–Sebastian
I generally agree with Hilzoy’s recent post on justification and explanation but something vaguely nags me about it. So of course rather than talking about what I agree with I want to talk about what I don’t agree with. Unfortunately I can’t quite put my finger on it, so this post is going to be a bit stream-of-conciousness with what I hope is an insightful question at the end. I think the place that bugs me is:
Just because they’re true, however, doesn’t mean that there are not other grounds for criticizing me for saying them. I am heartless, more concerned with pointing out your failings than with saving your life, etc. (To amuse yourselves while hammering home the central point, just think of the many, many occasions on which it would be wrong to recite the multiplication tables, true though they be. In the middle of a fight with your spouse, for instance.) In all such cases, the appropriate criticism is not that the person saying these things is saying something false, but that the act of saying it reveals her motives for saying it, or her character more generally, to be in some way bad.
I think that some conservatives tend to make assumptions about liberals that lead them to hear claims about e.g. any possible American role in the genesis of al Qaeda as just this sort of utterly inapt statement. If my first response to the sight of you bleeding on the sidewalk should be to tend to your wounds, not to tell you how dumb you were, then by the same token my first response to 9/11 should have been to tend to, or (if I wasn’t in a position to help directly) at least to mourn with, the dead and injured and those who loved them. It should not have been to point out America’s role (if any) in the genesis of terrorist movements; and anyone whose first response to 9/11 was not horror but blaming America would, I think, have shown real moral ugliness.
I think that some conservatives make assumptions about liberals that lead them to think that liberals who try to explain such things do so for all the wrong reasons. (Liberals have stereotypes about conservatives too, of course, but they tend not to get tangled up with explanation and justification.) Rush Limbaugh, for instance, thinks that liberals always want to empathize with anyone they can see as ‘downtrodden’, however loathesome that person might be; that liberals despise America and think that America is responsible for all the world’s evils; and that we think that no one from another culture is ever responsible for anything. If you think that liberals are like this, and you hear a liberal say that American policies in the Middle East contributed in some way to the development of al Qaeda or the motives of terrorists, you might well be inclined to think the worst of that person. But that would be because you assumed the worst to begin with.
I think the third paragraph has a bit of a back-door excluded middle argument. It is almost certainly true that conservatives are making assumptions about liberal speakers and justification, but I don’t think it is the assumptions identified. I definitely think that many liberals tend toward exusing other cultures from responsibility, though I think this impulse was stronger in the 1980s and 1990s than it is now. But I think that isn’t what really worries conservatives. I think that conservatives worry that the explanations are used to disguise a back-door pacifism or lack of will to fight against people who want to kill us. The same thing shows up in the "is it a war or mere crime" debate. It isn’t that conservatives don’t believe that law enforcement action is hugely important. They just worry that liberals want to stop there. They worry that liberals always want to try appeasement, and refuse to stand up to people that actually want to hurt us until it is far too late–and much uglier than if we stop things earlier. And liberals pretty much play into those fears–Clinton and Carter on North Korea is a classic example. However bad it would have been to try to deal with North Korea in 1994 and I have no illusion that it could have been awful, kicking it downstream until they actually had nuclear weapons made it far worse.
Furthermore, liberals don’t typically make a big deal to make the difference between justification and explanation very clear so those who are justifying can easily hide out with those who are explaining–we can’t tell them apart. The Sheehan example is demonstrative. I’m pretty sure that somewhere there is a vocal mother of a dead soldier who isn’t so much of an appeaser that she thinks Afghanistan was an unjust invasion. But you take the easy route, Sheehan is available so hop on the media circus, and we can ignore the fact that almost all of her foreign policy issues are framed like those of a raving lunatic. She clearly has all the tendencies conservatives fear are hiding in the liberal background, and she is embraced quite easily and very publically by almost the entire spectrum of the left. Is this because the left agrees with her? I strongly pressed, some will say no. But only if really pushed.
But back to the key question of justification/explanation. In the 1980s and 1990s there was a strong and growing pseudo-Christian militia movement. They felt mostly unreasonable and irrational greivances against the US government. Eventually Timothy James McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building. He was loosely tied to a number of militia-oriented groups and in interviews spoke to many of their talking points. Some people used this as a chance to attack Clinton for being weak on security, and I’m sure that some try to use this to raise questions about overreaching government. But on the whole lots of people didn’t care why he did it. Those who did typically analyzed it from a "he’s crazy" point of view. In other words they would explain things purely from the point of view of what he thought–not from the point of view of trying to analyze the thoughts as legitimate grievances. And even though he was only loosely affiliated with milita groups, even the loose identification was enough to break the back of the militia movement in the United States.
Their membership dropped off dramatically and they went from being seen as eccentric in some conservative circles to being much more likely to be seen as dangerous. Some prominent leaders (such as Lynn Van Huizen) have attempted to purge the more violent members from the militias. (Yes I am aware that Neiwert worrys almost incessantly about the militia movement, but even he admits that it fell off dramatically in response to the bombing).
So why was the reaction so different? Where is the Guardian article which says: Terrorist action is of course reprehensible, but one must really understand that McVeigh is raising important issues about the interaction between governmental power and its citizenry? Where is the Robert Fisk clone who get beaten up by the militia and says "if I had been oppressed by the atheist-loving US government for so long I would have done the same?" Where is the George Monbiot essay written seven days later which says "If Timothy McVeigh did not exist, he would have to be invented?" Even Patrick Buchanan–general high-profile wack-job conservative–didn’t try to explain McVeigh. There is a key difference in how we reacted to the Oklahoma bombings when compared to how many react to the 9/11 bombings. Making a binary distinction between justification and explanation doesn’t really capture that difference.
I think that the distinction between justification and explanation as discussed so far fails to capture why so many of the ‘explanations’ used for Islamism make conservatives queasy. I can’t put my finger on it, but I think the difference in liberal treatment of McVeigh’s crazed explanations and those of Islamists might shed some light on the issue.
Sebastian- I don’t see how you can justify blaming the Clinton White House for “kicking the North Korea can down the road.”
1 Every US administration since the 50s kicked that can.
2 North Korea now claims to have nuclear weapons, which they didn’t during the Clinton administration, but as they haven’t conducted a nuclear test yet, their claims look like simple posturing.
3 The processing of spent fuel rods for plutonium began on Bush’s watch, in response to Bush breaking agreements with North Korea.
I don’t think any of this was what you wanted to talk about with your post, but you need to get your facts at least somewhat straight if you want to have a serious conversation.
They kicked it at a very key nuclear proliferation stage.
“The processing of spent fuel rods for plutonium began on Bush’s watch, in response to Bush breaking agreements with North Korea.”
You have some nerve saying I need to get my facts straight if you think this is a fair assessment of why the Agreed Framework failed. It failed, in short, because the North Koreans were continuing nuclear programs despite being paid not to. Bush ceased the payments which were not doing their agreed work.
Sebastian: I suspect we’re going to get into a North Korea tangent. (Well, not ‘we’, since I will shortly go to bed.) As I understood it, N. Korea pledged not to develop plutonium; it did not pledge not to enrich uranium. I also thought its tossing out the Agreed Framework was in response to: (a) the Bush administration’s decision to put it on hold pending reevaluation, (b) the axis of evil speech and the preemptive war doctrine.
On the main point, though: back when Karl Rove made his remarks about liberals wanting to offer therapy to the terrorists, people went back and dug up polls from Sept. and Oct. 2001 that showed very large majorities of Democrats and liberals in favor of going to war with Afghanistan. That’s our attitude towards fighting people with a demonstrated desire to kill us. Likewise, a lot of us opposed Iraq on the grounds that those very same people who wanted to kill us had not yet been captured, and we did not want to divert attention from them; and also on the grounds that we thought it would be, in all likelihood, disastrous for American interests. I really wish I had been wrong, but I don’t see that I was. I do completely reject the idea that it was back-door pacifism that made me oppose this war.
I think there are people on the left (and some on the right) who oppose war either in all cases or in all but a vanishingly small number of cases. But there are also lots of people on the left (like me) who hate war (who doesn’t?), but who are also prepared to fight wars when it’s necessary, and also in some cases (Kosovo, Rwanda) when it’s not, but when a clear humanitarian objective can be met with the limited application of force.
In other words, I think you’re probably right about conservative suspicions (I mean, you’d know better than I would), but I don’t think those suspicions are better founded than the ones I mentioned. (Recall: none of the candidates who did well in or primary were in favor of pulling the troops out, though some had opposed the Iraq war in particular. And God knows none had opposed the war in Afghanistan.)
As to why people tried to understand al Qaeda: one reason, I think, was that it seemed fairly clear, at least from news coverage, that a lot of people supported them, many more than supported McVeigh. (I mean, there were no reports of people celebrating in the streets of American cities after Oklahoma City.) I don’t really think people would have felt the same had it seemed as though bin Laden was leading a bunch of nutcases that virtually no one had any sympathy with — had he, for instance, been a sort of Middle Eastern version of Aum Shinrikio: an odd cult without a large following. It was the fact that apparently lots and lots of people cheered him on that made me, at least, want to understand. (And, fwiw, I’ve always been more interested in understanding the psychology of recruits to al Qaeda like Atta, and the people who cheer them on, than understanding bin Laden himself; and I don’t think I’m atypical here.)
“in or primary” = “in our primaries.” Definitely bedtime.
“had he, for instance, been a sort of Middle Eastern version of Aum Shinrikio: an odd cult without a large following.”
make that: had he been the leader of a ME Aum Shinrikio…
(I mean, had he himself been a cult, that would have been very odd.)
Good night 😉
Your analysis seems to be based on a number of prejudices — this leaves the arguments dangling.
I definitely think that many liberals tend toward excusing other cultures from responsibility,
Think that if you wish, but its still made up hooey. And how about the conservative love of nurturing and excusing the death squad cults of various fascistic states? That far exceeds any liberal tendency to “excuse other cultures from responsibility.”
I think that conservatives worry that the explanations are used to disguise a back-door pacifism or lack of will to fight against people who want to kill us.
Again, a myth conservatives choose to believe, without any basis in fact. Liberals in office have a better military service record — its not an accident. Another generation ago, Republicans loved to talk about “Democrat wars” — how quaint that seems now. In the 90s, the Republicans regularly engaged in rhetoric against Clinton’s military efforts which they now call treasonous when spoken by Democrats. Who lacked the will to fight in the 90s?
The flip-side liberal point of view is that too many conservatives are basically warmongers, which recent events tend to show as true. And the whole chickenhawk phenomena only compounds the ugliness of advocating war while avoiding personal sacrafice to wage it — a far uglier sin than inappropriate pacifism.
And liberals pretty much play into those fears–Clinton and Carter on North Korea is a classic example. However bad it would have been to try to deal with North Korea in 1994 and I have no illusion that it could have been awful, kicking it downstream until they actually had nuclear weapons made it far worse.
And the Republicans advocating this in 1994 were…? What was Bush I doing 1988 to 1992? Plus funny how five years of Bush II looks exactly like Clinton policy, without the diplomacy. And they didn’t have nuclear weapons in 2000. Funny how since 2000, a policy of ending diplomacy and threatening war makes your adversaries more anxious to arm themselves, rather than the opposite.
The Sheehan example is demonstrative. I’m pretty sure that somewhere there is a vocal mother of a dead soldier who isn’t so much of an appeaser * * * Is this because the left agrees with her? I strongly pressed, some will say no. But only if really pushed.
Baloney. Most do not identify with her policy views, and have no problem saying so. It is the right that goes nuts over it, and wants to pretend that her nuttier views are why she has attracted so much support.
As many times as it has been explained to you, you ignore the one real thing about Sheehan. She is a grieving mother for whom you are unable to justify her loss, which demonstrates the evil of this war and the mendacity of Bush. Even the true believers on the right are lamenting his weak rhetoric justifying the ongoing war effort — their error is concluding that its just a rhetorical problem rather than the odor of rot in the policy itself.
Sheehan could believe in the abominable snow man, the Atlantis theory, UFOs, or the power of crystals, and it does not matter. BECAUSE IT IS NOT RELEVANT. Does shouting help you understand this?
And your McVeigh comparison? Why not the Unabomber, too? McVeigh was a spoiled white kid gone nuts over right-wing crazy propoganda and actually acted on the violent rhetoric — for what? The Unabomber — similar nuttiness about left-wing crazy propoganda. There is not much point to trying to understand the motivations of these people. There is plenty of reason to try to understand the motivations of literally millions of Islamists who hate us, resulting in many hundreds of thousands willing to engage in violent jihad. Once you grasp the difference, you will see the silliness of your McVeigh example.
I’m not getting into the Korean tangent more than this last comment because it really isn’t the thrust of my post, but this is wrong:
“As I understood it, N. Korea pledged not to develop plutonium; it did not pledge not to enrich uranium.”
