Month: January 2007

The truth behind Love God’s Way.

An atheist’s riposte to Kolakowski.

One word: a disgrace.

Today, 4.35 pm, Washington, D.C.

The Daily Star’s Michael Young has tended to downplay the odds of a new civil war in Lebanon in the past. He’s not so sure any more. The good news, however, is that Hezbollah has not been doing too well lately:

The last six months have been a period of meltdown for Hizbullah. The party has been neutralized in the South, at least for the moment; its reputation in the Arab world lies in tatters because it is seen as an extension of Iran; domestically, Hizbullah is viewed more than ever as a menace to national coexistence and civil peace; few Lebanese, other than Hizbullah’s own, believe that its insistence on participating in the political process means respect for the latter’s rules, free from foreign interests; and none of Nasrallah’s political rivals trust him anymore.

Read the whole thing.

"Religion is man’s way of accepting life as an inevitable defeat. That it is not an inevitable defeat is a claim that cannot be defended in good faith. One can, of course, disperse one’s life over the contingencies of every day, but even then it is only a ceaseless and desperate desire to live, and finally a regret that one has not lived. One can accept life, and accept it, at the same time, as a defeat only if one accepts that there is a sense beyond that which is inherent in human history – if, in other words, one accepts the order of the sacred.

A hypothetical world from which the sacred had been swept away would admit of only two possibilities: vain fantasy that recognizes itself as such, or immediate satisfaction which exhausts itself. It would leave only the choice proposed by Baudelaire, between lovers of prostitutes and lovers of clouds: those who know only the satisfactions of the moment and are therefore contemptible, and those who lose themselves in otiose imaginings, and are therefore contemptible. Everything is then contemptible, and there is no more to be said," – Leszek Kolakowski, "Modernity on Endless Trial."

(Painting: Mathis Grunewal.)

Scott Horton reflects on Frederick Douglass, Edward Covey and … Donald Rumsfeld.

"If you ask me what should have been done in the villages in Lebanon during this war, I think Israel wasn’t harsh enough. Now, I’m not right-wing, I’m not…I just think that if we are in a war…it’s like, if you play with fire, people get burned. There’s nothing you can do about it. These whole villages, they were empty, just filled with Hezbollah terrorists. They should have been totally wiped off the map. Except Israel left them standing. Many of our soldiers were killed because of that, so Israel wouldn’t be blamed after the war for war crimes and destroying civilian houses," – an Israeli soldier interviewed by Michael Totten about his actions in last year’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I have no idea what Mickey Kaus believes about the Iraq war (never have, actually). It is not a subject he is much concerned with. He is much more interested in weightier topics such as yours truly. His latest swipe is about this post, where I show a British Channel 4 video showing Shiite soldiers beating Sunnis on a joint patrol with U.S. forces. I describe the victims as "civilians," which gives Mickey an opening to ignore the point I was making and accuse me of inaccuracy. Hey, it gets him up in the afternoon. I referred to them as civilians because they are residents of the neighborhood, not in uniform, and unarmed, as compared with the soliders in Iraqi army uniform. Mickey protests because the video clearly shows the beaten men had mortars in their car. So they’re not civilians, right? That depends on who is or is not a civilian in a messy civil war like the one we’re now policing. The insurgents are civilians in as much as they are not in the Iraqi army, not in uniform, and often residents of a neighborhood. But they are not civilians in as much as they are engaged in a violent insurgency – actively or passively.

The whole point of the video and the posting, however, was that it illustrated how almost exclusively Shiite forces are beating Sunni residents, and clearing Sunni neighborhoods, with tacit U.S. support. The point of the narrative is precisely to show how in the current war, Plus Up inevitably requires support of a Shiite government against Sunni insurgents. Sadr City is to be left untouched under Plus Up; elsewhere, Shiite militias will be allowed to melt away; while the U.S. does Maliki’s work for him. This dynamic is central to the case that the current strategy will not only fail, but could also make the U.S. far more viulnerable to sectarian terrorism, and enrage both sides of the Muslim divide against us. Were they "beaten to near-death"? Well, one was repeatedly beaten in the face and body, had a rifle butt pounded onto the top of his spine, and was thrown head-first into an airless car trunk. Maybe my imagination got the better of me. But, in today’s Baghdad, are you going to bet on the safety and security of those captured? Is Mickey?