Report is out and has determined that Blair did not manipulate intelligence but the BBC did make reports not supported by the facts.
This is only news because of the feavered propaganda of the Left. I predict that feaverish propaganda won't go away, despite the findings of the Hutton inquiry or any other inquiries that are convened which come to similar conclusions, because the Left's propaganda has never been about the facts.
Update: Ripples of the report at the BBC and Downing Street. The good guys - the real ones - win one.
I'm not a huge fan of referendums either, actually. But then I'm not a "Power to the People" Leftist, I'm a republican (small R) rather than a democrat (small d).
Unlike Steven, I'm not a populist.
however, when it comes to matters like how we're to be governed, what we'll be governed by, whether to adopt a new Constitution creating an entirely new mechanism of governance, things like that: hell yah, I think that the will of the people (as opposed to the General Will as determined by a self-selected elite) should apply.
See, in my opinion what is involved here is exactly how people will be told how to live their lives: one look at the draft EU Constitution that Antonsen was talking about shows that.
I believe in limited government and have described myself as a Hayekian conservative. IMO his points with regard to whether democracy (people voting and whatever they vote for, that's good enough) equates to liberty are spot on.
I also agree with Burke that a representative owes the constituency not just reflecting their views, but his sound judgement: representative government is important, I agree, because not every citizen can make themselves an expert on every policy matter (not every representative can or does, either, which is why there are committees, &tc). So I don't disagree with Michael on that, as a general rule.
However I do believe that there is certainly a role for the wishes of the electorate: I think that the contempt Michael sees in Antonsen's mark expresses the perspective of the EU's elect on that. A sense of lack of accountability to voters, that voters views are to be disregarded in toto, and the rulers insulated from the governed.
This is a significant difference, IMO, from either Hayek or Burke. I know for certain it's a different perspective from Hayek, who did not believe in absolute democracy but likewise had pithy things to say about Rule by Experts, which is what the EU embodies and in my opinion is the attitude Antonsen expresses.
On the one hand there is the view Michael expresses, which is similar to Hayek's, that people should be left to live their lives as they chose by and large and with only such government involvement as is necessary for the functioning of a free society under the rule of law (the latter being important), but on the other hand is the EU view expressed by Antonsen that people's lives should be governed by a wise and enlightened elite that does not trouble itself with the uninformed views of the mass of humanity.
Sure, she is dismissive of the term "conservative", and Hayek was as well. But coming from much different perspectives.
I'll also say that representatives can and do fail, especially when insulated from voter feedback consequences. This indeed is why referenda processes have grown in several States in the U.S. I wasn't happy with the Recall of Grey Davis, but I can understand why voters felt compelled to resort to it. Similarly I don't see referenda processes such as have been used in California and in the state I'm currently living in, Colorado, to get initiatives passed. But often they've been the only way to get movement on issues that political elites otherwise ignore. The cures have not always been the best cures, but I do see that it isn't just the underinformed voters who can fail the political system: sometimes elected representatives do so as well, especially when they are as unaccountable as some have made themselves, and especially in Europe. One of the things that troubles me now, here in America, for example, is the trend towards "representatives" selecting their voters rather than voters selecting who will represent them (through computer-aided redistricting), insulating themselves from feedback by making "safe" districts for themselves. Safe from what? Electorial defeat.
Representatives become especially prone to failures when they insulate themselves from the governed and adopt attitudes that they know best for others and can determine how they ought to live and under what rules without any input from the people who are expected to live under these rules. That is a big problem with the EU, one that I’ve noted repeatedly in my posts on the EU and its processes, and the Antonsen piece is yet another example of this at work.
I get Michael's point on the tyranny of the majority, but the problem within the EU is the tyranny of a small, self-selected elite vanguard that believes it knows best over the majority. They do not evidence much respect for anyone's desire to live their lives without interference, which is what Michael says he fears. If there is anything worse than the majority telling people as the result of a popular vote how to live their lives, it is an elite that is insulated from the consequences of their policies, as the EU governing classes are, telling people how to live their lives.
If the problem with the EU was too much democracy, I'd be with Michael. But that's not the problem with the EU. The EU has the opposite problem. I do believe that people should have a strong voice in how they are to be governed, and that's what Antonsen, and most of the scions of the EU, want to deny them. I belive that's quite telling about their attitudes towards the individual member of the "Community", and liberty itself. That attitude is further revealed within the text of the Draft EU Constitution that Antonsen wants to be enacted without reference to the views of the citizenry who will live under its rule. See my "A Constitution for Bureaucratopia" series (enter that phrase into my search engine) for details, and Steven Den Beste's own recent post on how this Draft Constitution would take numerous issues off the table, mandating Social Democratic, Transnational Progressive policies and making them untouchable not only by the electorate but by representatives that the voters might elect in the future.