In the Agreed Framework North Korea (again, which really should have been a clue) agreed to live up to the requirements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the entirely different North-South Joint
Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The North-South Joint
Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula was of course intended to remedy the fact that North Korea was not living up to the NPT. There were to be Light-Water reactor nuclear facilities, but the North Korean government repeatedly thwarted attempts to make sure that systems could be in place to keep such reactors from being able to make nuclear material for weapons. Which is why the LWR part of the agreement broke down. But in any event the uranium enrichment was in violation of the North-South Joint
Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula which was re-ratified by the Agreed Framework.
But this has been well hashed out in the past, and isn’t the topic of the post anyway.
“Recall: none of the candidates who did well in or primary were in favor of pulling the troops out, though some had opposed the Iraq war in particular. And God knows none had opposed the war in Afghanistan.”
What about Kerry? He made pulling our troops out the centerpiece of the foreign policy debate. He talked (ridiculously) about having troops replaced by UN troops and most of the US out in a year or two.
1) don’t construe my silence on North Korea as acquiescence
2) I have said repeatedly that it is NOT BIN LADEN’S GRIEVANCES THAT INTEREST ME. I am interested in:
–what grievances (real or perceived) AQ leaders find most useful in brainwashing young men into killing themselves.
–what grievances (real or perceived) lead people who won’t actually murder for AQ to provide financial support
–what grievances (real or perceived) lead to Bin Laden’s high favorability ratings from many Muslims who do not participate at all in AQ, and cheers on the streets of Arab countries after 9/11
–what grievances (real or perceived) lead to those who reject bin Laden saying “a pox on both your houses” rather than actually working with the U.S.
etc. etc.
You can substitute “Zarqawi” or whoever else for Bin Laden as needed.
McVeigh did not have public support. Bin Laden does.
Also, you are once again noticeably short of examples of the U.S left of the present day confirming these things. You have cited arguments in a left-of-center English paper. I should think it would be obvious why the Guardian published fewer editorials about Oklahoma city.
The left isn’t attacking Cindy Sheehan’s foreign policy views on Afghanistan because a) she lost her son, b) she’s the one who chose to go public, c) she’s been effective, d) she is talking about Iraq, not Afghanistan, e) no one is mistaking her for a policy analyst, f) she’s getting attacked enough as it is, g) distancing ourselves from her and marginalizing her would be both heartless, and politically stupid. It has nothing at all to do with secret agreement with her position on Afghanistan.
And you know, I think you damn well know that, so I don’t know why you felt the need to imply otherwise.
“I definitely think that many liberals tend toward excusing other cultures from responsibility,
Think that if you wish, but its still made up hooey. And how about the conservative love of nurturing and excusing the death squad cults of various fascistic states? That far exceeds any liberal tendency to “excuse other cultures from responsibility.”
I was thinking more along the lines of huge demonstrations all over colleges about South Africa (with heavy Western influence) while very little went on about Communist depradations and tribalized warfare at the same time in Africa.
But if you want to go there–Communism. 1930s academics through the 1980s. I’d prefer not to go there, but I will with quotes if pushed. While I know Duranty has been inappropriately used on this site in the past, I won’t hesitate to use him appropriately if need be. And I believe his reporting was popular enough to win a rather prestigous prize that you might have heard of. What Latin American travesty would you like to compare to the intentionally (and if Jesurgislac is lurking I would like to point out the proper use of the word ‘intentionally’) induced starvation of 5-10 million in the Ukraine? What would you like to compare to the initial denials and explanations for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? Shall we talk about academic justifications of China’s Cultural Revolution. Shall we talk about how you can still hear ridiculous ideas like “Russia couldn’t have industrialized without Stalin” or “at least Castro provides good health care” as if you couldn’t provide good health care without putting people with AIDS in camps and locking away journalists and playwrights for half their lives.
Or if you want to go there we can talk about romanticized views of the Aztecs and Incas before the Spanish arrived.
I didn’t just make up the idea that liberals can be softer on the viciousness of other cultures. God, every single freshman in my college was forced to attend a class where we talked about how it was “ok” in certain cultures to be a hunting cannibalist. I didn’t create that syllabus as a rhetorical strawman, it really existed.
” definitely think that many liberals tend toward excusing other cultures from responsibility,
Think that if you wish, but its still made up hooey.”
Oh give us a break.
If you’re not “excusing other cultures” then you’d be judging them by the same standards.
Abu Ghraib, anyone?
Sebastian: What would you like to compare to the initial denials and explanations for the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia?
It would certainly be interesting to compare comments made by (for example) Noam Chomsky in the 1970s on Pol Pot, to justifications for supporting Pol Pot in the 1980s.
There may still exist people from Reagan’s administration who could explain or try to justify the Reagan’s administration’s support for the Khmer Rouge, but no one interested is able to press them for an explanation, and no one able is interested in hearing why, knowing that the Khmer Rouge were genocidal maniacs, Reagan still supported them. But assuming that we could ever get an honest answer out of Henry Kissinger, it would certainly be interesting to hear his justification for killing about half a million Cambodians between 1969-73, and (if we could ever get an answer from any of those who were in power then and are in power now) why Reagan’s administration supported Pol Pot through the 1980s. (cite)
We can compare the morality of actually supporting genocidal maniacs to merely discussing the reasons why genocidal maniacs were able to come to power, of course.
“McVeigh did not have public support. Bin Laden does.”
This is why I find the argument nearly impossible. Whenever I mention public support among Muslims for Al Qaeda I get SLAMMED for being insensitive and war-mongering. I get constantly blasted because of course most Muslims don’t support bin Laden. And of course they don’t. But a large enough percentage do that ‘most’ is not the most useful word to worry about. Please Katherine, have that discussion with Jesurgislac, dutchmarbel and Edward and get back to me on your results.
I strongly suspect that lumping real and perceived together is going to prove a serious problem in dealing with this issue. The vast part of the problem is that the Muslim world is awash in ridiculous anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in a desperate attempt to explain why their culture is so disasterously unsuccessful in modern times. Their propaganda makes the NAZIs look practically sane by comparison–and in no way am I implying that NAZI propaganda should look sane. Even if you think that MEMRI cherry-picks, it still finds hundreds of articles in state-controlled (I’m going to repeat that for emphasis–state controlled) media. It isn’t like it is just random wing-nuttery by an independent press.
If the contention is that liberals aren’t afraid to criticize culture, lets go. Modern Arab cultures are really really awful. They are going to keep pumping out dangerous terrorists until something very deep and very fundamental changes. They think it is perfectly appropriate to stone or hang homosexuals and they actually bother to do it. I don’t hear fundamentalist Christians saying that, and when they supposedly took over America I didn’t seem them doing it. Yet I am constantly barraged by “like fundamentalists in Iran, the US has fundamentalists too with the comparison invariably being in favor of Iran!
When Jesurgislac spouts off on one of her rants the only one on the left I ever see bother to contradict her is Gary but heaven help me if I am doing something else and Timmy the Wonder Dog says something stupid. If I don’t respond right away I get tarred with agreement by silence and I am far less silent about those who are sort of on my side than most.
“It has nothing at all to do with secret agreement with her position on Afghanistan.”
For many that is true. For ‘all’ or even ‘nearly all’ it certainly is not. The problem is that those who do agree with her crazy foreign policy ideas aren’t up front about it any more than pseudo-conservatives who want to kill Arabs because of race are up front about that. But I have to fight the racist charge publically practically every other week (sometimes implicitly and annoyingly sometimes explicitly) and frankly I think repeatedly repudiating racists is good, so let’s tone it tone and realize that we are more likely to effect change on our side than the other, so make it count.
Even Patrick Buchanan–general high-profile wack-job conservative–didn’t try to explain McVeigh.
Don’t know about McVeigh, but in 2000(!) Patrick J Buchanan said this:
Pretty sharp for a ‘wack-job’ guy, ain’t he?
You are aware that Reagan was one of the first US politicians in the 1970s to speak out against Pol Pot? Right?
Abb1, Chomsky is pretty smart for a whack-job too. Being smart and being a whack-job aren’t mutually exclusive. The fact that Buchanan’s foreign policy would have let Hitler take over all of Europe and Japan all of Asia, doesn’t exactly make me a fan.
Sebastian: You are aware that Reagan was one of the first US politicians in the 1970s to speak out against Pol Pot? Right?
And then in the 1980s, Reagan supported Pol Pot.
I don’t know about you, but Reagan’s speaking out against Pol Pot would have looked a lot more impressive if he hadn’t then jumped to support him. (Just as the current administration’s speaking out against Saddam Hussein would look a lot more impressive if so many of them hadn’t been happy to support him in the 1980s. Just as the current administration’s fulminations against terrorism would look a lot more impressive if it wasn’t that so many of them have a track record of supporting terrorism in South America.)
But I have to fight the racist charge publically practically every other week
1. Publicly.
2. No, I don’t think you’re a racist.
3. (need to get rid of that tag I attached to my name)
Sebastian, that’s incorrect, Hitler did take all of Europe.
Quite the contrary, Mr. Buchanan argued that the West should’ve been more consistent in appeasing and encouraging Hitler to do his ‘drang nach osten’ by sacrificing Poland more decisively than they (the West) did. According to Buchanan, Hitler and Stalin would’ve then bled and eventually destroyed themseves and the rest of Europe would’ve been saved from the scourge.
There’s nothing particularly whacky about this idea, because this was, of course, The Plan A in the first place, only poorly executed.
abb1: Hitler did take all of Europe.
*waves* Not quite! There was one small European archipelago out on the edge which he didn’t take quite all of, though I grant you he got the Channel Islands, and Ireland was neutral. 😉
Sebastian, two points.
First, I suspect that your reply to Katherine above reveals the reason why you wrote this post. In particular
Second, I think you should go read Peter Daou’s The Ethics of Iraq: Moral Strength vs. Material Strength which sums up this issue quite nicely with respect to your rants about how we on the left don’t take the “problem with Muslims and how’re they’re worse than Nazis” seriously.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that McVeigh was raising important positions, insofar as he was basically pursuing a far-right-wing libertarian agenda. Now, few Americans spoke up in support of understanding McVeigh’s opinions, but then, very few Americans speak up in support of understanding any opinions which differ from the mainstream. (Surely it’s no accident, Sebastian, that when you seek courageous opponents of the government printed in the mass media, you have to look to Britain.)
Fortunately, McVeigh was an army of one. However, the opinions which he held appear to me to have become very much mainstream. I can’t say that I’m surprised about that, and I wonder whether part of it isn’t simply because most Americans are not exposed to the implications of extreme xenophobic right-wing libertarianism.
Mr. Holsclaw–
This surprises me:
“But on the whole lots of people didn’t care why [McVeigh] did it. Those who did typically analyzed it from a “he’s crazy” point of view. In other words they would explain things purely from the point of view of what he thought–not from the point of view of trying to analyze the thoughts as legitimate grievances.”
I do not remember the coverage in detail, but I had thought that there was quite a lot of pop-psychological hand-wringing about his motivations and what they showed about American politics. Indeed, the fact that it was the *militia* movement that suffered shows that he was understood, not simply as an anomalous nut-case, but as someone representative of a line of thought and a package of grievances.
What I seem to recall was that the exploration of his motives came to a screeching halt when it became clear that he was simply putting into practice the government-hating rhetoric that Reagan had made into the political currency of the Republican party. It wasn’t so much that the militia movement had to disown him, as that the Reaganites who had inspired the militia movement (Watt, Meese, et al.) had to try to distance themselves from it as a whole. We hate the government, the government is always the problem, if you see somebody from the government they are trouble and bad news, you should be afraid of the government, etc. etc. Oh, but somebody blew up a government building? Well, let’s not delve too deeply into his sick and crazed mind.
And still the “small-government” right has not come clean on the ugliness of its stance, nor has the Republican party done enough to purge itself of them. Norquist fantasizes about drowning the government in a bath-tub, and he is at the center of Washington’s power elite. Well, McVeigh took him at his word.
I don’t know how central to your larger point the details of McVeigh’s case really are. Accordingly, I don’t know whether it makes sense for me to disagree with what you say about McVeigh in particular, or whether I should just pass over that and try to discern the larger point. (I’d be grateful if you would draw the moral about more explicitly).
But when you ask:
“Where is the Guardian article which says: Terrorist action is of course reprehensible, but one must really understand that McVeigh is raising important issues about the interaction between governmental power and its citizenry? ”
All I can say is: for god’s sake, I was fed a steady diet of nothing *but* that line during the Reagan years, and I can still find it every week in the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Sebastian:
“….it was O.K. in certain cultures to be a hunting cannibalist”
Well, I’m just a little curious in a funny sort of way about whether the syllabus actually said it was okey-dokey. I mean, did the college you attended have a fraternity devoted to cannibalism or was it just a suggestion in the school diversity code?
