Democracy and the Middle East

I think that the arguments against the possibility of democracy in the Middle East are wide of the mark. One of the more common themes in such arguments is that Democracy takes a long time to grow and has to be the result of an historical negotiation, not something imposed by force. The first has a ring of truth. Most democracies were the result of a long historical development. But that doesn't mean all of them have to be. The analogy could be with market economies. The first market economies take centuries to develope, but once the template is developed and seen to be working it is a much shorter process to adopt in late adopting societies. We are all quite unsurprised to see countries that have never had anything like the long process that lead to market economies in the West quickly adopting them successfully in the last half of the 20th Century. This is because market economies may have developed according to a very historically specific process but the elements of human nature that drive them are just that--elements of human nature. Likewise with democracy. The second argument, that you can't impose democracy by force, faces some obvious counter-examples, noteably Germany and Japan after WWII. But more to the point, the question to ask is why would not democracy be the sort of thing you could impose by force? You can certainly impose other sorts of governments by force? It is quite simple to impose it. The question is do the majority of the people in a country want to keep it? If they do, then the only way to stop democracy is by force. Democracy has become the only legitimate form of government. By legitimate, I mean it is the only one that can be defended by rational argument among political elites throughout the world. The fact that democracy is still rare in parts of the world is a reflection not of its legitimacy but of force. The fact that we are still fighting opponents of the government in Iraq is evidence not that democracy is unpopular there but that the people fighting it are unpopular. If it were otherwise, they wouldn't be fighting.

right again

ok, gloating done.

Now, on to the fun part, complaining. I find it a little tiresome, this line that people have on the election, that, now, OK, the ball is in the court of the Shias to show that they can be responsible and give the Sunni's a place at the table anyway. Obviously it would be prudent to try and peel off the moderate Sunni's to the extent practicable, but does anyone else find it a bit odious that we continue to put the onus on the Shias? Have they been the ones going around threatening to and sometimes succeed at blowing people up for having the termerity to vote? I think the most striking fact has been the amazing restraint shown by the Shia in the face of the most extraordinary provocation. It is a little like going down to Mississippi after the voting rights act is passed and saying, "Ok, now, the important thing is for the negroes to act responsibly and make sure that the KKK supporters have a reason to feel that their interests are not going to be prejudiced by the fact that they succeeded in terrorizing so many people from going to the polls."

released

Andrew Sullivan reports:

"RELEASED WITHOUT CHARGE: The final four Brits in Guantanamo were immediately released by the British government upon returning to the UK. They are charging torture. No formal charges of terrorism have been brought against them. Either we should be deeply concerned that potential terrorists are now at large or that innocent men have been held without any due process for three years and, if they were not British, would still be in jail. Which is it?"

I think he asks a very interesting question but one that excludes the middle, as Aristotle would say. One would presume that a large number of Al Qaed members were in Afghanistan but that most had never gotten to the point where they had committed what would normally be called a crime, i.e., participating in a direct conspiracy to perform a specific terrorist act at a specific time and place. There must be a large number of detainees that they were members of al Qaeda and had therefore taken an oath to attack America, went through a training program to do that and fought with them in the war. Those actions are good reasons for the Americans to hold them even though none of those actions are explicitly crimes. Applying standards of criminal law to such persons would mean they were innocent.

But innocent does not mean not dangerous. Imagine that they had been let free soon after being picked up in Afghanistan but were subsequently involved in a terrorist act against the US. What would be our reaction? I can imagine us saying now, "Well, that is the price we pay for being a civilized world," but I can also imagine a government being in a great deal of trouble. After all, they had by their actions clearly conveyed in a general sense thier intention to do harm to the US. No government whose citizens having subsequently been attacked by such people would have a right to say they didn't see it coming.

