Quote for the Day

"There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief."
                              --Aeschylus

My Back Pages

I just finished re-reading Saul Bellow’s 1959 novel Henderson the Rain King, a rambunctious narrative of a larger-than-life character. Eugene Henderson, a millionaire eccentric, large in body and actions, is at the beginning of the story almost uncontrollably rude, obnoxious, destructive, and pugnacious. Fifty-five years old, he is in his second marriage to a much younger woman, and behaves outrageously in social settings. He’s a big man, and Bellow concentrates on the size and effect of Henderson’s nose. He is a troubled soul living among material plenty. His soul keeps saying “I want, I want, I want,” but he does not know what that insistent refrain means. Having squabbled with his neighbors, fought with his wife, turned his lovely estate into a pig farm, and literally frightened an old woman to death, Henderson takes off for Africa, where after some mishaps and adventures, manages to become the Rain King of a people known as the Wariri, and befriends a remarkable king, Dahfu, with whom he engages in many philosophical discussions and endures the king’s attempts to heal Henderson’s soul.

Bellow’s protagonist has many personal issues and expresses a lot of philosophical insights about the intimate connections between the physical body and the soul, but in a particularly haphazard and scattered way that matches the man’s disordered life.

I read the book while attending Stephen F. Austin State University in 1974. It was assigned by my favorite college English professor. It is a book of personal redemption, of overcoming anger and confusion and inchoate desire. For many years I refused to re-read books, particularly novels, simply because there are so many other books out there that need reading. I have recently realized that a major joy in re-reading a book is to rediscover the younger self who originally read the book, to compare those initial responses with those of an older reader. After all, I’m the same age now as Bellow’s protagonist.

I noted a few things that had escaped me in the Seventies. First, the Africa Bellow constructs is not a real Africa. It is more like the kingdoms that Lemuel Gulliver encounters on his journeys. The people are not drawn to represent real cultures, but to be exotic background for Henderson’s redemption quest. Although Dahfu is described with respect and reverence, he is a superhuman figure who identifies with a captured lioness and primarily serves as an admirable foil for Henderson’s many foibles. Perhaps in 1959 Bellow could simply assume that there were few, if any, native Africans who would read his novel, much less be offended by it. Now such is not the case.

Henderson’s guide, Romilayu, is made to speak in the most obsequious Negro dialect: “Dem call you Yassi, sah,” and “You no like dat, sah?” Most of the people Henderson encounters are naked, particularly the groups of Amazon warriors among the Wariri and King Dahfu’s harem, who all seem to wear nothing or almost nothing at all. This nudity might have been meant to titillate the readers of the Fifties, but it just seems gratuitious and offensive nowadays

Despite the flaws, however, the book remains enjoyable almost fifty years after its publication. It is exuberant in almost every way. Henderson is a very flawed man who desperately wants to find the cause of his suffering. Dahfu is a memorable, idealized character who seems to have all wisdom in his hands, but we realize that he, too, does not possess all the virtues Henderson wants him to have. By the end of the book Henderson has grown and changed through suffering and through his therapies with Dahfu, who teaches Henderson to walk and roar with the lioness, and when he finds his way back to civilization with a lion cub, he is last seen in the company of an orphaned boy from Persia, breathing in the cold air of Newfoundland, and eagerly anticipating meeting his wife and enrolling in medical school so he can heal others. The ending is not so much heart-warming as life-affirming. The book rambles and stretches, scratches itself, yearns for resolution, and in the end, leaves us satisfied.

A Turning

I have recently broken a lifelong habit. I don't read the news. I don't read the blogs. I don't listen to radio news, and I don't watch TV. I'm trying to read more books, and even re-read some, an activity I have seldom undertaken.

I started reading the newspaper as a child of six or seven. The evening news with Walter Cronkite and those other guys, Huntley and Brinkley, Harry Reasoner, and Eric Severeid were models for me when I learned to eliminate my East Texas accent.

But I've had some travails in my love life, and I've been worrying about things for too long. I cannot take the weight of the world on my shoulders any more. I've broken off my study of Islam.

The world is too much with me. So this little blog will change. I don't presume to have much of a readership, but this is a handy place to collect occasional writings, a place to collect and display them.

It's the Iraqi Government, Stupid

The Washington Post reports that:

Senior military commanders here now portray the intransigence of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias.

Holy shit.

A Turnaround in Iraq: Veterans' Day

Andrew Sullivan has all the good readers. Somebody wrote him from Iraq, claiming that things are different than they were.

I was utterly disillusioned regarding Iraq’s chances until very recently, and have been highly skeptical that any of the recent good news signaled any real progress. In the last couple of weeks, however, I’ve started to see cause for hope that I have been wrong. Some of it is the precipitous decline in violence, some the increasing willingness of ordinary Iraqis outside of Al Anbar to come forward and help us make things safer. The joint Shia-Sunni fatwa against violence is a part, as is the reopening of roads closed by the security deficit.