Or did it just point out that cannibalism once existed in certain parts of the world? And that gradually, either through self-policing or outside intervention, folks developed a taste for cassava and dog instead. Maybe that’s just the way things happened.
The self-policing might have taken the form of a tribal ombudsman suggesting one day that, hey, instead of eating our cousins in the village right here, why don’t we kidnap those tasty people on the other side of the ravine who we don’t know? Then further innovation took place and pretty soon some entrepreneur introduced sheep as the meal of choice, both for the family meal and those required sacrifices to the Gods, you know, like Abraham and the nearly unfortunate Isaac.
Outside intervention took place of course by disinterested enlightened folks who eschewed political correctness (plus they thought people were kind of stringy) and wanted to civilize the cannibals. Plus, we hear there might be gold in them thar hills.
On a related topic, I always thought head-hunting was a gruesome way to pass the time, until I spent some weeks with some former headhunters (heads on belts for the delighted but enlightened tourist) in the mountains of the Philippines and heard how those fearsome warriors terrorized the Japanese during WWII with the mere thought of head removal and subsequent shrinking. (Cut to Bob Hope gripping his throat with one hand and swallowing hard at the mere thought of it)
I thought the cannibalism in “Alive”, the story of the soccer team whose plane crashed on the Andean snowfield was O.K., but I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
Yes, and what Tad Brennan said about McVeigh and the more civilized and much more effective but on the whole, equally contemptible and ruthless Grover Norquist, who may have been that third guy in the composite sketch.
And, what’s with the “drowning babies” theme? That’s just not right, but it seems to be in the Republican rhetorical syllabus.
“Drowning blastocysts in the bathtub” has more music to it.
Of course, Democrats have always eaten their own, which is not an endorsement or advertisement for cannibalism.
Tangential to your main point, but requires a response:
kicking it downstream until [North Korea] actually had nuclear weapons
It’s outrageous to pin this on the Clinton administration when it so completely characterizes what’s happened on the Bush “watch”. That they suppressed this information until after the Iraq war vote just rubs salt in the wound.
I assume that all right-wingers are looking for excuses to murder, kill and lynch other human beings. (In the name of God and Country, of course)
And that they always love authoritarian leaders.
Funny things—these assumptions and stereotypes.
Now, NeoDude, that’s a bit unfair, don’t you think?
After all–Mr. Holsclaw wasn’t trying to *justify* vicious right-wing slurs about liberals. Just *explain* them.
And another thing…were any of you right-wingers complaining about the tactics of jihadist in Afghanistan against the Soviets?
You right-wingers embraced Islamofascism with amoral glee. America was fully on board when the mujahadeen was cutting off the heads of Russians and kidnapping and torturing Afghani communists. So the Right-Wing’s sudden emotional attachment to human rights and “moral values” is a most devious move, indeed.
Talk about questionable values.
(just saw your post, Tad…and that last post was not directed at you)
Having once briefly met Sebastian, Neodude, I can attest that he didn’t try to lynch me, nor did exhibit amoral glee.
And, we both eschewed cannibalism and instead chewed on cinnamon rolls. Being the politically correct liberal, I, of course, felt bad for the cinnamon roll. Sebastian ruthlessly wolfed his down.
“…it would certainly be interesting to hear his justification for killing about half a million Cambodians between 1969-73, and (if we could ever get an answer from any of those who were in power then and are in power now) why Reagan’s administration supported Pol Pot through the 1980s. (cite)”
Before responding to this, a bit of personal context: there was never a time I didn’t oppose the Vietnam War. My parents took me to marches against it in NYC circa 1968. I vividly remember when we went to Washington for the Moratorium in 1969, even though I was only ten years old; the heat was incredible, but everyone was sharing canteens and water bttles and passing out salt pills. I went on later marches against the war. I had been reading news obsessively since ’68. I continued my fascination with politics and history and international relations and what have you, and continued to read every book that came out on the Nixon Administration, and for a couple of decades later, I continued to read in depth about every aspect of what happened related to the Vietnam War. I later took an editing job where, among other duties, I was the assistant editor in the mid-Eighties on the Avon Books Vietnam line; aside from the hundreds of books on the topic I’d read, I also read hundreds more manuscripts and hardcovers and small press books by professional historians and veterans.
So I learned a bit about the War and its context. While I could provide differing advice for each year America was in Vietnam as to what, in retrospect, would have looked like the best course of action, I never became convinced that any of the arguments about about the U.S. “could” have won or should have won made much sense other than in a very abstract sort of way. Generally speaking, the war was a, partially well-intentioned, tragic mistake that was, practically, not really winnable under the conditions of reality available.
So I’m not exactly a defender of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissiner, or the War. Or the Cambodian/Laotian “incursion.” Then, or now. We’re all clear on that? Good.
So, having said that: Pilger’s account is about as balanced and fair as is Henry Kissinger’s. It’s omissions and distortions are numerous and gross.
In his account, the North Vietnamese simply don’t exist as actors. They don’t. Read it and see. Apparently the U.S., simply out of imperialistic insanity, randomly decided to bomb and invade Cambodia, apparently for no reason whatever: sheer whim and evil, I guess.
Nor would anyone easily detect from Pilger that when the bombing went on, Pol Pot was fighting against the Cambodian faction the U.S. did support, the palindromic government of Prime Minister Lon Nol.
The bombing was wrong, for various reasons, but it did have, if one accepted the logic of the war, a perfectly valid military target, in theory, at least (in practice, of course, sure, a lot of empty jungle was also bombed): the Viet Minh (they never called themselves the “Viet Cong”) troops in Cambodia. The bombing was wrong, but it was neither purposeless nor random nor unprovoked.
If North Vietnam hadn’t made the strategic decision to use Cambodian and Laotian territory, there would have been little reason for the U.S. to involve themselves, and certainly it wouldn’t have been involved heavily in those two countries.
This is, as I say, not to defend the U.S. in conducting the “secret” war in those two countries; but it is to say that they didn’t take a major inititive in doing so, and when the common phrase “widened the war” is used, the impression conveyed that it was the U.S. who took such initiative, that is wrong, and the impression that the U.S. did so for no reason, is wrong.
Nor is this a mystery:
Well, gee, we were still enemies of North Vietnam, which, much though their regime was infinitely preferable in a moral sense to that of Saloth Sar, they were a) still a pretty nasty bunch; b) had gone ahead an conquered South Vietnam, violating all of their agreements (hardly a surprise, but also not precisely admirable and honorable); c) were conducting a hegemonistic policy in their region, which China found alarming enough to subsequently invade Vietnam over (and got their asses kicked, but that’s another story). But we really didn’t “back” Pol Pot.
Pilger cites this terrible “support”:
Yes, the U.N. gave them food. Food aid is supposed to be given without politics. How evil!
And, before we get too far past it in the narrative, the notion that the earlier American bombing, during the active war, helped create the conditions for the Khmer Rouge is correct, but it’s long since reached such a stage of mythology on the left that the context tends to be left running far behind, unable to catch up. It’s not as if the U.S. bears full responsibility , and the amount of responsibility is rather debatable, and certainly needs to be spread among other actors, including the North Vietnamese, the Cambodian government, and all the factions in Cambodia.
Well, gee, the country had just been conquered: what should policy have been? Pat the Vietnamese on the hat and say “we give you a mandate to run the country”? It’s difficult to reconcile objecting to the U.S. invasion of Iraq with support for the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia, unless one takes the stance that the Vietnamese government is more humanitarian-minded and able than the U.S. government, isn’t it?
Well, who now favors trying to gain the support of Sunnis in Iraq, but thinks that the people in the Khmer Rouge, who remained a significant organized fighting force and alternative political force if not dealt with, should have not been acknowledged as that? Anyone?
In other words, if the Vietnamese do what the U.S. does, it’s okay, in Pilger’s eyes, and presumably in the eyes of those who cite his view approvingly, even though it’s bad if the U.S. does it. And negotiation with and attention to the fact that a violent, highly ideological armed group needs to be taken into view in a peaceful resolution in a civil war is necessary in Iraq, but was good in Cambodia if the group supported Vietnam, but bad if they didn’t.
Very objective Pilger is in his views, indeed.
Yes, very bad, having elections, and it’s the West responsible for the rest of the above horrors. Instead, they should have…?
But let’s conclude with Pilger’s final piece of wisdom, which is precisely on par with most of the rest of his views:
And so his view has been borne out!
Er, right?
Yup, good cite. John Pilger, objective critic of the West and the U.S. Take all your political guidance from him, as well as his acute and fair-minded historical analysis, why don’t we?
Or maybe not.
I should have known that of course it was the Republican Party that supported McVeigh and that they were never sufficiently repudiated. Whatever.
I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of what Tad said at all.
What really “kills” me about the Right is its critique of “moral relativism”.
We are constantly reminded by The Right, that there are transcendent laws that are not relative to culture.
So, when Leftist/Liberals/Humans remind them of these transcendent laws (mass murder because they are scared, rape and torture to get information, killing children to get at suspects that scare you, etc.) we get accused of moral relativism.
So…what’s up with that, Sebastian? Why do you believe morality is relative to culture?
Mr. Holsclaw–
I’m sorry that my answer displeased you. I had *thought* your question was: where was the liberal reaction to McVeigh? I gave you one liberal’s reaction, along with a guess at the reason why there was less scrutiny of McVeigh’s motives on the national level, in any public venues. If I answered the wrong question, I can try again.
But mostly I would be grateful for your attempts at fleshing out what I take is the core of your post, which goes something like this:
1) liberals respond one way to Islamic terrorists;
2) liberals responded a different way to domestic terrorists;
3) that differences shows an incompleteness in hilzoy’s discussion of explanation and justification.
I think–hope–I have the rough outline correct. But I am having great difficulty in filling in the details or seeing the sequence of thought.
as regards NK, the only real alternative, now, during Bush I, Clinton and Bush II’s first term is starvation and war.
I think Cap Weinberger had an oped during the Clinton admin arguing for war with NK; i don’t recall that it got much republican support. nor much south korean support.
which gets to the larger issue. as SH points out in comments, there are many places in the world with atrocious governments. and while we used to be able to ignore these failed states, we can do so no longer:
“They are going to keep pumping out dangerous terrorists until something very deep and very fundamental changes.”
to which there is a very simple response: We tried war-on-the-cheap, and it isn’t working. Before you ask liberals to jump on board with your desire to remake the world, get your own house in order. Persuade your party that we need a radical change in course.
the second response is: This is a democracy. Unless you can persuade 51% of the people that the US needs to remake the Middle East by war, then you should join a NGO trying to build political parties in Eygpt.
“So, when Leftist/Liberals/Humans remind them of these transcendent laws (mass murder because they are scared, rape and torture to get information, killing children to get at suspects that scare you, etc.) we get accused of moral relativism.”
Gosh, I wish there was somewhere, oh somewhere where you could find some conservative on ObsidianWings who comes out against torture and who has specifically said that the line justifying torture spreads too easily to killing or torturing the children of suspects to get information. And if only such a person had somehow believed that the argument was talking about torturing the children as a bad thing instead of a good thing. How lamentable that no such person or persons exist.
Tad, I strongly suspect that the domestic/foreign terrorist distinction is not the basis for differential explorations into motives. It may be as simple as large scale movement vs small but it isn’t just that McVeigh was white.
back when i used to read Tacitus, i noted that a discussion wasn’t complete, no matter what the topic, until it had started at least one thread on Vietnam.
it’s nice to see people keeping-up the old traditions.
—
we can ignore the fact that almost all of her foreign policy issues are framed like those of a raving lunatic
and you should ignore them, because she’s not in any position to create or implement policy – as i’m sure you know, she’s not a government official nor does she sit on any advisory board. but, i suppose moaning about her awful policy recommendations is a handy way to demonize her and change the subject from the policies drafted and implemented by the professionial fnckups who started and advocated Bush’s War – you know the one, the one Sheehan is trying to get Bush to explain.
Trying to explain McVeigh
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | August 30, 2005
So your answer is appeasement, when it is being practiced by your culture?
I’m afraid you are going to have to be clearer about how criticizing torture is appeasement. Did Islamists suddenly come out against torture? Someone should tell Iran.
A “critique” in the face of tyranny certainly seems like appeasement.
Like your some kinda UN diplomat…Stop the torture, it’s coming from your people. Your people are committing acts of an immoral character and you offer a “critique” while you continue to support the perpetrators of depraved behavior?
Sounds like appeasement to me.
Sebastian Holsclaw: But you take the easy route, Sheehan is available so hop on the media circus, and we can ignore the fact that almost all of her foreign policy issues are framed like those of a raving lunatic.
Isn’t this overstating just a little bit?
She clearly has all the tendencies conservatives fear are hiding in the liberal background, and she is embraced quite easily and very publically by almost the entire spectrum of the left. Is this because the left agrees with her? I strongly pressed, some will say no. But only if really pushed.
