Gone Fishing

Since there's no real chance that I'll find the time to blog regularly in the near future, I've decided to shut up shop. If I start blogging again it will be at a new address. Thanks to all the readers and to those of you who responded.

May you live interesting times. (I don't believe in curses.)

- Andrew

Who Wants Civil War in Iraq?

Daniel Pipes for one. In a recent article he argues that civil war "would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one," and indeed it would come with a few benefits such as: destroying the credibility of the democratic model for the region, thus "keeping Islamists from being legitimated by the popular vote"; "reduce coalition casualties in Iraq"; and "reduce Western casualties outside Iraq." Realist foreign policy at its best! Or worst.

It's helpful to juxtapose Pipe's blunt assessment with some comments made by Robert Fisk the other night on Lateline. Speaking about the escalation of sectarian violence in Iraq, Fisk said:

What is going on in Iraq at the moment is extremely mysterious. I go to Iraq and I can't crack this story at the moment. Some of my colleagues are still trying to, but can't do it. It's not as simple as it looks. I don't believe we've got all these raving lunatics wandering around blowing up mosques. There's much more to this than meets the eye.... Somebody is operating these people. I don't know who they are... What is this thing when Bush says we have to choose between chaos and unity? Who wants to choose chaos? Is it really the case that all of these Iraqis that fought together for eight years against the Iranians, Shiites and Sunnies together in the long massive murderous Somme-like war between the Iranians and Iraqis - suddenly all want to kill each other? Why because that's something wrong with Iraqis? I don't think so. They are intelligent, educated people. Something is going seriously wrong in Baghdad.

In the past Fisk has stated that he didn't think Iraq would descend into civil war because "Iraq is not a sectarian society, but a tribal society.... Shiites and Sunnis marry each other." But now he believes that someone is actively trying to start a civil war in Iraq:

The real question I ask myself is: who are these people who are trying to provoke the civil war? Now the Americans will say it's Al Qaeda, it's the Sunni insurgents. It is the death squads. Many of the death squads work for the Ministry of Interior. Who runs the Ministry of Interior in Baghdad? Who pays the Ministry of the Interior? Who pays the militia men who make up the death squads? We do, the occupation authorities. I'd like to know what the Americans are doing to get at the people who are trying to provoke the civil war. It seems to me not very much.

I'll be honest with you and say that when I first heard this I thought Fisk was putting forward one of those wild conspiracy theories. In fact, though, Fisk is being quite elliptical and never does answer his own question. And I believe the reason he isn't prepared to offer an alternative narrative to the one we're getting in the press is that he's not yet in a position to answer the obvious question: why would the occupying powers want a civil war in Iraq? Pipes seems to offer a few possible answers to that question. But I'm not convinced.

None of the "pros" of a civil war in Iraq that Pipes puts forward are even plausible as possibilities, regardless of whether they are to be thought of as positive or not. He first suggests that Iran and Syria would be dragged into a confrontation with the U.S. But on the one hand, in that scenario the United States would find itself fighting on at least four fronts: Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan. The U.S. military can barely cope at the moment. A broader conflict could also destabilize the regimes in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and see Turkey intervene. (And the resulting oil prices would bring Western economies to a standstill.) For another thing, it's not clear why Iran or Syria would want to take such a risk. It is not necessarily in their interests to see Iraq descend into civil war, let alone for them to participate in one when the Americans are involved. Fisk points out that, in the case of Iran, the "main parties in the government of Iraq which have been elected... these are the representatives of Iran." And in the case of Syria: "my sources in this area... tell me that the Americans have already talked to the Syrians and are trying to do a deal with them to try and get the Syrians to help them over the insurgency." In other words, the U.S., Iran and Syria all have their reasons for avoiding a regional conflict. It does not seem feasible that any of them would try to use a civil war as a pretext for one.

The second reason Pipes gives, namely that democracy would no longer be seen as a viable option for the region, suggests that democracy was on the verge of breaking out all over the Middle East! That unfortunately was never the case - and his example of Hamas is in no way related to Iraq. It's a typically "realist" apology for despotism in the region; one that is unrelated to the scenario of a civil war in Iraq.