He goes on to tell the reasons why he thinks so. Seems he's in some kind of intelligence unit, and has a girlfriend in a similar position in another unit. He explains:

No more detaining crowds of anonymous local nationals because we have no way of telling who the real malcontents are. No more making ourselves the unwitting tools of one faction or another because our tools for identifying slander are limited. From what I can tell troops in Baghdad are twice as effective and half as offensive as this time last year. We may yet achieve security.

And then a sober and realistic reminder.

Of course, all of this still means nothing if there is no political accommodation. There is not and has never been a military solution to Iraq. The best we can do is keep chaos and fear from preventing a solution. I’m still pretty damned upset that my girl was supposed to get out in July before our almost-broken Army involuntarily extended her into mid 2009, but if someone takes advantage of this window of opportunity, I think we’ll both feel it was worth it. They’d better, because the Army won’t be able to provide another.

On the federal holiday of Veteran's Day, it's time to recognize the sacrifices and endurance and intelligence and willpower of our military in Iraq. I still want to see them out as soon as possible, but the conditions of withdrawal are important. Those guys, and girls, are bleeding and getting busted up, and dying so the fucking Iraqis can stop jacking off long enough to goddam take over their own shitty country. I've been tempted many times in recent years to say all is lost, but I never have. I don't have faith in the White House or any institution of government under this reckless, arrogant, dishonest and incompetent administration. Nor do I have respect for the Maliki Shia Islamic Republic of Iraq. But for those guys and girls over there, we salute you and want you to finish up and come home soon. Have a good and safe Veteran's Day.

Half of What We Know Is Wrong, But Which Half?

The Washington Post has an article on new discoveries in genetics. It's more complex than we had thought. I note, though, that in talking about the evolutionary import of the genetic mechanism, the author cannot avoid teleological language. Our sense of goal and purpose is so strong, we ascribe it to evolution, to Nature, to a God that makes goals and purposes for everybody. Evolution most emphatically rejects teleological explanations. One would think a science writer could get that point.

Meanwhile, the New York Times publishes an article on genetics and race. It's a subject guaranteed to make sane people shout, shake, or cower, as the case may be. There's a long history of bad science being used to support the racial hierarchies in society, but the cure for bad science is good science. Whatever that is.

Though few of the bits of human genetic code that vary between individuals have yet to be tied to physical or behavioral traits, scientists have found that roughly 10 percent of them are more common in certain continental groups and can be used to distinguish people of different races. They say that studying the differences, which arose during the tens of thousands of years that human populations evolved on separate continents after their ancestors dispersed from humanity’s birthplace in East Africa, is crucial to mapping the genetic basis for disease.
But many geneticists, wary of fueling discrimination and worried that speaking openly about race could endanger support for their research, are loath to discuss the social implications of their findings. Still, some acknowledge that as their data and methods are extended to nonmedical traits, the field is at what one leading researcher recently called “a very delicate time, and a dangerous time.”

The Eleventh Minute of the Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month

There is only one surviving American soldier who went to France in the Great War.

The Worst President In American History: The Smell Will Linger for Decades

I read recently that about a quarter of people surveyed believe that George W. (Shrub) Bush is the worst president in American history. That's a thesis I've propounded for years now, and I cannot see why the percentage is not larger, except for the usual lack of attention to history and to consequences that my countrymen exhibit on a regular basis. Most Americans tend to say that Herbert Hoover was the previous Worst President in American History.

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has written a sad and devastating article on "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush" in Vanity Fair.

Some portion of the damage done by the Bush administration could be rectified quickly. A large portion will take decades to fix—and that’s assuming the political will to do so exists both in the White House and in Congress. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden—even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated. And think of the widening divide between rich and poor in America, a phenomenon that goes beyond economics and speaks to the very future of the American Dream.

In short, there’s a momentum here that will require a generation to reverse. Decades hence we should take stock, and revisit the conventional wisdom. Will Herbert Hoover still deserve his dubious mantle? I’m guessing that George W. Bush will have earned one more grim superlative.

And this is just about ECONOMICS, not about the assaults on the Constitution, the rule of law, and the moral sentiment launched by this pathetic man and his bullies.

A Perfect Nightmare

Feeling unsure and confused about what's going on in Pakistan? So are the experts.

Pakistan

One thing about Pakistan is that there are so many people there who read and write English that it's easy to read what they have to say about the situation there. Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, writes in the Washington Post.
The establishment that has sustained four military regimes is deeply divided. The judiciary and the legal system are out in the streets, demanding an end to military rule. They are backed by the country's gleeful federal bureaucracy, which resented being shunted aside by Musharraf, and joined by civil society organizations and opposition parties. The protesters' ranks have also been swelled by poor people protesting increases in the price of food and other necessities and shortages of electricity during an already blistering summer.