Huh? This site’s comments are chock full of lefties who have readily noted their disagreement with Sheehan’s position on Afghanistan. We just don’t see it as material to her protest, nor do all of us find convincing your assertion that Afghanistan, supportable as the overthrow of the Taliban was, represents the easiest possible case for war. The easiest case for war against another nation is the invasion of U.S. territory by that nation, followed closely by an attack by agents of that nation. Afghanistan is less cut and dried: a state harboring a multinational group which attacked us on our own soil. I think Afghanistan is a clear case (which we appear to have botched), but that doesn’t mean that anyone who disagrees is a nutjob.
Mr. Holsclaw–
So you don’t think the foreign/domestic split is the place to look–sorry if I misunderstood that part of your post. And you don’t think it is the white/ brown split either. (I think I used the word “domestic” partly to abstract somewhat from the details of McVeigh, thinking that not *all* of his peculiarities were relevant to your train of thought. But it looks as though I abstracted away the wrong stuff).
Perhaps in trying to think through what *causes* the differential reaction, it would help to say more about what *constitutes* this differential reaction. What is it, exactly, that the liberals do differently vis a vis McVeigh and the Islamic terrorists? What is said in the one case but not the other? Nail that down a bit more and it might aid the search for the causes of that difference.
And re Sheehan–
I realize that ObWi liberals are not typical liberals–far more broad-minded, temperate, reasonable, and good-looking–but when von started a thread in which he criticized her substantive policy proposals, pretty much all he heard back from ObWi liberals was “well of course you’re free to criticize her policies–who said we were defending her policies?”
Gary, I think Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia was justified. It has little to do with whether their personal motives were noble–Pol Pot’s government was, if I recall correctly, shooting across the border and as everyone will admit, Pol Pot was killing at an increasing rate as his rule went on. It seems odd that we felt we had to give recognition to the worst regime of its time. Well, odd until you notice how often we actively support mass murderers when it suits our interests.
I think Pol Pot’s latest biographer, Philip Short, says the same thing, but I’m not sure. One of the Ben Kiernan books I have says the US support for Pol Pot began with Jimmy Carter and Brzezinski, as part of an alliance with China (a Pol Pot supporter) against Vietnam. I think Reagan continued this alliance.
On the bombing, Ben Kiernan cites CIA sources that say the US bombing of villages recruited for the Khmer Rouge and made their propaganda a lot more plausible-sounding. That doesn’t mean the US bombing caused the Khmer Rouge genocide because the US was just as brutal to other people without evoking that reaction. But it does explain part of the reason Pol Pot was able to recruit child soldiers. Incidentally, the bombing itself was an enormous war crime in its own right, not only for the role it played in increasing Pol Pot’s following.
The left does have a record in the 30’s of supporting Stalin and you find steadily decreasing examples of similar things in the decades following. The right, I think, was rather soft on Hitler during the 30’s because they admired his anticommunism and also on Franco for the same reason and on numerous rightwing thugs ever since and has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the recognition that the US is doing anything wrong every time the issue comes up. Orwell wrote a lot about hypocrisy on both sides of the spectrum and I’d quote him except people might mistake me for Hitchens. In general I think most of the left learned its lesson much better than the right and that’s why groups which try very hard to be impartial and accurate, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, are perceived to be leftist and human rights groups within societies (B’Tselem, for instance) are probably thought of as being on the left.
There may be some moral relativists on the left –I’m not sure if I’m using the correct term. Anyway, the kind of people Sebastian describes, who think cannibalism is okay in some cultural context or who might defend genital mutiliation. But the human rights left generally doesn’t see eye-to-eye with these people.
On McVeigh (I’ve got an opinion on everything, but will soon cut way back on clogging up Sebastian’s threads), I remember it much as Ted Brennan did, but would add that the militia movement’s complaints were about things like Waco and the shooting of Randy Weaver and how this was supposed to show that the Federal Government was a gang of jack-booted thugs. I didn’t and don’t take that last conclusion seriously, but I was open to the possibility that the government might have been wrong in the shooting of Weaver and in what happened at Waco. I never was never interested enough myself to read enough to form an opinion. (Um, not that lack of knowledge always stops me.)
But anyway, if the Federal government really was going around wantonly shooting people with fringe political or religious beliefs, then the anger of the militia types would be something that I as a lefty would feel obligated to understand. It wouldn’t justify Oklahoma City. The thing about Muslim fundamentalists is that there really are some legitimate reasons for anger at the West which they can exploit for their own purposes and again as a good little lefty I think we should understand those reasons and in some cases admit that they have a point. (Though no justification for killing innocent people.)
Cleek, re Ms. S.’s policy recommendations: “…and you should ignore them, because she’s not in any position to create or implement policy”
So your recommendation is that everyone should ignore Cindy S.’s policy recommendations?
My thoughts continue to evolve, rather than being intelligently designed from the get-go, on the military’s methods of discrimination.
I now believe the military should not allow people to serve whose parents are raving lunatics and might protest the death of their loved ones. Only the offspring of parents who are NOT raving lunatics and who question no decisions from the Commander in Chief should be allowed to be cannibalized.
NeoDude says to Sebastian re American torture:
What do you suggest is the proper moral approach to U.S. torture that people on ObWings should follow, given that most do little more than offer a “critique”? (I except CharlyCarp for his legal work, and perhaps Katherine, but most of us don’t have law degrees.)
I have to say that people leaping on Sebastian, because he is the token “conservative” here, as if he were a cardboard stand-in for Donald Rumsfeld and the entire Bush Administration, while an understandable psychological impulse, seems largely unjustified; why not stick to debating what he says, rather than over what someone Direly Suspects He Must Secretly Think?
But look, this thread was not supposed to be about Sheehan, or Pol Pot, or North Korea, much less Walter Duranty.
The point was supposed to be about how we could gain more insight into the explanation/justification split. Could we hear more about that? And could we try to ensure that bickering about the illustrative examples does not swamp the central point? (First request to Mr. Holsclaw–second request to everyone, self included).
“Could we hear more about that?”
Apparently no, but the nice thing about this thread is apparently we now have a nicely populated sample showing that confusion between justification and explanation doesn’t just occur on the right.
I think frankly that you are imputing views to the left about Afghanistan that you only WISH they held, because you would prefer to debate that than Iraq. On the one hand we have the poll numbers and the statements from a large majority of actual liberals here; on the other we have your unsupported conjecture about what liberals REALLY think.
“I strongly suspect that lumping real and perceived together is going to prove a serious problem in dealing with this issue. The vast part of the problem is that the Muslim world is awash in ridiculous anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in a desperate attempt to explain why their culture is so disasterously unsuccessful in modern times.”
Right, well, whether their grievances are based on fact or anti-semitic and anti-American propaganda, or a combination, is also crucial. But a lot of people in the Middle East honestly and in good faith believe those lies, and that’s important to know & relevant in determining our public diplomacy.
So first you look at their subjective beliefs about their grievances, and then you separate out the real from the perceived. Obviously, if a view about you is false, you can’t directly change it by changing policy. Israel doesn’t have a policy of committing genocide or using Palestinian children’s blood to make matzoh. But there is a difference between a false, anti-semitic, honestly held belief that actually does motivate terrorists, and something that is just a completely insincere post-hoc justification. Also, the grievances that are legitimate and based on accurate beliefs CAN be addressed by changing policy. And if they are not, if they are whitewashed like the torture scandals have been, this undercuts our ability to convince Muslims that the other stuff is false.
I think “explanation” shades into “justification” only when:
–someone says that a certain grievance motivated an act of violence, when the evidence shows that this is not likely or even plausible as a description of the murderer or terrorists’ subjective motivations.
For instance, when Cornyn suggested that the recent attacks on federal judges might have been motivated by activist judges–the facts surrounding the shootings made it clear that they were motivated by no such thing.
–someone argues that the correct response to an illegitimate grievance or a grievance based on false information is to change our policies.
So your recommendation is that everyone should ignore Cindy S.’s policy recommendations?
yes – because a lot of them are silly, and thankfully, she’s in no position to implement any of them. she does have some authority in one area, though: as a grieving mother demanding answers. i think she’d be better off sticking to that and laying off the policy stuff. YMMV.
“Gary, I think Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia was justified. It has little to do with whether their personal motives were noble–Pol Pot’s government was, if I recall correctly, shooting across the border and as everyone will admit, Pol Pot was killing at an increasing rate as his rule went on.”
I wouldn’t argue that Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia was the worst thing that could have happened, and should have been opposed uber alles, either.
And while there are few known leaders in history to compare to Saloth Sar — he is sui generis in many horrifying ways — it’s interesting to read the above paragraph and then note that, of course, Saddam Hussein had no history whatever of shooting across his borders, or of engaging in massive slaughters of his own citizens, or that he was in the process of diminishing his inhumane policies of violence in 2003, isn’t it?
One can debate scale; are the principles so different, though, between the two cases?
Mind, I obviously don’t excerpt the U.S. invasion from questioning, condemnation, or assert there isn’t a legitimate argument for having opposed it; I believe there was and is. But I wouldn’t treat Vietnam or any other nation by a different standard, myself. Should I assume neither would you?
Regarding the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq, would you also say that your judgment about it “has little to do with whether their personal motives were noble”?
If not, why not?
“What do you suggest is the proper moral approach to U.S. torture that people on ObWings should follow, given that most do little more than offer a “critique”?”
1) Note that most of my work on this issue has been factual, not legal, and did not require a law degree.
2) As far as what is to be done now–I have three not-particularly earth shattering suggestions:
(a) trying to convince other people in a sustained way that this is really happening and that it is not acceptable
(b) trying to convince our elected representatives that this is really happening, that it is not acceptable, and that it is politically safe to oppose torture and politically dangerous to look the other way as it continues–both in general and for specific pieces of legislation.
(c) trying to change the composition of Congress so that there is some possibility of it acting on this issue. This could mean supporting candidates like McCain and Graham instead of Cornyn and Inhofe and Hastert and Frist in primaries. But there are very few contested primaries. Basically, the only way for anti-torture legislation or genuine anti-torture investigations to have a chance in Congress is for the Democrats to take control of one House or the other, and get subpoena power. As far as I’m concerned, Republicans who aren’t willing to even consider this don’t show that they support the administration’s policies, but they do show that changing them is not any sort of a priority.
I realize, of course, that one’s vote is exceedingly unlikely to make a difference in flipping Congress. But if you won’t do (c), you also undercut (b) by showing that there really isn’t a political risk to supporting torture, because no one who would otherwise have supported you will vote against you based on this issue.
I have to say that people leaping on Sebastian, because he is the token “conservative” here, as if he were a cardboard stand-in for Donald Rumsfeld and the entire Bush Administration, while an understandable psychological impulse, seems largely unjustified; why not stick to debating what he says, rather than over what someone Direly Suspects He Must Secretly Think?
Cause I’m a lazy nihilist (with a dash of irony and sarcasm) and Sebastian is a tough “mutha fucka”.
Fair enough…I need to stop avoiding my work.
Katherine–
mostly agreement. But I’ll offer an amendment.
I don’t think that offering an unlikely or implausible account of a malefactor’s motivations means ipso facto that explanation has shaded into justification. Sometimes it’s just an unlikely or implausible account, no more, i.e. it’s more or less an innocent mistake on the part of the person who offers the account.
But what you say does sound right to the extent that, when the account does such a *bad* job as explanation, it becomes natural to wonder whether it was being offered in the service of some other agenda.
So my amendment: instead of your
“I think “explanation” shades into “justification”… when:”
I’d say e.g.
“one starts wondering whether the putative explanation is really serving as justification when:”
The unamended move of saying “that’s such an implausible explanation that you *must* be an apologist” seems to me to leave too little room for simple human error.
Okay, I put in a fair amount of effort on Katherine’s a and c, I like to think, although rather minimally on b directly, to be sure, and probably should put a bit more effort in there.
I’m not sure it would be unreasonable to describe any of that as a form of “critque,” rather than, say, “direct action,” though.
I think an obviously implausible explanation is far less likely to be a justification than one that seems on the surface to be plausible.
I think suspicion of justification can be found in differential treatment. You look like you are justifying when you condemn Iranian torture but talk about how tough the insurgency is in Iraq. You look like you are justifying when you talk about how direly oppressed the Palestinians are if you can’t explain why people in Tibet (far more oppressed) don’t serve as an inspiration for world-wide terrorism.
Of course, (a) alone is still more than most people do, and enough all by itself to make charges that “X is objectively pro-torture” or “X is completely indifferent to torture” and whatnot really unfair.
“You look like you are justifying when you talk about how direly oppressed the Palestinians are if you can’t explain why people in Tibet (far more oppressed) don’t serve as an inspiration for world-wide terrorism.”