Pipes goes on to speculate that coalition casualties would be less, the idea being that: "rather than killing American soldiers, the insurgents and foreign fighters are more focused on creating civil strife..." But since that pretty much describes the situation at the moment, I don't see how coalition casualties would be any less. In a full scale civil war, the Americans only have two choices: fight or get out. Otherwise they're sitting ducks.

And finally, to deal with his claim that Western casualties outside Iraq would be reduced. The exact opposite would be the case if the U.S. was dragged into a war with Iran and Syria; which would also almost certainly see an increase in the incidence of terrorism in Western countries. But in any case, it's not clear what casualties outside of Iraq will be reduced. The justification Pipes gives, namely that "when Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt," has nothing at all to do with the reducing casualties outside of Iraq - but rather has everything to do with increasing casualties within Iraq. I don't know why Pipes doesn't just come out and say he'd be happy to see them all kill each other.

For what it's worth, I don't think civil war in Iraq will be the outcome of any conscious decision on the part of any of the major players. It is just one strategy of the insurgency, who at least know how disastrous it would be for the United States; and if they are successful it will be the result of massive incompetence on the part of the occupiers. When Fisk argues that it is illogical for Iraqis to want civil war, it doesn't in any way refute the possibility that this is a strategy of the insurgency. And when he points out that some of the death squads are being run by the Ministry of Interior, it doesn't in any way discredit the fact of corruption, infiltration and incompetence. I'm beginning to think it isn't such a big mystery.

Thinking What They're Thinking

Are you thinking what we're thinking? was the Conservative party's campaign slogan for the 2005 British elections. It was of course satirised mercilessly ("are you drinking what we're drinking?"), and as a marketing exercise it may have been too clever by half. But its genius lies in the way it distils a common right-wing political tactic down to its very essence: so called "dog whistle" politics because it works by sending messages to the electorate at "high frequencies," or in a coded and implicit way. I disagree with the idea that these messages are always meant to target specific voters and not others, because I believe part of the value of this kind of politics depends on precisely the controversy it generates. This will be made clear below.

Literally speaking the Conservative's slogan doesn't assert anything; it's a rhetorical question which doesn't even seek an answer. But it is a very suggestive question: "are you thinking what I'm thinking?" is the kind of thing you might say to someone before jumping into bed with them. In itself, it doesn't put forward a proposition, but it does indicate the possibility of a symmetrical reflection of views. All it needs is some contextual clue as to what the topic of agreement might be. So for one of their campaign posters, the Tory's main text was: "It's not racist to put limits on immigration," written in a hand-writing font, and underneath in a smaller typed font they reproduced their slogan. The choice of font is meant to give the impression that this is the view of an "ordinary" person, a non-politician; the poster becomes a metaphorical looking-glass which reflects public opinion. And the party slogan is merely an invitation for you to agree with what other ordinary people think. It's a very sophisticated rhetorical technique which is deserving of further analysis. And of course it doesn't have to involve drawing attention to itself with a rhetorical question; if anything that probably weakens the whole effect. But its most interesting aspect can be seen when it is deployed as part of a strategy to influence public debate to your party's political advantage.

The ploy comes down to this: make a statement that in itself is almost trivially true, but which in the broader context of political discourse could be associated with an extreme position on a particular issue (say, anti-immigration). The opposing side of this issue is then faced with an unpalatable choice: it either responds by denouncing the statement, which leaves them vulnerable to the charge of contradicting common sense and being outside the mainstream; or it either doesn't respond or agrees with the literal content of the statement, either of which can be interpreted politically as giving tacit support to the other side. The opposition therefore finds itself in a double bind. (But also note that this strategy is less likely to be effective when attempted by the political opposition against a government, as e.g. was the case in Britain, because the government has a third option: neutralising an issue by making changes to public policy.)

