Posted Saturday, April 12
Hopelessness is Not a Plan

Via Memri, something heartening:

In an article titled "Saddam Did Not Fall Alone," Al-Rashid [editor of the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat] wrote: "It is not Saddam Hussein who fell yesterday. What fell is more significant than Saddam. What collapsed are the big lies that accompanied him, praised him, and glorified him. Also collapsed are the minds that insisted on falsifying the facts of both present and history, that prevaricated in the name of the Iraqi people. Before the eyes of the whole world, the Iraqis decided in favor of truth, by themselves, in their own capital of Baghdad."

And something disheartening:

'Adly Sadeq, a former columnist for Al-Hayat Al-Jadeeda, continued to express support for Saddam Hussein: "The man… was a thorn in the eyes of the imperialists. We will never change our mind [about him], no matter what [the attempts at] humiliation and deception. [We know] that the man made mistakes, which are an inevitable part of the experience of great leaders who rule complex societies in dangerous geographical regions during difficult times."

And what is Sadeq doing to keep himself busy these days? Why, he is Palestinian Authority Deputy Minister of Planning and International Cooperation.

Sigh.

Hopelessness is not a plan, Mr. Planning Minister. Some excerpts from Isaiah Berlin's "Two Concepts of Liberty":

The lack of freedom about which men or groups complain amounts, as often as not, to the lack of proper recognition. I may be seeking not for what Mill would wish me to seek, namely security from coercion, arbitrary arrest, tyranny, deprivation of certain opportunities of action, or for room within which I am legally accountable to no one for my movements. Equally, I may not be seeking for a rational plan of social life, or the self-perfection of a dispassionate sage. What I may seek to avoid is simply being ignored, or patronised, or despised, or being taken too much for granted – in short, not being treated as an individual, having my uniqueness insufficiently recognized. . . – I am not seeking equality of legal rights, nor liberty to do as I wish (although I may want these too), but a condition in which I can feel that I am, because I am taken to be, a responsible agent, whose will is taken into consideration because I am entitled to it, even if I am attacked and persecuted for being what I am or choosing as I do.

. . . . So much can I desire this, that I may, in my bitter longing for status, prefer to be bullied and misgoverned by some member of my own race or social class, by whom I am, nevertheless, recognised as a man and a rival – that is, as an equal – to being well and tolerantly treated by someone from some higher and remoter group, someone who does not recognise me for what I wish to feel myself to be.

. . . .What they seek is more akin to what Mill called ‘pagan self-assertion’, but in a collective, socialized form. Indeed, much of what he says about his own reasons for desiring liberty – the value that he puts on boldness and non-conformity, on the assertion of the individual’s own values in the face of the prevailing opinion, on strong and self-reliant personalities free from the leading strings of the official lawgivers and instructors of society – has little enough to do with his conception of freedom as non-interference, but a great deal with the desire of men not to have their personalities set at too low a value, assumed to be incapable of autonomous, original, ‘authentic’ behaviour, even if such behaviour is to be met with opprobrium, or social restrictions, or inhibitive legislation.

Posted Friday, April 11
Coalition Forces Take Up Advanced Contrapositions In Support of Logical Operations on Iraqi Freedom

Matthew Yglesias has a post that contrapositively complements mine of last night concerning tolerance of homosexuality and Iraqi democracy. My point: just because it would be a good thing doesn't mean you need it. Matthew's point: just because you don't need it doesn't mean it wouldn't be a good thing.

I hope that clears everything up.
Posted Friday, April 11
The War on Squid: Dispatches From Eastern Front



Posted Thursday, April 10
Watching the statue come down live

I take heart from the fact that even the too-patriotic marine who almost wrecked the moment by draping the flag couldn't wreck the moment.

May the Iraqi people continue to have patience with honest American mistakes in the months to come. This won't be the last. May the mistakes all be honest ones.

To celebrate this truly joyous occasion, I am going to send the nervous doves of pessimism fluttering off on vacation for the rest of the week. I am going to tear apart a dumb argument a day against the possibility of democracy in Iraq.

Foreign Policy, in its wisdom, has published a thing called "The True Clash of Civilizations". Ahem:

The cultural fault line that divides the West and the Muslim world is not about democracy but sex. According to a new survey, Muslims and their Western counterparts want democracy, yet they are worlds apart when it comes to attitudes toward divorce, abortion, gender equality, and gay rights–which may not bode well for democracy’s future in the Middle East.

Nor does it bode well for democracy's past in the West - before about 1965.

Here's a thought: it is bad when your argument proves that something that actually happened probably couldn't have happened.