No. Not unless you are claiming that oppression of Palestinians is the ONLY cause of terrorism. I know literally no one who has ever claimed that. You don’t have to provide a complete and perfect explanation of the problem for it to be useful. Of course they have a choice about how to respond to oppression, but you really don’t seem to have absorbed a word of hilzoy’s post if you think that it is illegitimate to start with your own side’s changes rather than the other wise. It’s simple pragmatism: I have no chance of changing Zarqawi’s torture policy and I do have a chance of changing the United States’.
If there are legitimate Palestinian grievances which contribute to support for terrorism, and we could undercut that support by pressuring Israel to, e.g. give up settlements, that’s enough. One doesn’t also need to prove that it is the ONLY factor. It never is; terrorism is also a choice; so according to your logic it is always appeasement and excuse to admit that our own policies play any role at all in explaining why people make that choice.
I’ve always found these arguments absurd, even when we only discussed them in terms of U.S. crime policy. I always thought: You have to be an idiot to believe that growing up in a horrible inner city neighborhood forces you to become a drug dealer or a murderer, but you also have to be an idiot to believe that poverty doesn’t contribute at all.
“Of course, (a) alone is still more than most people do, and enough all by itself to make charges that “X is objectively pro-torture” or “X is completely indifferent to torture” and whatnot really unfair.”
You were doing really great today until this, which pretty much so spreads the responsibility for torture that we all share it equally. Sweet, and pretty, but untrue.
“If there are legitimate Palestinian grievances which contribute to support for terrorism, and we could undercut that support by pressuring Israel to, e.g. give up settlements, that’s enough. One doesn’t also need to prove that it is the ONLY factor.”
Of course not. But the bolded clause seems likely not to be true in any significant way. If we even went so far as to completely destroy Israel, and hand it over to the Palestinian’s in toto, it wouldn’t change the fact that the Arab world is horrifically corrupt, that Islam is stifling its women, that the Arab world is almost a century behind developmentally, doesn’t seem likely to catch up soon, and many of the people there feel like they are entitled to live in a full-blown Islamist culture which simultaneously should be technologically successful. And that isn’t even mentioning the fact that the tempting allure of US culture would still be tempting and alluring to those who don’t want to be Islamist–and that you won’t be able to shut it out without turning off all the TVs and radios.
“but you also have to be an idiot to believe that poverty doesn’t contribute at all.”
It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright, saith Poor Richard.
“Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | August 30, 2005”
You sound like a Spaniard justifying colonialism in the Americas…”Those natives are primitive brutes and backward…and walk around naked, of course we can take their stuff! It would be sin not to!”
“But the bolded clause seems likely not to be true in any significant way.”
If I might touch on the specifics here: no, and yes.
“Yes” insofar as it applies to those of like-mind and who are Palestinian supporters of the Islamic Jihad/Hamas ilk, who believe all of Palestine must be recovered.
“No,” insofar as it applies to the mass of Palestinians who, while ideally desiring the same as above, are realists and know it won’t happen, and who are willing to settle for a viable state in Gaza and on the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital; that’s a huge proportion of the Palestinian population, although how large will vary under different circumstances.
And that brings us to the third, rarely mentioned, grouping of Palestinians: those who respond to events, whose opinions change like most human beings do, in response to circumstances. And those are the people whose stances Israel can significantly change with its own polices and actions. They’re very significant.
Basically, anyone who asserts that “Palestinians” are a homogenous mass, and “they” will act this way or that, pretty much doesn’t know what they’re talking about, and is contributing to an erroneous and tremendously destructive trope. (Ditto those who “know” that “the Jews” are all out to grab land and oppress Palestinians, or are all noble souls out solely to reclaim the land and defend themselves while being nothing but kind and gentle.)
You sound like a Spaniard justifying colonialism in the Americas.
Not Spaniard, an Englishman. Half-devil and half-child. The white man’s burden.
Gary, the Vietnam/Cambodia US/Iraq analogy doesn’t hold for the reasons you know. Saddam wasn’t killing millions at the time and he wasn’t shooting across our border.
Some of our tangents are unnecessary, I guess, though Sebastian brought up some of them, but the Timothy McVeigh one is in Sebastian’s original post and to me it shows the fallacious nature of it. If the militias had serious points to make regarding Waco and Weaver and if the Federal agents really were trigger-happy in gunning down eccentric rightwingers, then of course we should have taken their grievances seriously and understood how this atmosphere of Federal lawlessness contributed to monstrous and inexcusable crimes like the Oklahoma City bombing. It matters whether or not the complaints are legitimate. I don’t know about the militias, but in the case of the Muslims, some of their complaints are legitimate.
“Saddam wasn’t killing millions at the time and he wasn’t shooting across our border.”
No, he’d killed the millions primarily during the Eighties, and sent another army across his borders during the Nineties.
The argument that he was boxed in in 2002 is relevant; the question of what it would have taken to keep him boxed in, and would it have happened, and how would circumstances for Iraqis been under said circumstances, remains a fairly key question. The American-led invasion of 2003 is extremely questionable; so, though, is the matter of what the alternatives were and what the results would have been. The alternative, after all, to the invasion wasn’t peace and happiness and civil rights and kite-flying for all.
Saddam hasn’t killed any millions. So far 5,000 bodies have been discovered in mass graves. Five thousand.
One assumes that there are other ways of disposing of bodies than mass graves. Otherwise I have to assume that there were only ever a few thousand dinosaurs on the planet.
Right-wing columnist (and twit) Walter Williams did devote a column to understanding Timothy McVeigh’s “motivations”–though that was mostly an excuse for Williams to rant about his personal peeves (e.g., terrorism is the logical result of a government that keeps restricting the right to smoke! [no, I’m not kidding]).
As for relativism, the Reagan administration routinely argued that crimes against humanity were less objectionable if done by right-wing military dictatorships because we could make them reform, but the USSR never would.
More generally, I don’t see cultural relativism as a more objectionable reason for cutting foreigners slack than the cold-blooded pragmatism (the “he’s OUR bastard” school of thought) practiced so often by our government (on both right and left).
“Those natives are primitive brutes and backward…and walk around naked, of course we can take their stuff! It would be sin not to!”
I’m not really interested in stealing their stuff. It is probably a bad reflection on my moral nature to admit that I probably could have been mostly fine with the Middle East continuing to be a complete disaster area if its culture hadn’t contributed greatly to the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.
“Saddam hasn’t killed any millions. So far 5,000 bodies have been discovered in mass graves. Five thousand.”
Sure. Of course:
Must be someone else’s fault, I guess.
Or see here:
But, really, he only killed five thousand. You betcha.
And there are no apologists for Saddam Hussein. Really. It’s just an explanation.
abb1: Saddam killed a lot more than 5,000 people during the Anfal campaign alone. There are a lot of perfectly good ways to oppose the war in Iraq without denying the evident fact of Saddam’s inhumanity.
Yes, I am sure there are other means, although politicians just love to talk about mass-graves. In any case, the ‘killed millions’ argument would’ve sounded better with some evidence.
But the Iran-Iraq War was a war. Who killed all those who died in the WWI – Kaiser Wilhelm?
Hilzoy, I know that Saddam killed more than 5,000, but there’s a lot of space between 5,000 and millions.
“In any case, the ‘killed millions’ argument would’ve sounded better with some evidence.”
You’re not satisfied? And if not, why not? Are you contesting that I made an accurate statement?
“No, he’d killed the millions primarily during the Eighties, and sent another army across his borders during the Nineties.”
Which part are you denying? Oh, right, the “he’d killed the millions primarily during the Eighties.” Which part of that are you denying? And why?
“Some of our tangents are unnecessary, I guess…” D Johnson
“Kimmitt is correct…on the essential monstrousness of the Padilla case. This is a profoundly troubling affair in every respect.
A pity he undercuts his own credibility with statements like, “If you vote for Bush, you endorse that theory.” One assumes that Kerry voters therefore endorsed every manner of ill fame to which that candidate could justly lay claim.” …Tacitus, yesterday I think
I was going to go off on hilzoy’s “Responsibility is not zero-sum” meme and state that responsiblity is divisible and quantifiable and any conversation that does not acknowledge that Tacitus and Bird are more(tho only partially) responsible for the torture than von and Sebastian who are more responsible than Jes and I is one I find deeply offensive.
Farber’s “mea culpa” above that seems to say that he has not done all he possibly could so who is he to cast the first stone….argggh.
But, hey those are tangents. But to be frank, these fine moral and philosophical discussions or the smart counter-insurgency analyses seem increasingly absurd and irrelevant. Bush isn’t listening, and his Party isn’t going to get in his way.
“Bolton’s amendments make it clear that the Bush administration would like to pretend the millennium agreement never happened. This is a slap in the face for the aid organizations and international donors that have been working for years toward meeting the Millennium Development Goals. But it’s far worse than that for the Third World, where their abandonment would be a death sentence for millions.” via Laura Rozen
Thr priority must be to smash the Republican Party and their Democratic allies and enablers until they never rise again, or rise in an unrecognizable form. It is time-critical, and ethical analysis is a luxury for the uncommitted.
“But the Iran-Iraq War was a war.”
Wars are either a) just; b) unjust); c) a muddle.
Saddam started a war of conquest to gain control of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. You’re comparing it as morally comparable to the muddle of WWI? Okay.
In my universe, there’s no muddle, no “a” or “c” about Saddam’s war against Iraq; it was undeniably “b.” But you deny that.
Thanks for making your moral judgments clear.
“Farber’s ‘mea culpa’ above that seems to say that he has not done all he possibly could so who is he to cast the first stone….”
I’m not aware I said that.
OK, if you blame the Iran-Iraq war 100% on Saddam, then it’s indeed over 2 million. That’s fine with me. LBJ and Nixon killed 4 million. Never mind, go on.
Iran could have yielded…
According to the Wiki:
But I really don’t mind a bit of simplicity here; fair enough: the guy who started an aggressive war is responsible for the whole thing, to the end. It’s better that way. Moral clarity.
“LBJ and Nixon killed 4 million.”
More or less, yes, although I could quibble about figures and I’d note that they walked into an ongoing war. But, yes, I’d blame them both for millions of deaths. You don’t?
“But I really don’t mind a bit of simplicity here; fair enough: the guy who started an aggressive war is responsible for the whole thing, to the end. It’s better that way. Moral clarity.”
So: Saddam doesn’t bear moral responsibility for the Iran-Iraq War. It’s too morally complicated to assign such. It’s better that way. Moral clarity.
Saddam only killed 5,000 people. Got it.
Sebastian: on differential treatment: I think it has various causes in different cases. For one thing, it depends on how much coverage a particular place gets, which in turn depends on things like: is there someone being oppressed that we in the West already care about for some reason? (Example: the Tibetans: we care about the Dalai Lama, and Tibet is, after all, incredibly photogenic, the model for Shangri-La, and the focus of all sorts of Western myths. Not to deny the reality of the awfulness being directed at them, but to explain why they get so much more press than, say, the Karen in Burma.) (And note that the left has been upset about Tibet forever, despite their oppressors being Communist.) Another coverage-determining factor: is there good infrastructure and an existing press corps?
Another factor, which I think affects both (some) people on the (Euro/American) left and right, though sometimes in different ways, is the idea that Europeans and Americans are “us”, and can therefore be held to “our” moral standards, while other people are not, and we don’t really understand what they’re doing, and/or can think of it as “their colorful customs’, rather than as e.g. brutality. (I ran into a bunch of this when I was living in Israel: a lot of what Israelis took to be anti-Semitism, I thought was actually a willingness to hold Israelis but not Arabs to normal moral standards, and thus not a function of hatred of Jews, but of the idea that we don’t have to think of Arabs as people like anyone else.) (I also think this had a lot to do with why there were more protests about S. Africa than other oppressive societies.)
(For the record: I think it’s one thing, and OK, to say, about some non-European cultures: we don’t understand their culture enough to know what they take themselves to be doing, and thus to figure out how to morally assess it. I think this would be the right way to think about e.g. some recently discovered, hitherto isolated tribe in New Guinea with puzzling customs. It’s quite another thing, and the thing I find objectionable, to be willing to regard anything done by e.g. Arabs as ‘just more of their colorful, National Geographic-worthy behavior’.)
In addition, there’s the fact of simple ignorance. — When I was in college, for some reason, I actually knew something about the history of appalling massacres of Hutus by Tutsis and vice versa in Rwanda and Burundi, and the fact that so many people were upset about S. Africa but not by the Great Lakes region completely puzzled me. (I recall trying to get people who boycotted S. Africa to boycott the coffee companies that supported the government in Burundi. So I have some insight into the phenomenon you describe.