A classic example of the effective use of this strategy is the Australian Liberal party's advertisement during the 2001 federal election campaign, in which the PM John Howard is pictured with the words: "We decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come." Now insofar as the "we" in this statement refers to the Australian government or state, then its truth can hardly be doubted. If a modern state didn't have control over its own borders, or at least couldn't claim such a right, then it wouldn't even be considered a sovereign entity. But of course this statement of a simple fact wasn't an arbitrary pronouncement. It was, in part, a belated response to a boatload of mainly Afghan asylum seekers illegally entering Australian waters during the highly charged atmosphere of the newly launched "war on terrorism". In a dramatic military operation the asylum seekers were arrested and detained offshore for processing. There was a further incident in which another group of refugees were said to have thrown their children overboard in an attempt to force authorities to accept them (a claim which was later proven to be false). Now those who opposed Australia's tough (or rough) treatment of asylum seekers were quick to denounce Howard's position as implicitly racist. This led to a public "debate", for want of a better word, which had exactly the effect the government wanted: it split the opposition and polarized the community, with the majority of Australians supporting the government's position on asylum seekers. And all this by simply stating the obvious!

In my opinion there are three conditions in general which make this strategy possible: the first is the binary nature of modern politics, in which you're either for or against the government ("either with us or against us"); the second is that the position being tacitly endorsed enjoys widespread support; and the third is the influence of right-wing commentators on public opinion. First, the binary nature of politics means that attempting to agree with the literal truth of a statement while disagreeing with its connotations is a political impossibility: you either agree with it or you don't. Anything more complicated than a simple "yay" or "nay" is usually ignored. Second, if most people find the connotations of the statement positive, then it becomes very difficult to counter the statement without also attacking the motivations of those who agree with it, especially since it's impossible to refute it on the literal level. And third, the power of conservative opinion makers means that the "common sense" of common sense propositions tends to get exaggerated in public debates. In other words, the literal truth of the statement and its more controversial sub-text tend to get conflated. This is done by frequently and repeatedly characterizing any opposition to the "truth" of the statement as deceptive, stupid, dangerous, radical or foreign - in the mouth of a political "shock jock" these words in fact become synonymous.

I think the best way to combat this strategy, particularly when it is being employed by the government of the day, is to ignore it. I realise this may sound defeatist, or worse, like collaboration; but it is based on the belief that the strategy depends on ongoing public debate about a particular issue. Its singular purpose is to generate more heat than light, as they say; but starved of acrimonious exchanges it will hardly keep the people's interest. In the end people are being invited to agree with something almost on the level of a tautology, so why not let them agree? What will it change? It is when confronted by strongly voiced opposition that people will, more often than not, begin to dig in and seek justification for their prejudices. This is not say that one should never try to challenge people's prejudices; but there's a time and a place for that. Trying to shout over the top of a dog whistle is not the right way to go about it.

Presidential Aphorisms

To end the week, here is my selection of aphorisms from The Complete Bushisms compiled by Jacob Weisberg.

On War:

"I think war is a dangerous place."
—Washington, D.C., May 7, 2003

On Human Cloning:

"It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber."
—Washington, D.C., April 10, 2002

On Israel:

"There's nothing more deep than recognizing Israel's right to exist. That's the most deep thought of all. ... I can't think of anything more deep than that right." -Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

On Belief:

''I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe—I believe what I believe is right." —Rome, July 22, 2001

On Questioning:

"I would have to ask the questioner. I haven't had a chance to ask the questioners the question they've been questioning...."
—Austin, Texas, Jan. 8, 2001

On Leadership:

"After all, a week ago, there were—Yasser Arafat was boarded up in his building in Ramallah, a building full of, evidently, German peace protestors and all kinds of people. They're now out. He's now free to show leadership, to lead the world." —Washington, D.C., May 2, 2002

On Death:

"It's a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life."
—Washington, D.C., Dec. 21, 2004

On Fish:

"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
—Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

On Money:

"It's your money. You paid for it."
—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

On Humanity:

"I am a person who recognizes the fallacy of humans."
—Oprah, Sept. 19, 2000

On the Family:

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."
—Greater Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000

The Worst Has Not Yet Happened

J.M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello is about a prominent Australian fiction writer who travels the world giving public lectures and conference papers. It reads like a thinly disguised series of academic essays, and so it wasn't a surprise to discover, when reading David Lodge's review, that Coetzee had previously presented two of its chapters as part of a lecture series at Princeton University in 1997-8. The idea of using a fictional narrative to frame a theoretical discussion is unusual but not unprecedented: Plato did something similar. Unfortunately, since I spend most of my time reading academic texts, I was less enthusiastic about this book than I had hoped. One chapter, however, continues to intrigue me.