These dissenters have been joined by an increasingly influential media. Under military regimes, the media always grow in stature as they act as the conscience of the people and give voice to political opposition. For the first time, the public can watch demonstrations live on private satellite-TV channels -- something that has bewildered the army's Orwellian thought-control department.

On the opposing side stand Musharraf's remaining allies. The most important is the powerful, brooding army. On June 1, its top brass issued a strong statement of support for Musharraf that dismissed the protests as a "malicious campaign against institutions of the state, launched by vested interests and opportunists." But on live TV talk shows, pundits are lambasting the army for the first time, shocking many viewers. Such withering criticism has forced younger officers to question whether the entire military establishment should risk the public's wrath to keep one man in power.

Musharraf is also supported by the business community, which has experienced economic stability and rising investment from the Arab world during his regime. He also retains -- for now -- the backing of a motley group of politicians who came to power after the military rigged elections in 2002, although many of them are considering jumping ship or ditching Musharraf.

Running parallel to this domestic political crisis is the growing problem of radical Islam; the Taliban and al-Qaeda are now deeply entrenched in the tribal border belt adjacent to Afghanistan. These groups gained political legitimacy last year when Musharraf signed a series of dubious peace deals with the Pakistani Taliban. They are now coming down from the mountains to spread their radical ideology in towns and cities by burning down DVD and TV shops, insisting that young men grow beards, forcibly recruiting schoolboys for the jihad and terrifying girls so that they won't attend school. The military has refused to put a brake on their extremism.

Musharraf promised the international community that he would purge pro-Taliban elements from his security services and convinced the Bush administration that his philosophy of "enlightened moderation" was the only way to fend off Islamic extremism. But Pakistan today is the center of global Islamic terrorism, with Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar probably living here.

And here's a reminder of something that has become more and more evident, that the struggle in Pakistan is not over Islamist extremism, nor are the Islamists drawing much political support in the polls. Rather, it appears more and more that Musharraf's ploy right now is a naked grab to retain political power. We must be very very cautious of a false choice between Islam + Democracy vs. Musharraf + Dictatorship.

The Situation in Iraq

Obsidian Wings is a group blog, mostly centrist, with some bloggers grouping to the left and some to the right. Here's a take on the Iraq situation that puts together some graphs and charts for an interpretation that's guardedly optimistic. Concluding quote:

I don't think we are winning or that we have "turned the corner" in Iraq, but nor am I convinced that Iraq is "irretrievably lost". It is beginning to look like al Qaeda is clearly losing. I believe the current surge strategy is the best plan available, and I range from mildly optimistic to mildly pessimistic that it will succeed. Currently, there are clear signs that it's working. It may very well have been implemented too late, and it's likely that our manpower levels are too low, but I'm giving the plan 'til year end before I make a judgment on whether we should stick with the current strategy or opt for Plan B (orderly, phased withdrawal of American troops).

Cheering for the Ancient Greek Gods

Here's an article where a scholar says that pagan Greek theology is better for intellectual inquiry than monotheism.

Paradoxically, the main advantage of ancient Greek religion lies in this ability to recognize and accept human fallibility. Mortals cannot suppose that they have all the answers. The people most likely to know what to do are prophets directly inspired by a god. Yet prophets inevitably meet resistance, because people hear only what they wish to hear, whether or not it is true. Mortals are particularly prone to error at the moments when they think they know what they are doing. The gods are fully aware of this human weakness. If they choose to communicate with mortals, they tend to do so only indirectly, by signs and portents, which mortals often misinterpret.

Ancient Greek religion gives an account of the world that in many respects is more plausible than that offered by the monotheistic traditions. Greek theology openly discourages blind confidence based on unrealistic hopes that everything will work out in the end. Such healthy skepticism about human intelligence and achievements has never been needed more than it is today.

As a young child, I was drawn to Greek mythology. As an adolescent and early adult, I rejected the myths because they were prescientific superstitions. As a middle-aged man, facing a crisis in my personal life, I rediscovered the power of myth, and of a mythology where powers and virtues were distributed across the psychic landscape instead of concentrated into one benevolent god.

A great deal of English literature before the nineteenth century is undecipherable without a grounding in the tales of Greek gods and heroes. Alas, all that is fading away today, replaced by the latest Hollywood offering, the most recent reality TV show. True, many of the most effective creators alive today are still working the vein of myth. But their audiences resonate to stories they have never heard before. To paraphase the Dalrymple quote I posted yesterday, to regret Greek myth is to regret Western civilization.

Waterboarding Is Torture, Period: Honor and Experience In a Sadistic World

From time to time a post comes along that combines the voice of experience with a sound sense of dignity and a deep patriotism that looks beyond the frantic sadism of the torturers and their apologists. Here is such a one:

I’d like to digress from my usual analysis of insurgent strategy and tactics to speak out on an issue of grave importance to Small Wars Journal readers. We, as a nation, are having a crisis of honor.