I think there is a problem applying the legal paradigm to this problem. After all, I would imagine that many of the soldiers in the German or Japanese Armies never fired a shot in anger or directly participated in anything that they could be arrested for. My Uncle delivered mail in the Phillipines in WWII, not a crime against the Japanese but still part of the American War effort and still enough for any Japanese soldier that saw him to lawfully shoot him or take him prisoner. Maybe the problem is that we need to make joining certain types of organizations itself a crime?

The whole thrust of western civilization has been to move from treating people as members of collectives to treating them as individuals. This is surely an advance to the extent membership in these collectives were based on characteristics that a person can do nothing about, e.g., being of a certain race or nationality. But that may not be true for a collective one voluntarily joins. The reason you can shoot members of the opposing army without inquiring what they have done as individuals is that war is a clash of groups, not individuals. Asking what crimes these released members of Al Qaeda have committed seems to being applying the standards applied to individual activity through criminal law to the collective activity of war.

Michael Reinhard

Predictions

I predict these elections in Iraq will be a huge success. I think the turnout will be above 60% even in Sunni areas and even if it isn't it won't matter. Sunni's not being able to vote because of Sunni terrorists is really not a knock on the other 80% of Iraqis and in any case, a democratically elected government is a very hard thing to dismiss.

Predictions

I have a horrible cold and workload that prevent me from blogging just at the moment, but I would just like to go on the record for the benefit of the contemporary world and posterity that I think the Iraqi elections will be a big success. I have thought that all along and nothing has happened to make me less confident. I think turn out will be in the 60% range enven in Sunni areas and even if it isn't I predict that it will not matter. A democratically elected government is a difficult thing to dismiss.

society for self-congradulatory anachronism

There is a pattern in movies where we go back but take most of ourselves with us.
The pattern is straightforward. A hero, tortured by the his own past and his participation in the crimes of his own society is thrust into the midsts of an oppressed group. He learns their ways and comes to understand them. Then he has a great moral revalation about the importance and moral superiority of this oppressed group and, of course, the moral inferiority of his own group. The climax of the story is involves the hero making some sort of revelatory speech and members of the oppressed group looking on in gratitude for his revalation of thier own moral superiority and members of the hero's group sputtering in anger and storming away in a huff as only those who know deep down inside that they are truly the guilty ones can do.
These movies serve a political purpose just as plain as the movies made during WWII did--they validate the moral order that reigns among the people making the movies. The key is that the hero reacts to the situation not as a man of that time would but as a person of our time would. And the oppressed and oppressors have little relation to the historical groups they are to represent but are fully determined by the supposed virtues and faults of the contemporary political collectives they are meant to represent. Even when the story draws from a history situation where there was a hero acting against an oppressive group the hero's motives and conduct are not one of a person of thier time but of a person of our time transplanted into historical reality that is only costume deep. The three examples of the genre I will examine in this chapter are "Dances with Wolves," "The Last Samurai," and "Iron Jawed Angles."

Cosmotopia

Fellow came up to me. He was from Sri Lanka. He mentioned how funny it was the Americans started doing something about disaster relief only after the argument was made that failure to do so would be used by Al Qaeda to increase support among the Muslim victims of the disaster. Aside from being patently false the interesting thing is that he did not expect me to be offended. Nor did he have any reason to think I would be. After all, I am an academic and academics aren’t Americans, they are citizens of the world. His years in the U.S. academic world had lead him to expect that a professor would naturally see himself as a citizen of the world, not of America. He was not being provocative in insulting my country since, as a fellow academic, he implicitly assumed that my country was the “cosmopolitos” or “cosmotopia” that imagined community of the enlightened that will one day rule the world as soon as the U.S. can be persuaded to cede sovereignty to the UN and fund enough international bureaucrats.

mafia

today's wls editorial makes a point I have made myself on a number of occasions: the thing we are fighting in Iraq is the former regime. The reason we are having such trouble defeating it is that it is more like a mafia than a state.