Update: Here's an illustration of what I mean: in the U.S. some Constitutional amendments have been proposed that have a lot of popular support but thankfully never end up cluttering the Constitution. Flag Burning Amendments, for example. But no Constitutional Amendment would be passed that doesn't have popular support. So we see the genius, IMO, of the American system: representatives may pander on stupid stuff, but ultimately don't put stupid things in the Constitution. I expect no Marriage Amendment will ever append the Constitution, either. But neither do the Representatives impose Constitutional changes without popular support ("that's what judges are for" you quip. Yah, more on my lamentation of that another time).
What Antonsen wants is quite the contrary: imposition of a Constitution regardless of popular support, and indeed in the face of widespread popular opposition. Not a Good Thing, in my opinion.
Anyhow, this was a good opportunity for me to distinguish my opposition to referenda in general from those of people like Antonsen.
In Britain, I mean. Tony Blair has survived a vote that, if lost, would have precipitated a Confidence Vote and possibly resulted in the end of his Premiereship.
In unrelated news, Newsweek has a piece on young voters. Whatever else may be said about them, they aren't a Democratic Bastion:
While the near-equal partisan divide among young voters mirrors the split between U.S. voters overall, the poll also suggests that on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, 18-29 year-olds are eager to move beyond the partisan battles of the past.
Read the whole piece. Perhaps I'll have more on it later.
"Judgementalism" as a sin and judging behavior is one theme I plan on tackling. . .when I get around to it, along with posts on such subjects as who and what are "divisive", on "demonization", and other such themes.
The fact is that a lot of the "anti-judgementalism" crowd are happy to make judgements in other contexts, usually bad ones (to which we are not to apply our judgement). But more on that in the general "On Judgement and Judgementalism" post. . .when I get around to it. But I'm sure it wouldn't take me long to search Ross's site and find areas where he doesn't apply the "Who's to Judge?" standard.
I'll leave you all hanging with this one observation: to refrain from judging is to refrain from thinking. To ask people to refrain from judging is to tell them to suspend thought and not use their mental facilities, to just mindlessly accept something unquestioningly. So, tell me again, who are the "S-Factor" people?
Steven Den Beste is already all over this one, and I don't really have anything to add, but I can't resist blogging this, because it's so revealing of the contempt for the electorate that is at the heart of the EU and its champions. This isn't the problem:
"Referenda are in fact pure gambling. There is no guarantee of a positive outcome, unfortunately".
Referendums aren't random, their outcomes aren't a roll of the dice. It's just that the typical citizen of an EU country tends to reject what the EU's elites put in front of them. That is, the outcome of referendums aren't a matter of chance - they are definite expressions of the will of the voters, and those voters tend to reject the vision of the EU's elites whenever they're given a chance.
So the solution, obviously, is to stop giving them the chance. It's a very predictable solution. As for this:
"Referenda have a very conservative effect on development. If the other countries copy us, the EU will fall apart"
Denmark (the country alluded to here) doesn't really have a reputation for being a bastion of conservatism. Denmark's electorate is fairly Liberal. What this quote characterizing the voters as "conservative" really tells you is how extreme the champions/vanguard of the EU are.
This also puts yet another nail in the coffin of the idea that the Left is all about "power to the people" and giving voice to the wishes of the masses of common people. It's always been a crock, of course. But it's increasingly evident to anyone who is paying attention. It also shows, in my non-humble opinion, that material egalitarianism and redistributionist politics have no connection, except perhaps a negative one, to maintaining a robust civic discourse based on respect for the interests and wishes of the citizenry as a whole - that is, all the citizenry, not just those who have escaped "false conciousness" and are "aware and enlightened" enough to support what they're supposed to support and oppose what they're supposed to oppose in accordance with the vision of progressives, rather than express "conservative" views in random, gambling ways. One wonders if Charlotte Antonsen has thought of characterizing letting the electorate vote on how they are to be governed as a "risky scheme". Bob Shrum should give her a call.
Update: Michael at Discountblogger comments on referenda and I blather on more here.
Tony Blair is facing a troublesome period this week, and he's saying that the Intel was right. Meanwhile, the Manchester Union Leader reports that al-Qaeda WMD program was halted by the war in Afghanistan. Senator Lugar thinks more troops are needed in Afghanistan. Hey, isn't that what internationalizing it and involving the UN and our allies was supposed to provide? After all, Afghanistan is being handled in the model that people believe should be applied to Iraq. We're told that internationalizing Iraq in the manner that we have in Afghanistan will produce a surefit of troops from other countries to share the burden. So then what's up with respect to Afghanistan?
