Month: July 2005

Some encouraging signs that the Bush administration may shift priorities in the drug war.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s tribute to the stoicism of Little England:

“[Merry and Pippn] turned and walked side by side slowly along the line of the river. Behind them the light grew in the East. As they walked they compared notes, talking lightly in hobbit-fashion of the things that had happened since their capture. No listener would have guessed from their words that they had suffered cruelly, and been in dire peril, going without hope towards torment and death; or that even now, as they knew well, they had little chance of ever finding friend or safety again.
“‘You seem to have been doing well, Master Took,’ said Merry. ‘You will get almost a chapter in old Bilbo’s book, if ever I get a chance to report to him. Good work . . . But I wonder if anyone will ever pick up your trail and find that brooch. I should hate to lose mine, but I am afraid yours is gone for good . . . ‘”

Very English chit-chat. From the “Two Towers.”

“I really appreciated what you wrote this morning regarding the nature of your blog. As a reader, I can say that it has been very refreshing to know that there is at least one political commentator who has not firmly and blindly allied himself to one of the two camps in our bipolar political climate. I absolutely love that you have shown, repeatedly over the years, an ability to actually change your mind, which again, is a precious commodity in the times in which we find ourselves.

That being said, I want to raise something regarding that quote from your blog from 2002:

“These terrorists are not soldiers. They are beneath such an honorific. They are not even criminals. In that respect, Dick Cheney’s and Donald Rumsfeld’s contempt for the whines of those complaining about poor treatment is fully justified.”

Since you held this attitude then, is it not possible that the same kind of attitude animated the actions of those who committed or abetted the system of torture that eventually emerged? I must say, back in 2002 I held this attitude as well. I think at that time the anger over 9/11 was still very acute in my mind. But the passing of time brings a different perspective, doesn’t it? Not that we all should forget about 9/11, but that in our anger we should never push aside the values that make our society unique. I fear that in our collective post 9-11 rage, most of us, including you, including myself, forgot this. And I think the timing of this discussion is important, coming as it does one day after the attacks in London. In the face of such violence, anger is acceptable. But I hope Londoners don’t make the same mistake many of us did after 9/11, and allow their anger to overcome their principles. Given what little I know about the spirit of the British people, somehow I sense that they will pull this off better than we did.

This subject also reminds me of an article I read recently about Abraham Lincoln, which discussed his unique emotional intelligence, chief among which was his ability to empathize with his enemies. Near the conclusion of the Civil War, he told Sherman that he hoped that leaders of the Confederacy, such as Jefferson Davis, could somehow escape the country without his knowing it. Even after a long, tremendously bloody civil war, Lincoln still had the capacity to sympathize with those who had caused so much bloodshed. In fact, in one speech he indicated that if the situations had been reversed, and if Northerners had found themselves forced with the decision to either protect the slavery system or give it up, that Northerners probably would have come to the same conclusion Southerners did. Perhaps that spirit should reside in us during these difficult times as well. Like Lincoln, we need firm resolve, but we also need his essential humanity, and we need to recognize the essential humanity of those who would do us harm.”

Here’s a selection from Britain; here’s a three-part round-up of surrender-now pieces from the Guardian. Robert Fisk sinks to the occasion with this interesting formulation (for subscribers only):

‘If you bomb our cities,’ Osama bin Laden said in one of his recent video tapes, ‘we will bomb yours.’ There you go, as they say. It was crystal clear Britain would be a target ever since Tony Blair decided to join George Bush’s ‘war on terror’ and his invasion of Iraq. We had, as they say, been warned.

It’s Blair’s fault. But notice one word that does not appear: Afghanistan. That’s a war Fisk also opposed. The solution? Give them what they want. And hope they don’t want more.

Just as in the U.S. after 9/11, some who once dismissed terrorism as an over-rated threat have begun to change their minds a little.

Back to the old ways. According to the Beeb, the bombings were apparently a response to the re-election of Tony Blair. His support for the Iraq war is somehow responsible. Money quote about Britain’s support for democratizing Iraq:

Britain therefore remains in the front line, and the option of withdrawing from Iraq and minimising the risk of further attacks is not presently open to British voters. They have taken their decision and must accept the consequences.

But didn’t the al Qaeda group claiming responsibility also cite intervention in Afghanistan as a grievance? And does this BBC editorialist believe that somehow the Jihadists are interested in some kind of deal with Britain, rather than being fanatically opposed to all forms of government that allow for religious and political freedom? Here’s his attempt to answer that question:

There are those who argue that it does not matter what Western governments do these days, that they are all under threat and some will come under attack. However, that discounts the level of political thinking which is evident among al-Qaeda groups. They certainly have their political strategy and judge governments accordingly. Al-Qaeda might not have a detailed political manifesto but it does have aims.

No space left for him to detail those aims. One of them is making sure that a writer for the BBC will never write freely again. You can, of course, infer some kind of political strategy behind this BBC argument: deflect the attacks to America or the Middle East; if we can keep our heads down, they won’t target us first; if we withdraw from Iraq, they’ll leave us alone. Sure, we can agree to disagree about the Iraq war. But the notion that al Qaeda needed such a war as a pretext for murdering Westerners is simply belied by history; and it represents a failure to understand even the basics of their ideology.