The main problem, I think, was just that no one knew anything at all about Burundi (or Rwanda.) For more or less everyone I talked to, left or right, Burundi just fell into the category of ‘places in Africa with confusing names and even more confusing histories that we don’t know anything about’. And explaining some history wasn’t enough (maybe it would have been had I not been a little freshman, I don’t know): facts against an enormous void of ignorance tend to just drop into the void, never to be heard from again, sometimes, and that was what seemed to happen here. S. Africa was part of the much broader narrative of colonialism, a narrative that people knew something about. Burundi was part of nothing, except possibly ‘people we know nothing about killing each other’. I always took this to be a function of ignorance, not ideology.
And then, finally, there’s the tendency, on both sides, to trust one’s own ideological counterparts more than one should. I don’t think that the failure to condemn the Khmer Rouge lasted all that long after credible reports began to emerge from that country (with exceptions, cough Chomsky cough.) But at first, when it was still not at all clear what was going on, people on the left tended to assume that it wasn’t as bad as all that, and people on the right tended to assume that it was worse than anyone thought. In this case, of course, the right was right.
But, first, this was when there really wasn’t enough information to judge; when there was, my recollection is that most people followed it. And second, this didn’t happen in a vaccuum; it was against the backdrop of the right having consistently said that more or less any left-leaning movement was crypto-Communist and a threat to America. There were reasons to be skeptical of them. (Likewise, reasons to be skeptical of those on the left who said that any such movement was about to bring about utopia.) In the absence of evidence, people’s ideological assumptions took over. When evidence appeared, most people (iirc) followed it.
Finally, in that era (80s), my recollection is that while we on the left had (for the most part, as always with exceptions) long since concluded that there were leftist movements that were dreadful, it was really the right that was apologizing for horrible people. (NB: it had been even longer since anyone I knew on the left had considered the USSR ‘leftist’ in any recognizable form, so I’m not even counting them.) We were clear that the Cultural Revolution had been a nightmare; that Pol Pot had been even worse, and so on. We were also clear that e.g. the right-wing government of El Salvador was appalling. We didn’t have any particularly high hopes for the Sandinistas, but we thought the contras were thugs, and the lesson we took from Vietnam was: devastating a country for the sake of keeping one set of thugs in power and another set of thugs out of power is not worth it. We were not the ones comparing the Contras to the Founding Fathers, or claiming that there was something noble about UNITA in Angola, or trying to distinguish ‘totalitarian’ from ‘authoritarian’ regimes, where the only difference I could ever see was that all the authoritarians were right-wing.
Which is all to say: there are a lot of reasons for differential treatment; to the extent that both sides have a history of ideologically motivated differential treatment (since, say, the late 70s), I would argue that the right has done more of it. (Partly because we had been learning from our mistakes, not because of any inherent astuteness, I think.)
No, it wasn’t sarcasm; I am serious; I am accepting this approach.
You left a bit of wiggle room for yourself, though, with this just/unjust thing. Why can’t we just say: the guy whose army crossed the border is 100% responsible. If this was an enforceable law, then there would be no wars anymore.
Good post, Hilzoy.
As I recall, it’s conservatives who a couple of years ago objected to a line in the UN Treaty on the Rights of Women to the effect that wife-beating, honor-killing, etc. can’t be excused by tradition or culture.
I think the d-squared post which I referred to in hilzoy’s Explanation and Justification thread clarifies Sebastian’s problem. Consider this statement:
This is not purely explanation. It is not justification either. Essentially it is a refusal to condemn actions which are acknowledged to be deserving of condemnation. The reason offered for that cop-out is that d-squared hasn’t had the first-hand experience which he feels he needs in order to be entitled to condemn. (I have snipped the quotation so as to remove the specific provocations and reactions referred to; it’s the principles which are relevant here, not the politics.)
I don’t think hilzoy needs to modify her analysis to cover such cases. Sebastian needs to face up to the fact that there are many ways of pronouncing on the moralty of an action which lie between outright approval and outright condemnation. I may feel that I understand Timothy McVeigh’s grievance well enough to say it doesn’t justify what he did. Closer to home, I can condemn an IRA bombing without equivocation. McVeigh and an IRA volunteer have something important in common: citizenship of a democracy which they grew up in and which gives them better ways to redress their grievances. A terrorist in a third-world country, even a fledgling democracy, is different in that respect so I might not be so willing to condemn. Then again I might. It depends.
“Why can’t we just say: the guy whose army crossed the border is 100% responsible.”
Because there are (rare) cases where pre-emptive war is just. See Israel, 1967, although I suspect you won’t agree. But: surprise me.
I do think you provided a quite interesting example, though. You’ve not been justifying Saddam’s killings. You’ve been explaining them.
Or, maybe not so much.
Of course I won’t agree. That’s why you (and I, for that matter) shouldn’t have that wiggle room that allows us to minimize crimes committed by people we identify with and to exaggerate crimes committed by our villains.
I can see, though, that this probably won’t work; real life is way too complicated. We can’t really avoid using subjective judgment. In the six-day war, for example, Nasser certainly does share the blame.
“In the six-day war, for example, Nasser certainly does share the blame.”
Would your opinion be any different if Israel had waited a few days for the Arab coalition to attack first? Do you blame Israel for the 1973 or 1948 wars?
If this was an enforceable law, then there would be no wars anymore.
Yeah, except that enforcement = war.
(Unless you subscribe to the idea — like Congressional Republicans in 1996 — that you can cure terrorism with litigation. I suppose it looked good on paper: the trial lawyers will do for the terror-masters what they’ve done for municipal swimming pool diving boards. At least this legislation — and the follow-on enactments in 1998 and 2000 — mean that I don’t have to pay any attention to Republicans whining now that the Clinton Admin didn’t do enough about terrorism.)
I didn’t just make up the idea that liberals can be softer on the viciousness of other cultures.
Find liberals in the last 40 years, as opposed to communists, who ignored the communist atrocities you reference, or were otherwise sympathetic to them. Funny — there are practically none. There was a period of self-delusion in the 30s when Stalinist propoganda denying atrocities was effective, but that does not make the leftist dupes of such propoganda “softer” — just stupid for being duped.
And you have no reply to the long history of right wing lack of concern to carnage by its friends. Kilpatrick coined the weird rigth wing concept that mass torture and murder by “authoritarian” (i.e., right wing friendly) regimes was somehow not as bad as torture and murder by “totalitarian” (i.e., communist mostly) regimes. There is no similar doctrinal duplicity amongst modern liberals that matches this explicit apology by right wingers for looking the other way.
What is the logical fallacy in concluding that those who select South Africa for their anger are therefore “soft” on communists because they do not direct the same protests at them? By the same logic, right wingers positively love torture by right wing regimes since not only do they not protest it, they actively protected those regimes despite their torture and murder.
“Find liberals in the last 40 years, as opposed to communists, who ignored the communist atrocities you reference, or were otherwise sympathetic to them.”
There’s not so much, but there is a fair amount of double-standarding in the history of many (let’s say it’s a minority) of some threads of wishy-washy liberals between the USSR and USA. There’s a long history of some folks very carelessly explaining that, after all the US was more responsible for the Cold War during fill-in-the-blank, the [Fifties/Sixties/Seventies/Eighties], or that Soviet communism by the Seventies really wasn’t so bad; just as today you can still find lots of folks praising Cuba for its fine medical and educational system, or saying that Hamas is a political party doing good social work, with a military wing, whereas Israel is a vicious colonial apartheid state.
There are plenty of unjust extreme criticisms and lies about the left and liberalism both, but no political movement is without dunderheaded threads and careless, largely ignorant, people. Who often cross the line from explanation into justification, or at least into moral equivalency.
From what I’ve read it appears that Arab coalition wouldn’t have attacked and Israeli leaders admitted that much. They just saw it as an opportunity.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-159.html
1973 was obviously an attempt to get Sinai back; you can’t occupy your neighbor’s territory and complain when they attack you, that’s just ridiculous.
In 1948 there was some really disgusting rhetoric on the part of the Arab League, and yet if you read their declaration of war (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/arab_invasion.html) you’ll probably agree that they did have a fair point there.
It’s just that this whole process in 1947-48 was such a bloody mess. Hard to blame either side.
Much easier to spot a guilty party there after 1967 and especially after 1993. Once the PLO agreed to give away 78% of Palestine, this conflict ceased to be a conflict between two ethnic groups, now it’s a conflict between those who accept the 78-22 division (with compensation to the refugees a-la Geneva) and those who do not.
It was a close call in 1967, I must say. No question about that.
dmbeaster: I think that during the last 40 years, and specifically in the late 60s/early 70s, you could find some people who didn’t condemn the Cultural Revolution, and that these people would probably have been mostly on the left. But, as i wrote in some no doubt long forgotten comment thread, I think that’s a somewhat different case, since at the time most people knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about what was happening in China.
I mean, I really think it’s hard for people who weren’t around at that time to appreciate exactly how close to ‘nothing’ our knowledge of the PRC was then. (I mean, the PRC at the time in question., Things that had happened a while before did tend to get known eventually. Also, I don’t mean e.g. the statements of its leaders to the international press, which were obviously known; I mean what life was like there for ordinary people.) There is no country now about which there is as little information as there was about the PRC then.
I grew up in an academic environment; my parents had friends who worked on China for a living, and were not particularly sympathetic to it, as well as other friends who did foreign policy for a living and were, again, not inclined to be Chinese apologists; I had relatives who had been there (and I’m not counting the uncle who wrote what was essentially a propaganda book on China; I’m counting only the relatives whose judgment I would have trusted); and of course we all followed the news and were interested in other countries. Which is to say: I think I grew up in that segment of the US population (other than very, very recent immigrants from China, of whom there were very few, iirc) who would have been most likely to know more about the Cultural Revolution than: something by that name happened, and it involved a massive shakeup of Chinese society. It was not until around 1973? 1974? that the really bad stuff became evident to us.
Before then, there were people who had gone to China, been escorted around by the government, and had reported that all was wonderful, who clearly were not particularly reliable, and there were people who had not been there but assumed the worst about any leftist government, ditto. There were stories about barefoot doctors, which sounded sort of nifty to a twelve year old. My best friend went to China (dad in US government), but all she saw was a series of staged events (though she did report that thousand year old eggs were as bad as you’d think, given the name.) And that was the extent of our information.
“From what I’ve read it appears that Arab coalition wouldn’t have attacked and Israeli leaders admitted that much.”
I don’t follow this. The Arabs were about to attack, and so Israel struck at the massing troops, but primarily the air force on the ground and the artillery, and such, so as to not be overwhelmed by waiting. If they’d waited, Israel would have, in short, almost surely have been destroyed. To ask to wait to be invaded when your country is the size of New Jersey is suicidal. Russia can afford the luxury of pulling back; Israel and Monaco (or Kuwait) can’t.
I can’t imagine what you mean by Israel “admit[ting]” any of this.
I’m afraid that since your cite is incredibly long, and not directed particularly at Israel, I’m not interested in spending an hour or so reading it; if you’d like to summarize the point, or point elsewhere, by all means, feel free.
“you’ll probably agree that they did have a fair point there.”
Not enough to declare war. One question only: if they were so determined to fight for the “independence of Palestine” — let’s pause for a quote.
So, tell me, from 1948-1967, who controlled all of the West Bank and all those Palestinians? What happened to their “independence” the 1948 war was allegedly fought for?
“I don’t think hilzoy needs to modify her analysis to cover such cases. Sebastian needs to face up to the fact that there are many ways of pronouncing on the moralty of an action which lie between outright approval and outright condemnation.”
Umm, consider the fact faced since I bring it up in my original post:
“Making a binary distinction between justification and explanation doesn’t really capture that difference.
I think that the distinction between justification and explanation as discussed so far fails to capture why so many of the ‘explanations’ used for Islamism make conservatives queasy.”
The whole problem is that there are lots of in-between things that if you define the terms as opposites seem to involve explanation with a heavy dose of justification.
The problem that conservatives have with liberal explanations is that they sound like they have a pretty heavy justification side. The Fisk ‘I would have beat me up too’ idea is only the most strongly expressed version of it.
Regarding this from Hilzoy:
I know this isn’t hilzoy or katherine’s fault, but I would like to point out that this is the second time on this thread alone where one of the liberal members has said something (which ought to be uncontroversial)that would get me slammed for hours. And in hilzoy’s case, I was actually mocked openly and repeatedly on this very thread for an almost identical statement. But it has gone by almost entirely unnoted.
Now I know that I can be somewhat more obnoxious than hilzoy, and I can take unhealthy doses of criticism, and I also know that I started a thread on a super-touchy subject, but can you at least limit the slams to actual areas of contention rather than even bits which ought to be uncontroversial?
What follows is an accurate chronology of United States involvement in the arming of Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war 1980-88. It is a powerful indictment of the president Bush administration attempt to sell war as a component of his war on terrorism. It reveals US ambitions in Iraq to be just another chapter in the attempt to regain a foothold in the Mideast following the fall of the Shah of Iran.