It's called "The Problem of Evil," and it mainly concerns Elizabeth Costello's reaction to a book she read which describes the final days of those who had conspired in the plot to kill Hitler. She takes particular offense to the way the author, Paul West, has imagined the degrading treatment which these men would have suffered, and calls these passages from the book "obscene." Most of the chapter is concerned with the next to impossible task she sets herself in trying to formulate an intellectually convincing case as to why writers or readers shouldn't attempt to recreate such horrors, either on the page or in their own minds. She indicates that the problem lies with having to establish some kind of relationship to evil in order to represent it effectively. One has to make contact with it, or perhaps even let it in. Her own, personal experience of evil seems to confirm this to her; when many years ago when she was brutally assaulted by her date (a docker from the Melbourne waterfront). She compares her traumatic memory of that event to the experience of reading West's book:

While she has less and less idea what it could mean to believe in God, about the devil she has no doubt. The devil is everywhere under the skin of things, searching for a way into the light. The devil entered the docker that night on Spencer Street, the devil entered Hitler's hangman. And through the docker, all that time ago, the devil entered her: she can feel him crouched inside, folded like a bird, waiting for his chance to fly. Through Hitler's hangman a devil entered Paul West, and in his book West in turn has given that devil his freedom, turned him loose upon the world. She felt the brush of his leathery wing, as sure as soap, when she read those dark pages.

Costello is aware how "old fashioned" all of this sounds; and also of the strength of the objection that without the representation of evil we are not in a position to know and therefore prevent it. The irony here is that in order to allow his character to speak and to think, Coetzee has no choice but to represent in writing the assault she suffered, and thus violate the very injunction against evil his character is trying to establish. There is definitely something archaic in the idea that evil can be passed on through its simple representation; an idea which cannot easily be reconciled with modern ideas about art, literature and freedom of expression. In the end she knows her position is hopeless, and that there is no way to prevent the terrible events of the past from returning.

Confronted with a personal or public tragedy, it is perhaps easier to appreciate Costello's point of view. Writing about a new documentary on Sept. 11, Why We Fight, James Wolcott describes the reaction of the father of one of the victims to the endlessly replayed footage of the event:

On that bright, pellucid September morning in 2001, when the blue sky seemed like a magnifying lens, Sekzer looks out the window after the train rounds the curve, and sees that one of the towers is pouring smoke. His son Jason works at the World Trade Center, and Sekzer realizes that if his son is still inside he's a goner. He was. In the grief and anger of the following days, Sekzer phones NBC to beg them to stop showing the footage of the towers' collapse: "How many times are you going to show those goddamn towers coming down? … Please stop. You're ripping my heart out." He couldn't watch, and he couldn't not watch, as the networks broadcast the towers tumbling again and again as if their collapse were playing on a continuous loop. Protests from enough viewers finally shamed the networks into ceasing nonstop flogging of the towers footage, which had the effect of reducing al-Qaeda's feat of mass murder to video wallpaper.

"He couldn't watch, and he couldn't not watch..." This was the same dilemma that prompted Elizabeth Costello to try and find a moral way out: "She did not want to read but she read; a violence was done to her but she conspired in the violation." And this I think is a clue: it isn't so much the "evil" of the event, nor even a respect for the dead which underlies our repulsion before its represention; but its traumatic nature which makes it painful to remember and at the same time impossible to forget. The representation of the event is, in this case, an analogy for the trauma that lives on inside us.