Last week the Attorney General nominee Judge Michael Mukasey refused to define waterboarding terror suspects as torture. On the same day MSNBC television pundit and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough quickly

spoke out in its favor. On his morning television broadcast, he asserted, without any basis in fact, that the efficacy of the waterboard a viable tool to be used on Al Qaeda suspects.
...
In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

...Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Couple that with waterboarding and the entire medley not only “shock the conscience” as the statute forbids -it would terrify you. Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.

It is a long post, written clearly, cogently, and unsentimentally. I am not familiar with the author, but a quick look at his blog shows that he is no knee-jerk leftist. Perhaps we would disagree on matters of policy--but not on this matter of public morality and national honor.

Reason, Religion and Regretting Western Civilization

(image is a painting by Juan Sánchez Cotán referred to in Dalrymple's article)

Theodore Dalrymple is one of my favorite conservative writers. Here he, a nonbeliever himself, takes on the works of the "New Atheists" like Dennett, Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, Grayling, and Onfray. I find myself sympathetic to Dalrymple. Like him, I cannot believe in a personal God, and also like him I find a disturbing shallowness to the writings of neo-atheists.

Are Dalrymple and I simply too fastidious in our quarrels with our co-irreligionists? I think not.

First, I think the neo-atheists (shall I allow myself to use Dawkins' formulation, "brights"?) have a confused and sentimentalized view of "Reason."

Of course, men—that is to say, some men—have denied this truth ever since the Enlightenment, and have sought to find a way of life based entirely on reason. Far as I am from decrying reason, the attempt leads at best to Gradgrind and at worst to Stalin. Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.

David Hume once said, "Reason is, and always must be, only the slave of the passions." In doing a lot of thinking on the subject, I've concluded that reason is the congruence between our ends and our means for attaining them, that reason cannot of itself supply those ends, especially those ends that are categorically good in themselves.

Skepticism and doubt sit at one hand, but it's a very different and uncrafty hand that decrees the predominance of Reason as the ultimate goal and arbiter. Reasonableness, it seems to me, notices that reason has a lovely but limited dominion. This was once a paradox, but the time gives it proof.

I have not read the books in questions, though I have read many reviews and considerable postings by Hitchens and Harris, and I have read books by Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. I think I have grasped their arguments through their own words.

Some of these people have a tin ear for religion and religiosity. I have a friend who uses the expression "imaginary friend" to refer to God, and who regards religion as "superstition." He and many atheists abstract religion into a few dimensions of belief or practice--explanation of the world--social hierarchy--fear of death--the herd morality--but never quite seem to have an imaginative and sympathetic view of the religious life. Like Dalrymple, I am a nonbeliever, but I am impressed by the ways that religion can cultivate the humane--the arts--ethics--devotion--gratitude.

The thinness of the new atheism is evident in its approach to our civilization, which until recently was religious to its core. To regret religion is, in fact, to regret our civilization and its monuments, its achievements, and its legacy. And in my own view, the absence of religious faith, provided that such faith is not murderously intolerant, can have a deleterious effect upon human character and personality. If you empty the world of purpose, make it one of brute fact alone, you empty it (for many people, at any rate) of reasons for gratitude, and a sense of gratitude is necessary for both happiness and decency. For what can soon, and all too easily, replace gratitude is a sense of entitlement. Without gratitude, it is hard to appreciate, or be satisfied with, what you have: and life will become an existential shopping spree that no product satisfies.

Just this morning I walked into a conversation by my colleagues, a group of teachers decrying the inability of high school students to recognize Biblical allusions. One of the teachers was highly religious, one was an unbeliever, I am sure, and one seems to be a liberal Jew and the other I'm just not certain about. Yet all of us recognize that something vital is lost when young people are cut off from the literature of their ancestors. Many years ago I realized that to this extent I am a conservative, conserving a precious heritage that is, in great part, religious.

I have no patience with the "Celestial Teapot" or "imaginary friend" caricatures of religion. Sometimes religion makes people better than they would otherwise have been, and sometimes it makes them worse. I sometimes regret my lack of faith, but, though I doubt "Reason" find no lower-case reason that I can believe in a transcendent deity (an imaginary superbeing, as Woody Allen would say). Mr. Dalrymple and I are singing in the same choir. Actually, I did sing in an Anglican choir for a decade. I sang Bach and Palestrina and Vaughan Williams and Brahams and Rutter and Durufle. I could never recite the Creed, but when I sang, somehow, for the moment, I believed.

"Islamofascism" Concluding Unscientific Postscript

I'll make some remarks about "Islamofascism" and then put the dispute with Burchismo aside for a while. I've decided to swear off the term, for several reasons.