The answer is obvious: such claims have always been more political than practical. Additional troops for Afghanistan aren't going to come from France or Germany, just as additional troops for Iraq aren't going to come from those countries even if we handled it exactly the way the Democratic candidates say we should have. Here's why Our Allies want America to share military technologies with them: So they can trade them to their new friends, making money and sticking it to Uncle Sucker at the same time.
After my Caucus Predictions I should be either banned from further predictions or forced to redeem myself. We'll go with redeem myself, since that means I get to continue to play. I'll go with:
Mr. Kay told the New York Times that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his fledgling nuclear program as late as 2001, and had an active program to use the deadly chemical ricin as a weapon until he was stopped by the U.S.-led invasion in March.
Then there is this story from this January about a plot possibly involving the use of Ricin in France (again).
(Ricin-related links via Instapundit's search engine).
Yes, I know, I know: we're only supposed to draw nefarious inferences when things involve Bush, Cheney, Haliburton, the Vast NeoCon Conspiracy, and the like. We're not supposed to draw connections between our enemies producing, say, Ricin and Ricin showing up in stories involving terror plots. Nothing to see here, Saddam was obviously not involved in any of these episodes, move along(.org. . .)
"The Fallujah region is filling up with Wahhabis," a tribal representative from that section of the Sunni Triangle said in a late December discussion in Washington. He had come to the capital in hopes of brokering a new agreement between his people and American troops, following disorders in the town. "They are streaming in, exploiting the confusion and misunderstandings between the local residents and the U.S. forces."
Then there is this:
Just two months ago, a report from Iraq by Vernon Loeb, in the Washington Post, included the following significant comments: "Division commanders also said they now have solid evidence that Baathists loyal to Hussein are cooperating with Iraqi Islamic radicals whom the military refers to as Wahhabis, a particularly puritanical sect of Muslims dominant in Saudi Arabia. 'The Wahhabis love Osama bin Laden, the former regime loyalists love Saddam, they both hate us, and the enemy of my enemy is my friend,' said one officer. 'They are in cahoots 100 percent.'"
Beginning last summer, Saudi names began appearing among those of "martyrs" killed in Iraq. Late in November, the Saudi opposition website arabianews.org, which had chronicled the deaths of various Saudi jihad fighters in Iraq, reported the death of Adel Al-Naser from Riyadh. Al-Naser was killed on November 21 in Bagobah, a city near Baghdad. The website observed that "the number of Saudis fighting [in Iraq] has been rising over the past few months." Furthermore, Saudi guards on the Iraqi border told the website's writers, "Saudi fighters are still heading to Iraq, with little scrutiny by Saudi authorities." A guard commander in Rafha, a border outpost southwest of the Iraqi line, complained that he had asked for more equipment and personnel to monitor the area, but never received them. The guards merely fire warning shots when they observe people crossing the border illegally. Another guard, quoted by the same website, said "the infiltrators are highly skilled at crossing the borders."
Check out the whole piece. I said I was optimistic about prospects. I didn't say we were at the end yet. But there is, after all, this:
Meanwhile, it is clear that the jihadists are concerned that Iraqis are turning against them. Some would prefer to avoid Iraq and any other theater of operations where most of the victims of their bombings will be Muslims. But apparently the main terror command--al Qaeda--values the Iraqi theater as a diversion from Saudi Arabia.
Hey, even I'm allowed a moment or two of optimism, aint I? Still, I never said any element of Iran's political establishment was on the right track. I'm not that foolish. But "Myth 5" gives some indication of why people might go on anti-American rants which are, by almost all in-depths accounts, insincere when it comes to the population at large.
Another piece I linked to last Friday was Kenneth Pollack's piece on reconstruction efforts in Iraq. The vast majority of the points he raises are serious ones and I think anyone who is interested in the outcome of our efforts there should read the piece. Of current interest may be his take on Grand Ayatollah 'Ali Sistani, whose actions have concerned a lot of folks in recent weeks.
As for my part, Pollack allayed most of the concerns I had about Sistani's role. If Pollack is accurate in his evaluation of Sistani, we don't have anything to worry about - his actions, and those of the Shiites who are taking their cue from him - are a "feature, not a bug". That is, we should be more concerned if things like this weren't happening than that they are: expressions of political differences, political dissent - peacefully - are characteristics vital to a democratic Iraq.