In his discussion of Sept. 11th in Philosophy in a Time of Terror, Derrida suggests that the trauma of that event does not come from the repetition of the past, but rather from the future and the possibility that the worst has not yet happened. It is because we are uncertain about the future, about whether we have seen the last of such evil or whether there is worse to come, that the work of mourning can never be completed. And in a footnote he adds:

Of all the reflections that might be inspired by the televisual media coverage of the event, I would like to underscore the following, which I don't think has really been discussed. By establishing a complete and continuously accessible archive, reproducible at every moment, in a loop, we give ourselves the comforting feeling that "it's over." It's over because it's archived, and anyone can visit the archive! The archive, the archive effect, reassures... and we then do everything to monumentalize the recordings, thereby reassuring ourselves that the dead are dead; it won't happen again because it already took place. We thus deny the irresistable foreboding that the worst has not taken place, not yet.... The only testimonies that escape archivization are those of the victims, not of the dead or of the cadavers (there were so few) but of the missing. By definition, the missing resist the work of mourning, like the future, just like the most recalcitrant of ghosts. The missing of the archive, the ghost, the phantom - that's the future.

As it happens, Wolcott in his review also looks at another documentary, The Unrecovered, about how those who vanished on Sept. 11 and their loved ones who "are sifting through the debris of that day and diagramming its trajectories in the hopes of discovering or confirming a hidden pattern, a buried message, an encoded transmission." That is their future, if not our future too. Perhaps what both Elizabeth Costello and the father whose son died in the World Trade Center were reacting to was the breakdown of the "archive effect," of archival material which could no longer reassure them, because they knew the dead were not dead but missing; and would not be laid to rest as long as there was a future.

Useful Idiots

If you want a glimpse into the world of U.S. political blogging, take a look at "America's Useful Idiots" by conservative Alexandra von Maltzan. It's the occasion for a bitter polemic against her "good blogging friend," the insightful Glenn Greenwald, for criticizing the Bush administration's extra-judiciary NSA survelliance program. Apparently she believes criticizing Bush is akin to the "betrayal of Christ," since she otherwise inexplicably begins her post by reproducing a 16th C. painting of that name.

Here is what I take to be her actual critique:

The line of argument which Glenn provides is feeble and smacks of partisan reflex action disapproval of the President rather than providing us with any irrefutable and succinct argument to back his scurrilous allegations, which amount to The President manipulating the public and fabricating information on past foiled terrorist plots in order to keep up the fear in order to.....well I am not sure what the latest conspiracy theory is, but presumably to rally behind the President in support of his intelligence gathering methods....or better still, simply believe him.

I wonder what the actual point is? We do not have an enemy? We are not in danger and should not keep our vigilance up, and should relax into let's all live in peace together and love each other? We have not had a serious threat in the last five years therefore we will continue not to have any serious terrorist induced disasters? The President is fabricating information regarding thwarted attacks in order to keep the fear factor up? The Attorney General is lying to protect his unlawful President, who in turn lies to the American people to justify our presence in Iraq?

So there you have it - don't you dare suggest that the President is "manipulating the public" or "fabricating information" in the absence of "any irrefutable and succinct argument"! (Why "succinct"? I can only assume that conservatives get bored easily.) She then goes on to borrow a term used by Anthony Brown to characterize the anti-war left: "useful idiots" who by their opposition to the "war on terrorism" are aiding and abetting the enemy.

This completely disingenuous and vacuous attack by Maltzan, which was applauded by a menagerie of right-wing bloggers whom she links to in an appendix, led Greenwald to ask: do Bush followers have an ideology? He writes:

The blind faith placed in the Federal Government, and particularly in our Commander-in-Chief, by the contemporary "conservative" is the very opposite of all that which conservatism has stood for for the last four decades. The anti-government ethos espoused by Barry Goldwater and even Ronald Reagan is wholly unrecognizable in Bush followers, who – at least thus far – have discovered no limits on the powers that ought to be vested in George Bush to enable him to do good on behalf of all of us.