This is something I think can't be overemphasized. The mistake that humans are prone to make is to put themselves in the opponent's shoes. That is a mistake in the case of a regime like the one we are fighting. More specifically, I think we have made a sort of category error in the case of Iraq. We have assumed that since they have a seat in UN and exist within lines on a map that it is a state. But the Baath party never governed through the organs of the state. It governed through a kinship based mafia. Taking over the government buildings and organs of state are only a slight impediment to its power. It is like the FBI thinking it has taken down the Soprano family by running them out of Satrialla's butcher shop.

the problem

why didn't we anticipate the insurgency? because when you are figuring out how a war will go you think what you would do in the enemy's situation. In the formal war we could ask what would we do against the tank army that we sent into Iraq. Well it turns out that we think a lot like Iraqi tank commaders but we have better tanks. on that basis we out thought as well as out fought the enemy. But the next stage of the war was something that we couldn't anticipate for the simple reason that no American could put himself in the shoes of the insurgents. the situation that the iraqi insurgents are in is not one that American commanders would ever be in. American commanders can imagine facing a superior force. American commanders cannot imagine trying to impose a dictatorship on thier own country. they cannot imagine a strategy of trying to create deaths in order to frustraite the democratic will of their own people. they cannot imagine simple killing for the sake of the nightly news. even when they put themselves in the shoes of the enemy they mistakenly import some unstated and in the case of the Iraqi insurgents an incorrect assumption. they assume that their enemies are, like them, men.

John Le Carre

just finished the latest John Le Carre novel. Lost two days of my life to it. Couldn't put it down. The thing that is so odd is that I found myself in almost complete agreement with all of his observations on politics until practically the last 10 pages when everything turns out to be an American plot. It is kind of disturbing when someone that you agree with on so much about life and politics has one point on which you just drop your jaw and say "What?" The plot by the Americans involves elaborate deception and plenty of cold-blooded murder to manipulate European and especially German public opinion. Compared to what Le Carre has the Americans doing planting a few WMD in Iraq would have been child's play.

Peace in the Middle East

All the people that are saying there is no chance for democracy in Iraq are always ready to give the Palestinians another chance. I feel just the opposite. I am quite ready to believe that the Iraqis can pull it off but really see no evidence the Palestinians are ready to do anything but give temporary cease fires on the road to destoying Israel. Of course both sides are obliged to say why they are optimists about democracy for one people and not for the other.
I can't say I have an answer that I find completely satisfying myself. The starting point must be that Democracy is only as good as the will that it reflects. Ultimately, the only thing that the bulk of Iraqis want is to have a normal country within recognized borders. Democracy can only decide things after you have drawn a line around the polity, after you have made the decision that makes it possible to answer the question, "a majority of what?" The problem with the Palestinians is that they want their country within someone else's recognized borders. The basic issue, majority of what, has not been agreed upon. And democracy offers no way to decide it.

kerrick

It is quite amazing to listen to this kurfluffle about Kerrick. People seem to have agreed that he would be great for the job and that he should have told Bush earlier before his name was even put in nomination.
Now how important is it that we have homeowners checking the IDs of people that work for them? What about all the people that were willing to defend Clinton on the basis of the argument that the nation's interests are more important than some silly rule? If the nanny problem is so severe that he should not be offerred the job would it not be grounds for taking the job away from if he already had it? And if we are going to fire people on that basis from government why not from the private sector? And aren't the same people demanding the head of anyone that has employed someone who subsequently turns out to have been illegal also blocking an ID card that would make it practicable to verify someone's status?
Of course we have no intention of holding people to this standard, it is just something we do for people in really important jobs.