OK, a few more details. I quote in a festive spirit because - to the unclouded mind - all this bodes astonishing well for democracy's future in the Middle East:

The WVS [World values Survey] reveals that, even after taking into account differences in economic and political development, support for democratic institutions is just as strong among those living in Muslim societies as in Western (or other) societies [see chart]. For instance, a solid majority of people living in Western and Muslim countries gives democracy high marks as the most efficient form of government, with 68 percent disagreeing with assertions that “democracies are indecisive” and “democracies aren’t good at maintaining order.” (All other cultural regions and countries, except East Asia and Japan, are far more critical.) And an equal number of respondents on both sides of the civilizational divide (61 percent) firmly reject authoritarian governance, expressing disapproval of “strong leaders” who do not “bother with parliament and elections.”

. . . However, when it comes to attitudes toward gender equality and sexual liberalization, the cultural gap between Islam and the West widens into a chasm. On the matter of equal rights and opportunities for women—measured by such questions as whether men make better political leaders than women or whether university education is more important for boys than for girls—Western and Muslim countries score 82 percent and 55 percent, respectively. Muslim societies are also distinctively less permissive toward homosexuality, abortion, and divorce.

May I interject: this 55 score is surprisingly high, although of course one wishes it were higher still.

These issues are part of a broader syndrome of tolerance, trust, political activism, and emphasis on individual autonomy that constitutes “self-expression values.” The extent to which a society emphasizes these self-expression values has a surprisingly strong bearing on the emergence and survival of democratic institutions.

If anyone has managed to transvalue the healthy values of tolerance, trust, autonomy and self-expression into a pathological 'syndrome', I trust it is our two authors.

Have I got it right? You can't be a proper democrat unless you think abortion is permissible - in fact, a 'self-expression value'? Has it not crossed certain tiny, tenured minds that some people sincerely believe abortion is murder? And murder is impermissible. This belief has been weighed in many a moral balance and found heavy indeed? For myself, I am pro-choice; even I find such artless flirtation with the the notion that a woman expresses herself by snuffing a tiny life to be revolting. Abortion is permissible, but not as performance art.

Divorce and homosexuality? Yes, yes, the Catholic Church is wrong, wrong, wrong. But does anyone seriously believe that if we, as a society, collectively resolved to lock ourselves in failed marriages, and to shove Andrew Sullivan back in the closet, we couldn't function democratically? Huh? This is not social science. This is some weird exercise in guilt by free association. Retrograde attitudes about sex and human sexuality are being impressionistically transmogrified into original, political sin.

I might also point out that, when A is strongly correlated with B, this may be because A causes B; but it might also be that B causes A; and it might be the case that there is no causal link.
Posted Tuesday, April 8
You can really taste the boy!
Loyal readers know I've been hawkish against squid. But after war - and I believe it must come - comes reconciliation and reconstruction. That is why, to symbolize the prospect of inter-species harmony between surface and undersea dwellers, the proprietors of this blog eat Shrimp & Boy brand by the jar.


Posted Tuesday, April 8
I never said it was OK to shoot people

Russell Fox kindly links with comments and criticisms of this post. I admit it; I got a bit carried away with the satrap schtick. It's just...well, I don't think I've ever used the word before. It seemed sort of exciting. But I don't back down from political-parties-are-tribes. More on that presently.

First, the curious case of the trigger-happy tribesmen. Kurtz writes:

A truly modern and democratic Iraq will require a state with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. That means in the areas where rifle-bearing tribesmen still rule, the populace will eventually have to be disarmed.

I objected that I don't see why we necessarily need to nab the rifles. Someone emailed Fox, objecting that this qualm of mine is 'absurd'. I would deprive the state of its monopoly on force. But why should securing a state monopoly on the legitimate use of force in Iraq necessitate disarming the populace?

Maybe Kurtz is just saying: can't up and shoot whoever you please. Lawlessness bad. But that seems sort of obvious. If he is saying anything worth saying - and he seems to be - it must be that these tribal rulers, who are incurably undemocratic, need to be eased out of power in favor of members of an educational and bureaucratic meritocracy. Might be, might be. But how does Kurtz know a thing like that?

And for all I know your average Iraqi tribesman has legitimate uses for his trusty shootin' iron: bandits and wolves and camel-rustlers. (Can you tell I don't know what I'm talking about? In fact, let me go on the record as having definitely no idea whether it is a good idea or a bad idea to go to the trouble of confiscating all the rifles. I'm agnostic).

I bring up the rifle thing only as an example, only because, so it seems to me, the democracy in Iraq debate is rapidly filling up with claims of the form, 'Iraqis/Arabs/Muslims don't have the concept of X', or 'feature X of Iraqi/Arab/Muslim society is incompatible with democracy'; and many of these claims strike me as patently false, or curiously undemonstrated, or seriously speculative, or too vague to be much use.