From
Arming Iraq: A Chronology of U.S. Involvement
Whatever his complexes, Khomeini had no qualms about sending his followers, including young boys, off to their deaths for his greater glory. This callous disregard for human life was no less characteristic of Saddam Hussein. And, for that matter, it was also no less characteristic of much of the world community, which not only couldn’t be bothered by a few hundred thousand Third World corpses, but tried to profit from the conflict.
From:
The United States and Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988
The whole problem is that there are lots of in-between things that if you define the terms as opposites seem to involve explanation with a heavy dose of justification.
If I understand hilzoy correctly she uses “explanation” for statements which make no moral judgement, favourable or otherwise. For example, this is explanation: prohibition created an opportunity for gangsters, which they expoited. Nobody should mistake that for a justification of gangsterism, or as a condemnation for that matter.
What’s involved is not a binary distinction between explanation and justification. A better way to think of it is that there are statements which involve value judgements and statements which don’t. In economics, a distinction is made between positive economics and normative economics. Abolishing tariffs promotes trade belongs to the former whereas abolishing tariffs promotes welfare belongs to the latter. The distinction is really quite clear.
In principle we should be able to make a similarly sharp distinction in discussions about politics, including war. Surely the “in-between things” are always normative statements? If you are saying that normative statements come in all shades from approval through condemnation then I agree. But hilzoy is still right to insist that explanation is something quite different from justification.
I apologise for being pedantic here, Sebastian, but your post suggests that you think hilzoy is actually missing some nuance, as opposed to being more indulgent to liberals than you would like (that’s a given). I’m pretty sure she isn’t missing anything.
Sebastian: if I had to guess, I’d say that the different responses to your statement and mine was partly due to the fact that you attributed this view to liberals while I did not. I really think that the tendency in question affects people on both sides, though in different ways. For instance, that those liberals who are subject to it would be more likely not to take seriously the actions of individuals from non-Euro/US cultures, while conservatives would be more likely not to take seriously the actions of their governments, if right-wing, or to say, as — was it Westmoreland? — did in Hearts and Minds, that the Vietnamese don’t feel death the way we do, where (to me) the relevant part of that wasn’t just how callous it was, but how unlikely it was that he would have made such a ludicrous statement about any group of people he thought of as “us” without a lot of proof.
“What’s involved is not a binary distinction between explanation and justification. A better way to think of it is that there are statements which involve value judgements and statements which don’t.”
Ok, lets look at a simple statement that is almost always interpreted (and I think correctly) as justification though it is one the face strictly explanation.
“The reason the rapist chose her was because she wore a short skirt”.
Any problem labeling that as having annoying justification overtones? Why or why not? Do you agree that such a statement is almost always treated as if it had justification overtones?
“For instance, that those liberals who are subject to it would be more likely not to take seriously the actions of individuals from non-Euro/US cultures, while conservatives would be more likely not to take seriously the actions of their governments, if right-wing, or to say, as — was it Westmoreland?”
Sure, but that is in direct response to your suggestion that many conservatives think: “that liberals despise America and think that America is responsible for all the world’s evils; and that we think that no one from another culture is ever responsible for anything.” I say that pairing the two is incorrect. The first is sometimes held by the extreme left but conservatives aren’t really worried about that one so much, while the second is too strongly worded, but correctly identifies a tendency that actually exists. The fact that conservatives tend to trust the government too much on foreign policy is also a stereotype with large heapings of truth in it. They may be symmetric reflexes, but they aren’t the same thing. And even if they are, my statement isn’t wrong–as you you illustrate much later in the thread. Nevertheless heaping piles of scorn were thrown about regarding a perfectly obvious statement.
And my statement could hardly have been more qualified. A tendency isn’t an inevitability. One of the whole points of having civilization is resisting your tendencies.
Sebastian: actually, I think that more or less all versions of ‘treating explanations as justifications’ depend on assessments of the speaker’s intentions/motivations, and that one is no exception. Said in a class on criminal psychology, I think it would be fine (if true).
The problem is that it’s usually said in contexts that raise the suspicion that the speaker thinks that it’s women’s job not to provoke rapists.
I mean: it might be true to say: the insurgents picked X up and beheaded him because he was wearing American/Western clothes. In certain contexts — those that in any way suggested that it was X’s fault for wearing those clothes, for instance — that would enrage people. In others — say, a class for special operations people on how not to get beheaded — it would be clear why someone said it, and so this rage would not arise.
Seb: about your latest: I tend to see the impulse not to hold people from other cultures to the same standards as a part of a broader thing, which I really think is not ideologically specific: the tendency to think that there are some people who are, well, people, and whom we treat as ordinary people, and others who are exotic beings normally found only in National Geographic, who have all sorts of colorful customs, but who aren’t, somehow, us. Thus the Westmoreland comment: “they” have their odd little Vietnamese ways, etc. I do not think he would have accepted a statement like that nearly as readily about any American (or European.) Thus also the idiotic person I met who lambasted Israel but said that it was hard to condemn the Phalangists in Lebanon since “these feuds go back for generations” (a comment he would not have accepted about Israelis.)
“I know this isn’t hilzoy or katherine’s fault, but I would like to point out that this is the second time on this thread alone where one of the liberal members has said something (which ought to be uncontroversial)that would get me slammed for hours.”
I hope everyone has noticed that I don’t exactly give Sebastian an easy time when I think he’s wrong, small or large. Having said that, I think Sebastian is entirely right here.
I’m in a restaurant with my 10 year old. He’s playing with his peas, sending a couple bouncing a few inches from his plate. I reprimand him. He says, “Look at what that kid two tables over is doing — flinging mashed potatoes at his mom. That’s way worse.” “I don’t care what other children do.” “Why do you hate me?”
Sometimes it’s really that simple.
Something I should have put in my last comment: I think one of the major general problems at work in the sort of thing Sebastian complains about is something I alluded to earlier, and will now expand more generally to call the “Cardboard Substitute Theory.”
It seems to me that an awful lot of online debate breaks down into people interpreting, or projecting, or preferring to have Found One to to vent on, other people as representing The Dumbest Face Of Those Idiots I oppose.
Thus, an unthinking extremist and angry right-winger will arrive at a web-discussion, see someone take a mild liberal view, and immediately begin ranting at that person as if s/he were some rolled-up-in-one amalgam of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, John Kerry, Al Sharpton, and Ted Rall. And an an unthinking extremist and angry left-winger will arrive at a web-discussion, see someone take a mild conservative/libertarian view, and immediately begin ranting at that person as if s/he were some rolled-up-in-one amalgam of Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, Donald Rumsfeld, “Reverend” Fred Phelps, and Pat Buchanan.
It’s people treating each other as cardboard stand-ins for all that pisses them off.
It’s less than useful.
I didn’t mean to imply that I’m immune from what I described, by the way, if it seemed like I did.
“The reason the rapist chose her was because she wore a short skirt”.
Context matters. If this is from a campus police officer lecturing first year college students in a dorm session on personal security, describing an incident, I’d say it’s fine.
If it’s from a juror explaining a judgment of acquittal, I’m ready to scream.
We’re all familiar with the phenomenon where only certain people can say certain things. the woman 2 doors down can tell the woman 7 doors down that the outfit she wore today compliments her figure. She can use fairly explicit language doing so. I can say, at most, “Gee, is that a new suit?” [I’m older, married, and their superior in my organization’s heirarchy].
“The problem is that it’s usually said in contexts that raise the suspicion that the speaker thinks that it’s women’s job not to provoke rapists.”
Ok, I think that is a useful distinction. One thing I note about your examples is that the times when it would be ok to say “She was raped because she was wearing a short skirt” and “He was beheaded because he wore Western clothers” are really very limited.
So that brings us to the foreign policy question. When Hamas blows up a bus, we are almost always treated to explanations of the short skirt variety in op-eds. I can think of almost no situation where an op-ed writer could get away with the short shirt explanation and not have it be seen as a justification.
Am I missing something, or isn’t it logically impossible for him to say of any group that he thought of as “us” that “they don’t [X] the way we do”?
GF, it’s safe to say we all share your online experience. It’s funny, though, that this is so much more rarely encountered in person.
The sort of flip side of this is the special sensitivities we all bring with us. I’d guess that SH is no more pleased with ‘Republicans are homophobes’ than I am with ‘Democrats are traitors.’ One gets used enough to seeing this kind of thing, even from people who ought to know better. Sure, I can name a bunch of Republicans who’ve made statements that seem mighty homophobic, and I suppose some Democrats can be identified who’ve engaged in treason, but the generalization is offensive enough, in such a personal way, that no one would expect SH (or should expect me) to put up with it.
I don’t think of myself as particularly homophobic, and I am sure SH doesn’t think of himself, in any sense, as a traitor. Nonetheless, I would guess that he would react very differently to a generalized charge of treason and I to a charge of homophobia than either of us do to the other charge. I would think that this is because the charge doesn’t play to the archetypes.
Gary Farber–
First take the general and average attitude towards death among us, then rigidify the extension of “the way we feel death”.
I.e., there’s a way most of us feel death, and referring to *that* way, I can coherently say, “some of us don’t feel death *that* way.”
When Hamas blows up a bus, we are almost always treated to explanations of the short skirt variety in op-eds.
I’m not reading the same newspapers you are. What I find are explanations — the bus was blown up as part of a campaign to derail X peace iniative — but never ‘this peace iniative is so bad that nearly any action which could derail it is justified.’
Hamas is blowing up busses as a means to communicate. With us, and not really with the passengers. It is useful to figure out what the message is. The rapist isn’t trying to communicate to you, me, or anyone other than the victim (and then, like riders in the bus, only in the most impersonal and generalized way).
Gary-
You’re missing something. Someone could say, e.g., that the British have a different attitude toward the risk to individuals from terrorism than we do, because of their experience with IRA bombings (not saying this, just making up an example). Someone making a claim like that would need to have an argument about different experiences, etc., because the British are people just like us, and if they think differently there would have to be a reason for it. But it’s still possible to make and support a claim that they will generally react differently than Americans.
On the other hand, for a group of people who the speaker considers as fundamentally not ‘us’ (such as, apparently, Westmoreland and the Vietnamese), people will make vast claims about differences without support.
Sebastian: I’m somewhat echoing CharleyCarp, but: the very limited contexts in which it’s (clearly) OK to say the short skirt and beheading things are: (a) classes in abnormal psych, where it’s obvious that you are trying to explain without justifying, and (b) cases in which you’re trying to help people figure out how not to get raped/blown up, and where the context (training for special ops soldiers, etc.) makes it clear that blame is not the issue.
I think that part of what makes things get tangled up here is that I assume that we all want not to get hit by al Qaeda again. If I were talking to Osama bin Laden — well, I’d phone in an air strike, but suppose God had made it impossible for me to do anything other than talk to him, I would try to get him to see why what he is doing is unbelievably, horribly wrong. But I’m not talking to him, nor does he (I hope) read this blog, nor is he the primary audience for op-eds. We are. And so if, by writing the blog/writing an op ed/living my life I am to do anything to prevent our getting hit again, it will pretty much have to involve our conduct, not his.
But then, because of Gary’s cardboard cut-out thing, it gets taken as blaming. Now: before the reaction to the reaction to 9/11, I would just not have considered this possibility. I mean: it had not occurred to me that anyone would think I was a traitor, or thought we should just say “ooh, poor Osama, didn’t you get enough love as a child?”, or whatever. I mean, I don’t, in normal conversation, go out of my way to make sure that no one thinks I’m a counterfeiter or a bank robber, since it has never crossed my mind that I need to. Likewise with treason. That’s also worth bearing in mind, I think.
One last thing: I’m sure that you are, by now, sick and tired of people assuming that you’re a homophobe, or (of they know your sexual orientation) consumed with self-hatred. One reason people screech when you say things that even make it sound as though you think that liberals are just into appeasement is that we are exactly that tired of our cardboard cut-out, let alone the treason thing, which I swear makes patient peacable me want to strangle people. (The reason I didn’t ban TtWD for his Duranty crack was, truth be told, that I was too angry to think of it.) It’s hard being consistently accused of something you think is not just “not me”, but actually dishonorable, and it gets the best of all of us sometimes.
The other point I would make about Westmoreland’s comment — or about generalizations in general — is that I view them differently when made ‘against interest.’
I had a case — in St. Louis — nearly a decade ago where we argued that the court system of Kuwait was inferior to the system in the US. Not to excuse our own conduct in some way, but to get the US judge to prefer his court as the venue for the case to Kuwait (where the same dispute was also pending). That our client was a Kuwait company (and the opponent a St. Louis company) made a difference in the credibility of this proposition, I’m sure.
What iced it, though, was when the Kuwaiti justice ministry started proceedings against our expert for the statements in his affidavit. I’m not sure that part got into the published opinion, but it sure got the judge’s attention . . .