First, analytically, it's a word that has a very loose connection to the European fascism it's supposed to evoke. The weakest connection is the very different conception of the state in European and Islamist world views. Hitchens concedes as much, that fascists glorify the state, whereas in Islam the state is or should be wholly subordinate to the ummah, the faithful Muslim people. Indeed, for hard-core radical Islamists the state with its man-made laws is deeply sinful, in that Allah is the source of all true law, and the political entities needed to provide for the people's welfare must be congruent with shariah, or Islamic law, which is more akin to Jewish Talmud than to Western concepts of code law or common law.

Secondly, fascism is hierarchical to the core, whereas Islam is not. True, the Prophet and the early caliphs wielded considerable power, but Islam has no priesthood and no hierarchy. In Sunni Islam the authority of religious leaders resides in their own piety and knowledge and reputation. Shia Islam, it is true, has a concept of a spiritual power inherent in the imam's blood line, something not unlike Hasidic Judaism. One might argue that the radical Islamists want to centralize religious power in a revived caliphate, and surely some do want that, but the history of Muslim societies is one of political autocracy and considerable religious congregationalism.

Thirdly, fascism is deeply racist and xenophobic. Islam is doctrinally free from racism. All men and women are invited to submit to God's rule, both in practice and in theory. To find examples of racist and xenophobic attitudes among Muslim peoples is possible, but these attitudes do not support the kind of racist ideology that seems necessary for fascism. While it is true that not all fascist regimes were as racist as the German Nazis--the Italian fascists were less concerned with racial purity--they all had a concept of an "organic" Volk, a People who were united by blood and land. The ummah is comprised of people from all nations, and while there is a primacy put on the Arabic language, the ummah is not a Volk.

Lastly, the word is analytically barren but emotionally overwrought. It is a word used by people on the far right of political spectrum, rhetorical bomb throwers like David Horowitz and authoritarian politicians like Rudy Giuliani, as well as the wrathful rump of the discredited neocon movement. I think these people are not only wrong, but are dangerously wrong. Although I agree that Islamist radicalism is a danger to the world--how great a danger I cannot say with the militant certainty of these people--I would no sooner use this polarizing diction than I would employ such shibboleths as "death tax" for estate tax or "surrender date" or "government schools" or other right wing neologisms. I don't just find the term "Islamofascist" offensive to Muslims, but I find it to be the cant and jargon of people whose political judgment I distrust.

All that said, I find that I am no friend of Islam. I do not want to engage in Muslim-baiting, because I think it's bullying and sadistic to constantly bring up the seamier side of Islam, to no good effect except the promotion of bigotry. (Likewise for Catholicism, Mormonism, and Pentacostalism--all of which I think incorporate beliefs and practices that I regard as silly, false, and pernicious.) Still, I forthrightly oppose Islamism--the attempt to bring societies into submission to an Islamic model. I oppose this idea because, quite simply, I think the globalized world of science and economics and political pluralism makes for a greater satisfaction of human desires than a retrograde utopian theocracy ever could. And I am not only opposed, I am a mortal enemy of radical Islamism, of the violent jihad practiced by al Qaeda and its clones, the murderous takfiri suicide-bombing, throat-slitting, misogynistic, liberty-hating enemies of everything I hold true and good. But the congruence of means and ends is the essence of rationality, and I demand that our rhetoric stay more coolly rational and analytical than the verbiage the overwrought Muslim-baiters of the right would employ.

Sacrificing Liberties for a Phantasm

Andrew Sullivan has the immigrant's faith in America's values, and he just won't look away and hum a distracting tune about torture. He calls himself a conservative, practicing "the conservatism of doubt" to distinguish himself (in two senses of the word) from "movement conservatism" and the lockstep power-worship of the Worst President in American History and the pathetic remnants of a once-proud Republican party.

The second paragraph seems to be an ad hominem attack on the President, and lord knows, we've had too many such attacks in recent years. But character matters, especially in the highest office in the land, a view that most conservatives once held, and a view the pseudo-conservative wingnuts seemed to hold when the brilliantly-flawed Bill Clinton occupied the oval office and the oval orifice of Miss Lewsinsky. The tragedy of this country's moral descent into acquiescence of torture and abdication of its moral stance among the nations is, in a very intimate sense, a tragedy like the Greek ones, a tragedy of hubris and stubbornness, pride and meanness, with a flawed man turning to his flawed instincts to steer the ship of state.

The longer this war goes on and the more we find out, the following scenario seems to me to be the best provisional explanation for a lot of what our secret, unaccountable, extra-legal war-government has been doing - and the countless mistakes which have been laid bare. On 9/11, Cheney immediately thought of the worst possible scenario: What if this had been done with WMDs? It has haunted him ever since - for good and even noble reasons. This panic led him immediately to think of Saddam. But it also led him to realize that our intelligence was so crappy that we simply didn't know what might be coming. That's why the decision to use torture was the first - and most significant - decision this administration made. It is integral to the intelligence behind the war on terror. And Cheney's bizarre view of executive power made it easy in his mind simply to break the law and withdraw from Geneva because torture, in his mind, was the only weapon we had.