This is not to say that I have concluded that Sistani is right and we are wrong about how an interim Iraqi government should be established (elections or caucuses), but rather that I don't fear disagreement from Iraqis on how to do things, I see that as a Good Sign. It would be a Bad Sign if they were afraid to express disagreements. Thus, from this perspective, things are going rather well. Also, we've been treated to frequent scares that the Shiites have had enough and are about to blow their lid over this, that, or the other thing during the last nine months, that they won't compromise, &tc &tc. Each time things have been worked out, compromises reached, and patience shown. So until I see otherwise, I'm thinking this is not so much a problem-that-could-derail-our-efforts but rather a "political problem", a problem of the sort that is natural when people feel free to hold a variety of opinions on political issues. Again: A Good kind of problem instead of a Bad kind of problem. One I hope gets worked out well, but which I have a fair amount of confidence will get worked out.
In an otherwise good piece, though, Pollack embeds a couple of the usual tropes. There is, for example this one:
Adequately providing security for a country of 25 million people is a massive task. Military analyst James T. Quinlivan of the RAND Corporation has demonstrated that stabilizing a country requires roughly 20 security personnel (troops and police) per thousand inhabitants. In his words, the objective "is not to destroy an enemy but to provide security for residents so that they have enough confidence to manage their daily affairs and to support a government authority of their own."8 For Iraq, with a population of nearly 25 million, that would require a total security force of nearly 500,000. However, the U.S. has fewer than 130,000 troops there and the 32 Coalition allies have so far provided only another 24,000 -- producing a ratio of barely seven security personnel per thousand Iraqis.9 What's more, as noted above, most of these troops are not even trying to conduct basic security operations but either remain in their cantonments or come out only for mostly useless mounted patrols or frequently counterproductive raids against suspected insurgents. Hence the state of lawlessness. . .
However, the Bush Administration's resistance to allowing the United Nations to play a leading role in the reconstruction of Iraq has eliminated the Security Council as a vehicle for garnering such international support, and has made it more difficult to secure commitments from the countries most able to furnish large numbers of troops to stabilizing Iraq. France, Germany, Russia, India, Pakistan, and a host of other nations have refused to commit the tens of thousands of troops that would be needed to bring real security to Iraq.
Much of what Pollack writes about over-concern with force protection on the part of the U.S. and making security for Iraqis a lesser priority hits home, in my opinion. But here in the quoted section it is Pollack, not the Bush Administration, that is pursuing a chimaera.
If 500,000 troops are needed to secure Iraq, it's certainly not going to come from France, Germany, Russia and the like. The NATO members Pollack mentioned have, for example, contributed a few hundred soldiers each to peacekeeping efforts in Afghanistan, for which they've been given monumental credit. The idea that France and Germany, for example, would ever be able to send (even if they were willing) more than a modest force to Iraq is a delusion. As for what Russia might contribute to such an effort, one has to wonder whether, given the antics of Russians (possibly rogue, possibly government-directed) during the run up to the Iraq war, whether the involvement of Russian troops would be more of a help or a hindrance. Given the record of Russian soldiers in Chechnya and their response to provocations like terror attacks, I'm dubious. Lashing out at the population as a whole would not be helpful.
Likewise, when the Democratic candidates for President talk of how they will bring in Iraq's neighbors and let them take a greater hand in this, I have to cringe. Clearly they either don't know or don't care that this is the last thing Iraqis want, precisely because they know that the involvement of their Islamic Brothers will mean the sabotage of any hopes for a democratic Iraq. Iraq's fellows in the Moslem world have no interest whatsoever in seeing an Iraqi democracy work. There is, after all, a reason why the Iraqi Governing Council, in one of its actions that apparently had great popular support, rejected Turkey's offer to send troops. And Turkey is one of the "better" possibilities when it comes to possible sources of peacekeeping forces. It goes rapidly downhill from there. Given the problems Pakistan has with terrorist elements in its own country and the unreliability of its army in rooting them out, would Pakistani troops be that helpful in Iraq? No, I'm not forgetting the good service Pakistan's soldiers have performed in other contexts, but this situation is quite different.
Given these realities that simply cannot be hand waved away if only the policy in Washington or the Administration making policy were different, reliance on Iraqis for basic security (crime fighting and the like) is the best practical option. It doesn't mean it's perfect, but it at least puts responsibility into the hands of those who have the greatest stake in making things work, the Iraqis themselves, rather than entrusting it to those who have the least stake or even interests quite to the contrary of the Iraqis, our "friends" in the "international community" who, lets be honest, would never provide anywhere near a half a million soldiers, even if they had the best intentions and greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission possible, Dave.