Instead, he suggests that conservatism as a political ideology has been replaced by a "personality cult":

And what I hear, first and foremost, from these Bush following corners is this, in quite a shrieking tone: "Oh, my God - there are all of these evil people trying to kill us, George Bush is doing what he can to save us, and these liberals don’t even care!!! They’re on their side and they deserve the same fate!!!" It doesn’t even sound like political argument; it sounds like a form of highly emotional mass theater masquerading as political debate. It really sounds like a personality cult. It is impervious to reasoned argument and the only attribute is loyalty to the leader. Whatever it is, it isn’t conservative.

It may not be "conservative", but it is politics. I've discussed this before, but what's becoming clear to me now is the full-scale "moralization" of politics. Those on the other side of the political fence are increasingly being characterized in moral terms; and there's nothing like a war to encourage this trend. Greenwald is right in his diagnosis of conservatism, of course. But if there's one thing that does ring true in the conservatives' response, it's that those on the left really do hate Bush. And the Bush administration. And Republicans. And anyone who has a nice thing to say about them. Polarization works both ways, and both sides have their useful idiots.

Toward the end of his essay "The Future of Democracy," Niklas Luhmann cites as a potential "functional deficit" in our political system the moralization of politics. He points out that characterizing one side of the government / opposition difference as immoral and not deserving of respect effectively calls into question the very legitimacy of a change of government in favour of the "wrong" side. This of course undermines democracy. He cites an interesting historical example:

A good example here is the enemy of communists, McCarthy: the moment that he accused the Democratic Party of communist sympathies and infiltration his career was finished. In a democracy the political opponent cannot be treated as unelectable. However, this is what happens when the political schema is made congruent with the moral schema.

Today we don't have senator McCarthy but people like Ann Coulter and the talking heads on FOX accusing "liberals" of "treason". It wouldn't be hard to find similar accusations being directed at conservatives. I don't know what the circuit breaker might be; but as it is, the only ones who benefit from this hijacking of political discourse are those already in power.

I Stand Refuted

Lenin: Oh fucking hell! They don't merely "intentionally satirise the prophet", they fucking demonise Muslims! How is this not obvious? How do so many intelligent [people] miss this?

Montin: Probably because some intelligent people think that the subject of Islamic terrorism can be satirised without demonising Muslims in general.

Lenin: Well, those intelligent people obviously aren't looking at the fucking cartoons properly, you scabby little runt.

How could I have ever taken this idiot seriously?

What is it to look at the cartoons "properly"? Lenin begins an earlier post (which I discussed below) by incorrectly employing the term "logocentric" to refer to the conflation of the distinction between speech and writing (or drawing). In fact, the term as used by Derrida refers instead to the idea that words, signs, marks, etc. carry the kind of inherent meaning that lenin is arguing for. Of course, lenin's argument is undermined by the fact that he has to reach back into the history of orientalism, quote Edward Said, discuss the political situation in Denmark, etc, etc. So much for the "obviousness" of it all.

On the left, I would describe the debate over these cartoons as follows. There are those who concede that the cartoons may be racist, but argue that free speech takes precedence and to this extent racism is irrelevant. Then there are those like lenin who argue that the cartoons are racist, and that therefore the issue of free speech is irrelevant - or better, that "free speech" is a hypocritcal distraction put about by apologists for Western imperialism, etc. etc. (all the while taking advantage of this very freedom). Neither side wants to admit that both racism and free speech might be relevant because, on the one hand, this would mean conceding something to the other side; and on the other hand it would transform the terms of the debate from a simple "clash of civilizations" on the liberal side, and a simple "will to power" on the Stalinist-Maoist-Leninist side.

What would it mean to give due consideration to both of these issues? It would mean first of all asking whether the cartoons really are racist - after much searching I have yet to find any serious attempt to analyse specific cartoons (i.e. not the broad stroke rubbish lenin has come up with). What exactly are people afraid of? I would attempt it myself if I had more expertise and more time... In addition, one should ask under what conditions free speech is and is not legitimate. Without this kind of analysis, the (ultimately insincere) charge from the left-wing extremists that "free speech" is a vacuous concept is allowed to do the rounds unchallenged. But apparently neither of these issues are up for discussion in this debate, which makes it unclear what the hell this debate is supposed to be about anyway - apart from both sides taking comfort in the fact that they were right all along (no surprises there).