Rumsfeld vs. Bush

Everyone is praising how Bush answered the armor question in contrast to the "cold and callous" way it was handled by Rumsfeld. I have to say I disagree. I think that Rumsfeld is once again in trouble for being honest.
It reminds me of the Dukaukis debate debacle where in response to a hypothetical question about the death penalty involving the rape and murder of his wife the governor didn't miss a beat and went straight into his standard, "I don't believe the death penalty is a deterent" answer. He was faulted for not showing enough emotion, as if a professional politician is supposed to get choked up everytime he has one of the million and two variants of the "what if it was one of yours?" question thrown at him.
I was reminded of the interview with Tom Wolfe on Cspan the other night where he recounted his first meeting with Chuck Yeager. Yeager was late for the meeting because he was investigating a fatal crash that had taken place that morning in his command. Wolfe solemly made his condolences, to which Yeager replied, "Aww, you give these boys these planes and they will crack them up." That is the way a professional military man reacts to death.
I am glad that one of the people in the Bush administration is able to strut is emotions for the TV babies, but I am even more happy that the people making the real decisions (one hopes) have enough self-respect not to bother.

Sinn Fein

So Sinn Fein is balking at having its disarmerment photographed, cliaming it would be humiliating. Well, I thought that democratic parties are proud to not be paramilitary organizations? Indeed, insulted at the suggestion they have a stockpile of arms at ready for when the electoral process yeilds an outcome they don't like?

But the real sticking point is the public decommissioning of their weapons. The reason they don't want to do that is the same reason that Sadaam wouldn't, the value is the uncertainty. As long as people do not know for a fact that they don't have them then they can threaten thier opponents with them and have the benefit of having them. The free world must learn that the burden of proof must be on the terroists, not the other way around. Uncertainty favors the violent. The public demonstration of the fact is more important than the fact itself.

Libertarians' reading habits

Instapundit's reading list is out. It reminds me why I am not a libertarian. They all seem like highschool boys to me. It is all science fiction and alternative history. It is a way to structure the fantasy lives of middle-aged men. The writing is so thin, all movie script direction. That seems to me a good description of most of what passes for libertarian political thought as well. Free love, low taxes and good drugs. Aging teenage male fantasy.

real power

real power is the power to ignore. Big media used to have it, now they don't. Two terrific stories from real clear politics roundup:

How Daschle Got Blogged - John Fund, Wall St. Journal
All the News That Fits Their Spin - Chris Weinkopf, The American Enterprise

The point of the two is that media no longer is the gate keeper. They can no longer decide what is a story and what isn't. This is why all of those studies of media bias kept coming up empty. They looked for things that were said. They would count up the adjectives that came along with the names of conservatives and compared them to the ones that were paired with liberals and would hyperventilate about who was called "hard-line" and who was called a "committed activist" as if anyone out there cared who Dan Rather was telling them to like. The real power of the media was to be able to decide that Bush maybe missing a physical was news while Kerry's words coming in handy for the tortures of American POWs--the brothers that were not invited to report for duty at Kerrython--was not news. The most effective point at which to deal with political conflict is before it starts, as E. E. Shattschneider reminds us. The most effective way to bias the news it to decide that it isn't news.

Fareed

I mean, really, saying something will be a turning point one way or the other is saying little more than that is will be important. Now it is one thing to say that something is important when no one else is paying attention to it is one thing, but standing out there in front of the huddle masses of the international press core and say, "I argue, that this event is important," is a little redundent.

Iran

Can't blow up those nukes, no, no. Isolate us in the world.
If the choice is between 3 billion unemployed European students accross Europe spending their weekends burning Bush in effigy and 3 guys in Teheran having a nuclear weapon I think we should, without hesitation, choose the former.

Fareed

Big risk taking pundit watch, "In November, as the attack on Fallujah began, I argued that it would be a turning point, one way or another." Or, after this happens, something else will happen. Thanks, Fareed, that was very brave of you. A true disciple of Yogi, never make predictions, especially about the future, Bera. Fareed's corrallary: unless you confine yourself to the prediction that there will be a future. After all, if you are wrong, who is going to call you on it?

principles

I have very firm principles, it is just hard to specify them in advance.