The fact that most of these claims seem to be negative probably provoked me into seeming glib optimism - why these tribes are just like political parties! - which is funny, because I'm actually extremely pessimistic, but I don't feel intellectually entitled to my pessimism just yet. I'm working on it. I want someone to explain to me, taking baby steps all the way, why these tribes cannot turn into acceptable tribes. I am not so stupid as to miss the very great difference between ethnic and kin-based groupings and voluntary political associations. But more needs to be said than: Iraq can't be democratized because it's overrun with mutually hostile tribes. Every society is that, in some sense. (And its not a trivial sense, even if I skated over it pretty lightly.)

Probably it would be a good idea for me to go to the library and check out a fat book rather than grousing and shin-kicking, no? (I think that Stanley Kurtz' essay is a very worthwhile read; liked the bits on Mill and Burke very much. Just thought I should mention it.)
Posted Monday, April 7
Under there, Under there,
Send the word, send the word, under there,
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming ev'ry where.
So prepare, say a pray'r
Send the word, send the word to beware,
We'll be under, we're going under,
And we won't come up till it's over under there.
When I was just a lad I had what google infallibly informs me must have been a 1969 GI Joe Eight Ropes of Danger Set.

The ‘eight ropes’ in question were not real ropes, I hasten to add, but a graceless metaphor for the limbs of an octopus that, for reasons best known to itself, guarded pirate treasure the US Army had, for reasons best known to itself, dispatched Joe to recover.
The unconventional nature of such a military operation did not impress me at the time. But the octopus did. I once dreamt of a giant black version of this rubber monster, rolling along the beach near our cabin at the Oregon coast like a wheel with spokes and no rim; black, bulb-body sticking out to one side in hideous defiance of gravity; tentacles rigid and extended; malevolent eyes rolling in and out of view as it bore down with terrible speed.
And then I woke up.

If only I had so soon awoken to the dangers posed to humankind by squidkind. Much have I learned since my Saturday squid posting. Much remains to be learned. Much, no doubt, remains unknowable.

Here are some links.

First (thanks to a post to Matthew Yglesias’ comment section), I found this all-too-aptly-entitled article, “They Came From the Deep”:

They're big, they're slithery, they're terrifying, they've never been seen alive – and now, it's reported, they're taking over the world, with a greater total weight as a species than the entire human race.

That’s right. Giant squid.

The respected journal Australasian Science was reported to have announced that giant squid are currently growing so fast – both in size and in number – that, in terms of total biomass, they now surpass the human race.

On the face of it, this is absurd. Here is a species whose existence mankind has scarcely even noticed until now; for living examples of which scientists have spent whole careers searching in vain. How can they suddenly be occupying more of our planet than us? And how can scientists be so certain – when they are simultaneously so ignorant?

But the article, based on the work of Dr George Jackson of Tasmania's Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, seemed plain enough. Squid, it insisted, are the new "big players of the ocean". Previous constraints on their population – such as predation by sperm whales and tuna and competition for food by smaller "ground fish" such as flounder, halibut, cod and hake – have in recent years been abruptly removed, in both cases by overfishing. At the same time, global warming has heated the ocean to a temperature better suited than ever before to rapid growth – both for giant squid and for cephalopods in general.

Suddenly it all seemed so terrifyingly clear.

Just as the end of the Cold War left a sole superpower bestriding the surface of the globe – with veritable flounder, halibut, cod and hake like France, Germany, Russia and China churning helplessly in its wake; so a different thaw has left the watery three-quarters of the globe in the exclusive embrace of a very different superpower.

How long, how long, before these titans must clash?

It was with feelings of trepidation that I turned to google, seeking more information. Quickly I found myself at Cephalopod News. “If it’s squishy and has eight or more legs, we republish the headline.” Well, that’s some reassurance. Sober heads prevailing.

From here it was relatively easy. I report my substantive findings.

Containment is a tempting strategy. We have our ‘sphere of influence’. They have theirs. But we humans should not complacently assume we can stay on land and enjoy ‘peace in our time’ – or even that we can take to the air, should the surface fall to the enemy. Scientists say mankind will be replaced by giant land squid, flying killer fish and intelligent baboons. In only a couple million years.

Also, this. Even I’m not sure what to make of it. It complicates ‘air superiority’, as the fly-boys like to call it. It complicates something.

Also, evidence is mounting that non-cephalopodic submarine species may be providing our enemies with additional arms – I mean what I say: arms. As though they didn’t have enough already.

Speaking of which: the sort of swift decapitation strike that may (or may not) have worked against the Iraqi regime might have little effect against our future enemy because of this.

And if you think we have an edge in stealth technology, this article on cuttlefish should shift your paradigm: No defense budget could ever match nature's resources. Evolution, a hundred-million-year arms race between predator and prey, has perfected an extraordinary array of camouflage. As one British scientist mournfully despairs (on the edge of tears, and I feel the same): "it's all out there – nature has absolutely beaten us to every structure we think we've designed."