About the planned political transfer process, Pollack writes:
In Baghdad, Chalabi opposed the agreement and tried to maneuver the IGC to oppose Bremer until Bremer let it be known that the President had already approved the plan, and therefore it was going to happen whether they wanted it to or not. Again, the President's unswerving commitment overrode all opposition.
That same determination, on the part of the CPA and its successor, but particularly on the part of President Bush, will be absolutely essential if this plan is to succeed. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the President to push the process along and prevent those seeking to subvert the agreement from doing so. If the President is willing and able to do so, the plan can succeed. If he can't or won't, the risk of failure will be high.
If there's one thing I think we've learned about Bush it is that, for both good and ill, unswerving determination once a decision has been made is the hallmark of his White House. That isn't the case in some of the Departments, but is the case when it comes to Bush himself. This can be a drawback when it means unswerving determination to pass Prescription Drugs or to not re-evaluate WMD intelligence, but in this instance it will be a strength. It is not a strength of the "international community", especially its organ, the UN, which would be more likely to try and bend with the various winds and with many cooks in the kitchen send mixed messages and not remain focused on a plan (such as the Nov. 15th agreement) once made. This is something for people who see only strengths in involving the UN to keep in mind: it's drawbacks as well.
Remember also that Pollack was in Iraq during November. It's hard to tell from here how things have gone since then and how well or badly the CPA is performing on concerns he raises in the piece. But October/November was possibly the worst period thus far since the fall of Baghdad. Stratfor had a piece (pay-per-view only) sent to me by an Alert Reader that said, among other things, that:
This created a situation, starting in the summer of 2003, and reaching its greatest intensity during the October- November offensive, in which the United States ppeared to have failed to achieve either of its strategic goals. It appeared unable t o bring the conflict to closure, and its forces appeared incapable of threatening any neighbor.
The perception had a kernel of truth to it, but only a kernel. Most of Iraq was not involved in the guerrilla war. Neither the Kurdish nor the Shiite regions were involved. The war was confined to the Sunni regions and, when compared to guerrilla wars in Vietnam or Afghanistan, was neither particularly intense nor particularly effective. Its significance was magnified by the Bush administration's consistent and curious inability to manage public perception of the war's status. . .
The situation in January 2004 is startlingly different than it was in November. The guerrilla movement is contracting, and the core problems in Iraq have become primarily political, involving the transfer of power. The Saudis are intensely involved in an internal conflict with Islamists and are paying a significant price to wage the war. The Iranians are discussing the public price of reconciling with the Americans while privately collaborating. The Libyan government has reversed policies dramatically, while the Syrians have also begun to search for a path to policy reversal, having massively miscalculated the course of the Iraq war in the summer of 2003.
Finally -- and this may be the single most important fact -- threats that an explosion in the Islamic world would follow a U.S. invasion of Iraq proved to be in error. The single most important fact is that the genuine anger in the Islamic street has not had any political repercussions. Rather than trending away from the United States, the political behavior of Islamic states has been toward alignment.
The situation, therefore, is much better than the administration had any right to expect last fall and substantially better than the general perception. It might be put this way. Even while the tactical situation in Iraq deteriorated, the strategic situation in the region improved. Once the tactical situation in Iraq improved, the improvement in the strategic situation accelerated.
So things seem to be going well, even in the absence of a half a million French and German troops bailing us out in Iraq.
Thanks to those who left generous remarks in the open comments thread. The best sort of comment is one that generates a post. Bernard wrote:
Regarding the part of the SOTU relating to the President's ambition "To cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda...", the "proposal to double the budget of the National Endowment for Democracy" appears to be a welcome step in the right direction. I wonder, though, how effective any attempt to educate and transform the Arabic and Persian Muslim world will be as long as the imams and maddrassahs continue to inculcate a virulently anti-Western and anti-Democratic world view. Certainly, one could argue, as much emphasis should be expended on shutting off these sources of hate as counteracting them.
It's true that anti-American attitudes are widely held in the Arab world, but I have begun to wonder how deeply held they are. It's interesting that you mention the Persian world alongside the Arab one, for by all accounts the Iranian population is the most pro-American in the region. To me that demonstrates the limits of anti-American propaganda when confronted with a governing reality. For a quarter of a century the Mullah's of Iran have demonized America as the source of Iran's problems, but few Iranians believe them anymore.
We see in Iraq that in reality most Arabs are not hostile to America. Sure, some are virulently so, but the vast majority of the Iraqi population are not. But we had been told for over a decade, often b