Nothing I’m not used to. Yesterday, James Taranto took yet another dig at my early attitude to reports of “poor treatment” of terrorist captives. In January 2002 and for a while thereafter, I somewhat summarily dismissed reports of mistreatment of detainees as probably enemy propaganda and certainly not something that should worry us too much:

These terrorists are not soldiers. They are beneath such an honorific. They are not even criminals. In that respect, Dick Cheney’s and Donald Rumsfeld’s contempt for the whines of those complaining about poor treatment is fully justified.

I’m not proud of those sentences, but they rested on a basic level of trust that of course enemy combatants might be treated roughly, but would not be subject to systematic abuse, torture or beatings. This was the American military. This was the Bush administration, people I trusted. I had no idea – and perhaps I should be held responsible for my naivete – that memos were being written allowing for torture and abuse to occur under the legal cover of a president’s wartime authority. Abu Ghraib had not yet been exposed. The hundreds of incidents of abuse, the dozens of prisoners who died while in captivity, the smaller number who have indeed been confirmed as tortured to death: these facts I did not then know. But after Abu Ghraib, I obviously changed my tune. If that could happen, I worried about what else could have occurred. I read the record. I explored the evidence. I came to a different conclusion. The facts available to me changed; and so I changed my mind. Why is that open process to be mocked? When you blog half a million words a year, and you do so for five years, and you use the blog form as a way to think out loud, the notion that your views will remain identical throughout strikes me as preposterous. When the facts available to me change, I change my mind. But then I guess I’m not James Taranto.

RESPONDING TO CRITICS II: Now for some criticism from the left, i.e. from Atrios and Kos. (Atrios Dowdifies my quote, making it seem as if I wrote it, while in context I’m actually relating the arguments of someone in the Bush administration.) I’ve long written about the “flypaper theory,” the idea that somehow it’s a good thing to attract terrorists to Iraq to fight them there, rather than here, and to deploy an aggressive American force to counter Islamist terror in Iraq. From the beginning, I’ve written about the potential benefits and costs of such a strategy. And to be honest, I still don’t know how to judge it. I’m not prepared to dismiss it out of hand; but the evidence against its efficacy also seems to me to have accumulated over the past couple of years. You can read my treatment of the issue over the years here, here and here. I’d say that the weight of the evidence now bears against this idea; but I don’t think the debate is over, or that the concept was obviously nutty from the start. If you want to read a blog that will always take the position of the Bush administration on the war, there are plenty out there. Ditto if you want to read a relentlessly anti-Bush blog, like Kos. But this blog is a little different. It’s an attempt to think out loud, which means there will be shifts over time in argument and emphasis. It may appear wishy-washy or excitable or whatever. But it’s my best attempt to figure things out as I go along. If you don’t like it, read someone else. If you have a point to make, please email me. I try and read as much criticism of my fallible work as I can.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members… Today, the Spanish society answers to a group of people who, during many years have, been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed. Today the Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their identity, and restores their liberty. It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone’s triumph. It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet: because it is the triumph of Liberty. Their victory makes all of us (even those who oppose the law) better people, it makes our society better. Honorable members, There is no damage to marriage or to the concept of family in allowing two people of the same sex to get married. To the contrary, what happens is this class of Spanish citizens get the potential to organize their lives with the rights and privileges of marriage and family. There is no danger to the institution of marriage, but precisely the opposite: this law enhances and respects marriage.” – Spanish prime minister Luis Zapatero, hailing the inclusion of homosexual couples in his country’s marital laws.

Fuck yeah, they explained. Money quote:

Driving on the wrong side of the road! FUCK YEAH!
Greasy fish dripping through a newspaper! FUCK YEAH!
Page Three! FUCK YEAH!
Alfred Hitchcock! FUCK YEAH!
Eric Clapton! FUCK YEAH!
Going to see Mark Knopfler Tonight in London! FUCK YEAH!
Crabtree and Evelyn! FUCK YEAH!
Shortbread from Marks and Spencer! FUCK YEAH!
Rudyard Kipling! FUCK YEAH!
Lord Stanley and his Cup given to Canada! FUCK YEAH!
Tweed with patches on the elbows! FUCK YEAH!
And The Magna Carta! BIG FUCK YEAH!

That’s enough fuck yeahs – ed.

“Leading a sort of James-Bondy-but-‘extremist muslim’ lifestyle with lots of sneaking around and secret passwords and high explosives and Manichaean struggles between the collosal forces of Good and Evil is so much more fun than the actual process of creating goodness, justice and peace in the world, which lie in the small struggles of everyday life.

As a Muslim, I am horrified by these attacks in Britain.”

Pro-war British leftist, Norm Geras, details how terrorists kill. And yes, today, on the BBC, they’re “terrorists”. Yesterday they were “militants.” I guess it’s all part of a learning process.