Bush, putty in Cheney's hands, never wanted torture, but was so cowardly and lazy he never asked the hard questions of what was actually being done. He knows, of course, somewhere in his crippled fundamentalist psyche. But this is a man with clinical - Christianist and dry-drunk - levels of reality-denial, whose interaction with reality can only operate on the crudest levels of Manichean analysis. All he needs to be told is that whatever it is they're doing, it isn't torture. He won't ask any more questions. They're evil; we're good; so we can't torture. Even when they were totally busted at Abu Ghraib, his incuriosity and denial held firm. After all, what if he were to find out something he didn't want to know? His world might collapse.

But torture gives false information. And the worst scenarios that tortured detainees coughed up - many of them completely innocent, remember - may well have come to fuel US national security policy. And of course they also fueled more torture. Because once you hear of the existential plots confessed by one tortured prisoner, you need to torture more prisoners to get at the real truth. We do not know what actual intelligence they were getting, and Cheney has ensured that we will never know. But it is perfectly conceivable that the torture regime - combined with panic and paranoia - created an imaginationland of untruth and half-truth that has guided US policy for this entire war. It may well have led to the president being informed of any number of plots that never existed, and any number of threats that are pure imagination. And once torture has entered the system, you can never find out the real truth. You are lost in a vortex of lies and fears. In this vortex, the actual threats that we face may well be overlooked or ignored, as we chase false leads and pursue non-existent WMDs.

My original concern with torture was moral and sprang from Abu Ghraib. It never occurred to me that the US would be doing it before. Poring over all the data, it became simply impossible to deny that Abu Ghraib was not an exception to the rule, but a horrible, predictable result of an existing torture policy that spread beyond the limits Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted. My second concern with torture is that much of our actionable intelligence may have come from it. Think of what that means. Much of it may be as valid as that nuclear bomb in New York City or the notion that Abdallah Higazy was a member of al Qaeda.

We may have entered a world, in other words, where the empirical reality of our national security is less important than the imaginationland that every torture regime will create. We may therefore be sacrificing our liberties for a phantasm created by brutality spawned by terror. We don't know for sure, of course. But that's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger - the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up. And since they have utter contempt for the role of the Congress in declaring war, we and the world are helpless to stop them. Every day we get through with them in power, I say a silent prayer of thanks that the worst hasn't happened. Yet. Because we sure know they're looking in all the wrong places.

The Orwellian "long war" extra-constitutionally declared by the executive feeds the real beast of state, which is not taxes, but untrammeled power, hitched to fear, lies, and recklessness. The next President will take us, most likely, out of a failing campaign in that "war." But our historic liberties and instutions of state need more than that to thrive. Like the Hellenes after the Peloponnesian War, we will find ourselves physically, fiscally, politically, and imaginatively stunted, our cherished polity wrecked and shattered on the shores of empire--unless we can find a path to a real peace somewhere between rashness and despair.

The "Islamofascism" Imbroglio

Over at Burchismo, I'm mentioned in a challenge to say what is wrong with Christopher Hitchens' recent defense of the term "Islamofascism" in Slate. I'm grateful for any mention in the Blogosphere, and I'll take just a minute before running off to earn my daily bread to respond.

First, as Mr. Burch knows, I have had a long quarrel with the word "fascist." In particular, I have taken on the promiscuous use of that word by the left. Now it's the right wing that wants to capitalize on the emotional connotations of that word.

George Orwell, who certainly knew something of the subject, said, "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." And I've done a lot of reading and thinking and writing on the subject myself. About a year I wrote:

I am a lot less likely to use a word such as Islamo-fascism as perhaps I once was. Iraq under Saddam and Syria under the Alawite Assads comes close to European-style fascism, and the current government of Iran can be described by such a term. But I think it’s far, far too broad a statement to equate Islamism with fascism. I don’t know that “fascism” describes a neofundamentalist reactionary regime such as the Taliban, and, while I certainly see fascist elements among bin Laden jihidis, the word seems imprecise for any but the most narrow uses. In any event, there is an extremely troubling anti-democratic, militant, fanatic mindset to one of the Muslim factions that is competing in the free-for-all that is the Islamic Reformation.

So what did Christopher Hitchens say?