And here is an article accompanied by a really cool short film. I expect the Pentagon will be releasing a lot more like this – hopefully they will end with big explosions!

Last but not least, this isn’t really directly squid-related (so far as I can tell!) But it seems like the sort of headline that might cause confusion, which is a bad thing that arises often in modern life: tiny cameras will film sex life of tits. You heard me right:

A Dutch university is going to attach tiny cameras to 120 great tits in a £1million project to study their sexual behaviour.

The Dutch.

Is there any level of depravity to which they will not sink?
Posted Monday, April 7
When democracies attack!

I detect a tendency to set the bar too high as we earnestly limber ourselves up for the democracy in Iraq debate that must follow. (This is an odd fact for me to be noting, since I am pessimistic about the whole business, but never mind that. What's done is done. Must look to the future.)

First, to conclude my criticisms of Garfinkle of a few nights ago, let us consider the following allegations of Islamic illiberal infirmity:

Since divine, extrinsic authority cannot be disputed there is [in Islamic political culture] no logic to political pluralism as a permanent or ideal condition. Tolerance for any other set of social and political principles amounts to heresy; tolerance of other private religious beliefs is conceived as virtuous forbearance, not as a recognition that truth might really be in dispute.

The problem – beyond the odd phraseology - is that there is, arguably, ‘no logic’ to political pluralism as an ideal condition within Western liberal political culture. Pluralism may be praised as productive of many ‘truths’: diversity for its own sake, let a million flowers of individualism bloom. This essentially romantic conception is not to be despised. But pluralism can be more humbly commended as the least non-ideal mechanism for everyone not killing everyone else on a regular basis. By the same token, there doesn’t need to be any ‘logic’ to the permanence of liberalism. We hope it lasts, in the Middle East as at home. That will do.

In short, a culture of virtuous forbearance is sufficient for democratic purposes. Forebearance is almost the most we manage to muster on the home front, after all. We very seldom (too seldom) think that the truth might really be in dispute – let alone deeply, metaphysically plural - when we argue with those the other side. We don’t go to the barricades when we lose at the ballot box, but this is very seldom (even outside of Florida) because we are thinking: ‘perhaps these electoral results shows they are right after all.’

Moving right along.

Stanley Kurtz’s provocatively entitled and thoroughly radical but unnervingly sober-toned “Democratic Imperialism: a Blueprint” is similarly guilty of accidentally setting the bar too high – or at least at an odd angle.

Consider the problem of Iraq’s traditional tribal areas as a specimen of the coming administrative challenge. A truly modern and democratic Iraq will require a state with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. That means in the areas where rifle-bearing tribesmen still rule, the populace will eventually have to be disarmed.

Someone (perhaps myself) really ought to bring this to the attention of Instapundit and the Volokhs. It is not a conceptual truth that a (well-regulated) militia is inimical to the security of a free state. Plausible counter-examples might be adduced.

Yet, in the early phases of the occupation, it will be necessary to work with the tribes, not against them, to consolidate the new government’s control. It will take time to educate and train a modernizing and liberal elite. Eventually, patronage through tribe and kin will have to be stamped out in favor of an educational and bureaucratic meritocracy. In the meantime, some cultivation of traditional leaders and some accommodation of traditional kinship-based patronage will have to be tolerated. Inevitably, there will be contradictions in policy.

We would be reasonably content – insanely pleased - if Iraq became like the United States. But the USA is not only a well-armed society, it is fiercely tribal. There are fifty (!) states. (Can you imagine how complicated that makes things?) Beneath that, there are stubborn satraps and satrapies all the way down to level of the local school board. Last but not least, although our Constitution did not anticipate the permanent establishment of two fiercely prideful, mutually hateful, warring tribes – Democrats and Republicans – it has actually worked out more or less OK in practice. As to the need to stamp out patronage-based government in favor of some sort of efficient meritocracy: McCain-Feingold will always be the dream (we will see how well it works in practice); for now many people appear to have careers in politics.

Kurtz is writing as though the goal in Iraq could be (might be) the realization of a Eurocrat’s dream of efficient central rule by aloof, locally unaccountable elites. But there is surely no chance of Baghdad becoming Brussels. And no chance, actually, that Kurtz wants to try out such an unpromising model. Why does he not simply out and say it: no hope of stamping out passionate factionalism (Federalist 10, anyone?) Best hope, surely, is that Iraqi ethnic and religious groups will prove to be the sorts of tribes that are not inimical to the operation of some sort of liberal democracy.

The 64 billion dollar question (at the very least) being: well, are they or aren't they?