The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately the way in which al-Qaida has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and green movements. (See my column on

Osama Bin Laden's Sept. 11 statement.)
There isn't a perfect congruence. Historically, fascism laid great emphasis on glorifying the nation-state and the corporate structure. There isn't much of a corporate structure in the Muslim world, where the conditions often approximate more nearly to feudalism than capitalism, but Bin Laden's own business conglomerate is, among other things, a rogue multinational corporation with some links to finance-capital. As to the nation-state, al-Qaida's demand is that countries like Iraq and Saudi Arabia be dissolved into one great revived caliphate, but doesn't this have points of resemblance with the mad scheme of a "Greater Germany" or with Mussolini's fantasy of a revived Roman empire?

Technically, no form of Islam preaches racial superiority or proposes a master race. But in practice, Islamic fanatics operate a fascistic concept of the "pure" and the "exclusive" over the unclean and the kufar or profane. In the propaganda against Hinduism and India, for example, there can be seen something very like bigotry. In the attitude to Jews, it is clear that an inferior or unclean race is being talked about (which is why many Muslim extremists like the grand mufti of Jerusalem gravitated to Hitler's side). In the attempted destruction of the Hazara people of Afghanistan, who are ethnically Persian as well as religiously Shiite, there was also a strong suggestion of "cleansing." And, of course, Bin Laden has threatened force against U.N. peacekeepers who might dare interrupt the race-murder campaign against African Muslims that is being carried out by his pious Sudanese friends in Darfur.
This makes it permissible, it seems to me, to mention the two phenomena in the same breath and to suggest that they constitute comparable threats to civilization and civilized values. There is one final point of comparison, one that is in some ways encouraging. Both these totalitarian systems of thought evidently suffer from a death wish.

I do not disagree with this analysis. Indeed, I've been reading Gilles Kepel's Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam and Raymond Ibrahim's compilation The Al Qaeda Reader. I confess I'm moving slowly through them. My studies have brought on a sharp case of Islamo-indigestion.

So, what's the crux of the biscuit? I don't disagree with the reality of the situation that Hitchens so clearly elucidates. My disagreement is over the rhetorical utility of the term. Burchismo has no problem with insulting his opponents, a nasty habit of the conformist political right in this country, with all those Limbaugh and O'Reilley wanna-be bloggers attacking their opponents' patriotism, sincerity, and intelligence. (I'm sure the same thing happens on the far left, but they are easier to avoid than the Faux News Network.)

If we inheritors of Western liberal democracy are engaged in an ideological strugle with radical Islamism, something Hitchens, Burchismo, and Paco Pond all agree on, then it seems to me we should engage the struggle with the appropriate rhetorical weapons. I don't refer to this struggle as a "war" because I think war is a false metaphor, and because I think Western liberal democracy cannot survive the so-called "War on Terror." Using terms like "Islamo-fascist" is simply counter-productive.

Hitchens and Burch seem to care not a whit about offending people. Hitchens, for one, relishes the attention he draws, the harumph of approval from his meme-tribe. He, like Burchismo, frequently referes to "enemies" and "traitors." I believe such reckless, offensive rhetoric sacrifices effectiveness to self-gratification.

I do care what Muslims think. Not the hardcare jihadis, but the millions and millions of normal people who were born into that faith. Some of my countrymen are Muslims, and when I say "we" I include Muslim Americans in that polity. I also deeply believe that the key to suppression Islamic extremism lies in the Muslims themselves. Using "Islamofascism" is kind of like calling a man "nigger." There are some men I despise and would gladly call "nigger," but I restrain myself because that word, even when applied to the sorriest exmplar of all the stereotypes--and they do exist--nevertheless demeans honest, hard-working, decent, intelligent and good people.

So, in summary, I don't disagree with Mr. Hitchens, or Mr. Burch, about the phenomenon of Islamofascism, though I sometimes think they both believe that Islam and Islamofascism are coterminous. But I believe that steadiness, self-restraint, and a prudent and unremitting rhetorical struggle promises to protect our national and cultural interests better than abusive and demeaning language that alienates people unnecessarily, and like the Iraq Imbroglio, creates more enemies than it destroys.

Quote for the Day

Our idealists are divided between those who would renounce the responsibilities of power for the sake of preserving the purity of our soul and those who are ready to cover every ambiguity of good and evil in our actions by the frantic insistence that any measure taken in a good cause must be unequivocally virtuous. --Reinhold Niebuhr

Koran a Supermarket?

Noted without comment:


An Egyptian professor has stirred up a hornet's nest among his fellow Muslims by comparing the Koran with a supermarket where you can find whatever you are looking for.
Hassan Hanafi's remarks, made at a seminar organized by the Alexandria Library, have sparked a fierce response, from demands that he retract them to suggestions that he might be mad.
Hanafi, who teaches philosophy at the University of Cairo, said Islam's holy book is often contradictory.
The Koran "is a supermarket, where one takes what one wants and leaves what one doesn't want," he told an audience at the seminar last month on freedom of thought.
In Egypt, as elsewhere in the Muslim world, critical interpretation of the Koran can land you in hot water.

Journalism in Iraq

A friend and reader sent me this article today. Ironically, this morning I was very much struck by this news article on NPR. (Better listened to than read.) Both of them are about the role of the press in Iraq. The Michael Yon article started out with what looks like a tired, battered old right-wing meme:

I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.

No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.

Now, let's see, isn't this very similar to the stuff we used to hear back in 2004, as the insurgency gathered and grew--that really most of Iraq was going very well, and the liberal mainstream media were not telling the story? Explanations back then ranged down a continuum of wing-nuttiness, from the valid observation that mayhem is more noteworthy than reconstruction, to aspersions on the courage of journalists, who (unless "embedded" were unprotected by the might and skill of the US military) were too cowardly to go out and get the truth, to insinuations and assertions that the press actively wanted us to fail, and were not interested in any stories of success.

The situation in Iraq has changed somewhat, but "drastically changed?" Wishful thinking, of which there has been several metric plethoras. The MSM has certainly reported that some aspects of "the surge" and "the Anbar strategy" have led to some positive consequences, but we should be cautious of false optimism. Sectarian violence is down somewhat, but a lot of that is because Shiites and Sunnis have ethnically cleansed their neighborhoods. While it is a very good thing that Sunnis have taken up arms against al Qaeda (I've always thought that armed former Baathists wouldn't take any shit off guys who believe that ice is haram because the Prophet didn't have it.) Al Qaeda in Iraq has overplayed its hand, and only chronic warfare has kept it from being suppressed by the Arabs themselves.

I remember a report by Ann Garrels of NPR, returning to Baghdad a month or more ago, and talking about dramatic changes in the neighborhoods there. So much for the liberal-media canard. The MSM has been far more honest than the Bush Administration, and far more accurate than wingnut bloggers.

So I was ready to dismiss this article as more impcon hoo-ha. And it's clear that I believe Yon systematically overstates the positive and dismisses the negative:

I’ve been with the Brits here for more than two weeks, during which time there have been only a few trivial attacks that could easily have been the work of an angry farmer with extra time on his hands and a mortar in his backyard.

I guess stuff is relative. In Iraq, pissed off farmers use mortars, and that's "trivial"?

Still, I've concluded that the guy might be biased, but he's not dishonest. He seems to believe that the situation in Iraq is getting better. He also thinks the war is of great strategic importance for future generations, which I think is overstated, but, OK, what else does he have to say that would cause my friend to send this to me. (My friend has sent me way too much wingnut b.s. over the years.) But Yon has written quite a few postings, and not all of them are the cartoonish, nasty mean-spirited stuff of The O'Reilley Factor and Repo political operatives. He also acknowledges that those who oppose the war sometimes have honest and cogent reasons for doing so. He is, at any rate, a compelling writer, sort of like Victor Davis Hanson, who can be brilliant and wrong-headed in the same paragraph.

I’ve written about the small and petty ways the military’s Public Affairs Offices can sour even the most earnestly and positively-inclined reporters. I’ve written about how the military’s entire approach to media has failed utterly to serve both the particular mission in Iraq and the greater cause of an informed and vibrant democracy. I’ve written about reporters who got the story right, about those who got it all wrong, and also about those whose reports, good or bad, never saw the light of day.

I’ve written about why an effective and engaged media is especially crucial for the kind of counterinsurgency strategy only now being applied comprehensively in all areas of Iraq. I’ve written about how the current system of over-reliance on questionable sources creates a pressure to rush to judgment.

I have not had time to follow all these links, but I am troubled by the phrase "an effective and engaged media is especially crucial for the kind of counterinsurgency strategy."

Look, I'll admit I think the goal is to GET OUT OF IRAQ. I would rather it be under the best circumstances possible. I have sympathy for our military officers who are doing the best they can with a counterinsurgency strategy, and if it proves to be paying off, I'll grit my teeth and support the policy for a little bit longer. But there are real problems with the media aspect of this posting. If it's dealing with IRAQI MEDIA, I agree with him. But to say that OUR media is an important part of the war strategy is, while well-intentioned, extremely damaging to our liberty. Our media should be trying to tell the story, to tell the truth in all its complexities and contradictions. (Now whether we want to deal with those complexities is a different matter--the American people are reluctant to do so, and their president is impervious to complexity.) At any rate, the media is not, should not, cannot be part of a counterinsurgency strategy. A media that is part of a counterinsurgency effort has been coopted. It's just not honest.

Yon makes a pitch for an organization that distributes his stories for free. And then he asks for money. No problem there--as long as it's individuals, even wingnuts, giving the money, he's ok to ask for it. It's Pledge Week at my local NPR affiliate, after all. What would be intolerable is for government funds to go to Yon and his group.

I had not been aware of him before. I thank my cranky right-wing war-mongering friend for sending me the link.