(So, it it true that the court system in Kuwait is inferior? On average, sure. I’ve got a case right now, though, in a certain peninsular state that should be returned to Spain for a refund, and it’s not all that terrific.)
“Hamas is blowing up busses as a means to communicate. With us, and not really with the passengers. It is useful to figure out what the message is.”
It’s a perfectly clear message; they’re neither shy about it nor reluctant to discuss it in press interviews, press statements, in public speeches, nor on posters.
It’s “we shall liberate all of Palestine, from river to sea.”
Now, mind, this is not the message of either Fatah or the PA, and it’s certainly not the message of all Palestinians, and I don’t think it’s likely the serious message, at least when push comes to shove, of the majority of Palestinians.
But of Hamas: that’s neither obscure nor a mystery. They’re quite on the public record with it.
I would like to withdraw my previous label and grandly replace it with “Cardboard Cut-out Syndrome.”
Isn’t there at least some question (and I say this explicitly in an seeking explanations rather than a justifying vein) that Hamas’s explicit adoption of that position is a negotiating tactic rather than a minimum with which they will be satisfied? I don’t think that it’s always safe to rely on a organization’s public statements as an authoritative statement of its actual positions.
Agreed, Gary. I didn’t mean to imply that I found the general message difficult. There may also be particularized things within this one message — why this day, and not another — but even those are not difficult to ascertain.
I can’t say I’ve ever read an editorial in a main stream publication that posits that ‘liberation of all of Palestine, from river to sea’ justifies violence. I guess I’ve read that efforts to try to divert, defang, or defeat this agenda are ineffectual. But never that the agenda is justified.
I would ask where such things can be read, but am not sufficiently interested to read them to justify doing so.
“Isn’t there at least some question (and I say this explicitly in an seeking explanations rather than a justifying vein) that Hamas’s explicit adoption of that position is a negotiating tactic rather than a minimum with which they will be satisfied?”
It depends upon how finely you want to parse it.
At the first level: no. They are who they are because they are the Islamic fundamentalist alternative, and the entire nature of their policy towards Israel/Palestine is religious, which is entirely unlike that of Fatah and the former PLO, which were always secular/Marxist in nature. So on religious grounds, they can never surrender the holy land of Jerusalem. Never.
Now, what could, theoretically, take place is a “hudna,” which is an Islamic truce. However, a hudna only has precedent of lasting as long as ten years, and in its original usage, as I understand it, the purpose was to gain an advantage over the enemy too strong to overcome immediately; in the original precedent, the followers of Mohammed then slaughtered those they’d made the hudna with.
So the precedent isn’t so great, there.
But, if you’re an optimist, you can imagine that maybe in modern times, a future Hamas could keep renewing a hudna, out of practicality, every ten years, until such time as a better accomodation is reached.
But I tend to think, myself, that sooner or later, Abbas, or his successor, is going to have to have an Altalena moment with Hamas, or Hamas will wind up sweeping the PA out of power or taking it over.
Of course not. But the bolded clause seems likely not to be true in any significant way. If we even went so far as to completely destroy Israel, and hand it over to the Palestinian’s in toto, it wouldn’t change the fact that the Arab world is horrifically corrupt, that Islam is stifling its women, that the Arab world is almost a century behind developmentally, doesn’t seem likely to catch up soon, and many of the people there feel like they are entitled to live in a full-blown Islamist culture which simultaneously should be technologically successful. And that isn’t even mentioning the fact that the tempting allure of US culture would still be tempting and alluring to those who don’t want to be Islamist–and that you won’t be able to shut it out without turning off all the TVs and radios.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | August 30, 2005
What was your context for this statement? It certainly sounds like your blaming a whole civilization for the actions of a minority.
It sounds like they get raped because their stupid sluts, and that’s what happens to stupid sluts, men will put them in their place, until they act properly.
But I gave you the benefit of the doubt, and used the voice of a Colonial Spaniard, instead of the voice of a backwoods hick…although both are saying the same thing.
NeoDude–
I find it hard to make sense out of your last comment.
What in Mr. Holsclaw’s paragraph corresponds to “they get raped”? And what corresponds to “they are stupid sluts”? And what to “they act properly”?
I just have trouble seeing how your comment corresponds to anything in his.
Gary- It seems to me that this: “It seems to me that an awful lot of online debate breaks down into people interpreting, or projecting, or preferring to have Found One to to vent on, other people as representing The Dumbest Face Of Those Idiots I oppose.”
Is something the Bush White House, and the right wing noise machine do on every news channel at all times. Then again I don’t watch that stuff anymore, maybe it has changed.
The only way I can explain this is as parent.
Another metaphor:
If I have family members getting shot at, my first response is to protect and defend-as hard as I can. However, If I find out that those violent acts are a result of my family member’s involvement with gang activity…I may get a little hostile toward my family member…all of a sudden he has not made our family an innocent victim of gang violence, but instead s/he has brought his family into the middle of gang activity…And his or her claim “Why do you always blame us first?’ Is not going to cut it.
Many on the Right have been in denial of the activity many of our fellow Americans are involved with across the globe, and because of this the whole family suffers.
I don’t know if anyone has read what I posted in the most recent open thread, by the way, but it’s become clear in the last few hours that the devastation of Katrina is vastly worse than thought earlier in the day. Check the news.
it wouldn’t change the fact that the Arab world is horrifically corrupt, that Islam is stifling its women, that the Arab world is almost a century behind developmentally, doesn’t seem likely to catch up soon, and many of the people there feel like they are entitled to live in a full-blown Islamist culture which simultaneously should be technologically successful. And that isn’t even mentioning the fact that the tempting allure of US culture would still be tempting and alluring to those who don’t want to be Islamist–and that you won’t be able to shut it out without turning off all the TVs and radios.
I do not see any reason in that statement that justifies acting immoral toward Middle Easterners.
It seems this statement is providing a reason, for Sebastian, to justify immoral acts toward them.
It seems this statement is providing a reason, for Sebastian, to justify immoral acts against them.
NeoDude–
Thanks–I think I understand what you mean now.
You take that entire paragraph from Mr. Holsclaw as equivalent to statements like “they are sluts” or “they are not acting properly”, and then you take other aspects of Mr. Holsclaw’s foreign policy stance, not expressed here, (e.g. his support of the Iraq war?) as equivalent to “they get raped”.
And your point is that he justifies his foreign policy stance by reference to his complaints about their culture.
If I understand you now, then it seems to me quite plausible that Mr. Holsclaw does indeed take his complaints about Islamic culture as providing some justification for his foreign policy stance.
But whether that is a *bad* thing or not will depend entirely on whether the foreign policy really is immoral or not, and whether the complaints about the culture are well-founded or not. Won’t it?
I mean, suppose I say “Sam killed three people while robbing a liquor store. That’s why he’s locked up now.” It is true that I have alleged his previous actions as a justification for his present incarceration. And so to that extent there is a parallel between the *structure* of my statement and the structure of a statement like “she got raped because she wore the wrong clothes”.
But surely there is a huge difference in the *content* of these respective justifications, and in the morality of the actions described. It is immoral to rape people; it is not immoral to incarcerate the guilty. People ought to be free to wear what they like; people are not free to rob liquor stores and commit murders.
That’s why the statement about the murderer, and the statement about the rape, are both *justifications*, but one of them is morally repugnant, whereas the other is not. It is morally repugnant to justify rape as a response to blameless activity; it is not morally repugnant to justify incarceration as a response to murder.
So I think if you want to criticize Mr. Holsclaw, you will need to do more than simply showing a broad *structural* parallel between his statements and the statements of someone who justifies rape. You will have to get down to cases, and show
1) that the features of the culture he complains about are blameless in the way that wearing clothes is blameless; and
2) that the policies he advocates are intrinsically immoral, in the way that rape is intrinsically immoral.
That’s the direction in which you should take your next round of comments, to my mind.
Thanks for helping me understand your position.
“It seems this statement is providing a reason, for Sebastian, to justify immoral acts against them.”
Nope. The only thing it is a justification for is the idea that throwing the Jews to the wolves isn’t going to solve the West’s Islamist problem.
regarding cardboard cut-out syndrome, i present the following quotes from a self-proclaimed conservative:
“I definitely think that many liberals tend toward exusing other cultures from responsibility, though I think this impulse was stronger in the 1980s and 1990s than it is now.”
and
“[Conservatives] worry that liberals always want to try appeasement . . . And liberals pretty much play into those fears.”
and
“liberals don’t typically make a big deal to make the difference between justification and explanation very clear so those who are justifying can easily hide out with those who are explaining–we can’t tell them apart.”
and
“I think the difference in liberal treatment of McVeigh’s crazed explanations and those of Islamists might shed some light on the issue.”
gee, OVER-GENERALIZE MUCH?
since you’ve been commenting more than usual about how hard you get pounded, SH, re-read your own material and you might, just might, understand why liberals on this blog aren’t willing to give you much slack.
here’s a hint — this liberal finds your gross and inaccurate overgeneralizations insulting.
CCoS, indeed.
Now they are wolves? Do you believe those wolves crave the tails of the Jews?
What reason/justification, do we have to create a space where we allowed rape, torture, death, disease to rule?
If morality is so important, why is Sebastian so willing to support an action that allows for the most immoral behavior on earth?
These are horrible acts we have unleashed in Iraq…we are responsible…what did the Iraqis do to deserve this? We didn’t even treat Eastern Europe, like this…we didn’t use the horrors of the Soviet Union to justify a depraved invasion and occupation of those countries.
(*Ducking in*)
Is this most recent Francis the same as or different from the Francis, Rail-Gun Brother of Reasoned Discourse?
same. just decided to shorten the handle.
“I definitely think that many liberals tend toward exusing other cultures from responsibility, though I think this impulse was stronger in the 1980s and 1990s than it is now.”
I believe this is the comment that is close enough to hilzoy’s that I’m not going to comment further.
“[Conservatives] worry that liberals always want to try appeasement . . . And liberals pretty much play into those fears.”
I am talking about stereotypes that conservatives have (descriptive) and the fact that post-Vietnam liberals have tended not to avoid the stereotype (only slightly less descriptive). You may not like it, but it is a simple fact that Democrats are not as well trusted on foreign policy. I believe it is because of the association with Vietnam protestors, left-wing Communist defenders, Carter doing practically anything, Dukakis (I really shouldn’t need to say more), and well Clinton. A major reason that Kerry was selected was that his military service was thought to immunize him from the quite common belief that Democrats are wimps at foreign policy. Do I believe that they all are? No. Do I believe that they tend to have that reputation? Well, duh! Do I believe that Democrats don’t work very hard to dispel that reputation. Absolutely. It is like Republicans and race. If you want to talk about race and you are a Republican, you had better be very sure that you repeatedly stress your distance from racists or there is no chance you are going to be taken seriously–and even then the stereotype about Republicans and race is hard to overcome. That is a descriptive fact. Do I think Democrats work very hard against their stereotype? Unfortunately, no they generally do not? Do I think they work very hard to distance themselves from reflexive appeasers? No I think they do not. Do I think any of that is particularly controversial? Not if you have been paying attention.
“liberals don’t typically make a big deal to make the difference between justification and explanation very clear so those who are justifying can easily hide out with those who are explaining–we can’t tell them apart.”
See the above, and think about Republicans trying to talk about race and distancing themselves from racists. Republicans have done so far better than Democrats have from the ugly left. If you don’t think Republicans have done a good job vis-a-vis racists, you are correct. If you think Democrats have done so with Carter, you might want to reanalyze the analogy.
Once again, I’m not saying that all Democrats ARE IN FACT reflexive appeasers, I am saying that those who are not do not successfully stress the differences between the ‘peacenik’ side of the party and themselves. Just like Republicans and racists–only more so.
“I think the difference in liberal treatment of McVeigh’s crazed explanations and those of Islamists might shed some light on the issue.”
On this I will admit I was wrong. Apparently the difference has shed essentially no light on the problem.
NeoDude: explain what you mean clearly, instead of saying things like: “What reason/justification, do we have to create a space where we allowed rape, torture, death, disease to rule?
If morality is so important, why is Sebastian so willing to support an action that allows for the most immoral behavior on earth?” — which are both inflammatory and (to me) literally incomprehensible. (I mean, I have no idea at all what you’re talking about.)
Francis: I think Seb’s statements 2 and 3 were describing stereotypes, not engaging in them. Moreover, we presumably know each other well enough to be able to assume that we’re arguing in good faith.
“(I mean, I have no idea at all what you’re talking about.)”
I took him to mean that by invading Iraq, we allowed all these dreadful things to take place, and since Sebastian supported the invasion, why is Sebastian such a terrible person as to want all these horrible things? More or less.
It’s not all that far off from Jes’s use of “intended” and “designed” to mean “every result thereof,” but not quite.
There is no country now about which there is as little information as there was about the PRC then.
Possibly Burma; possibly parts of Indonesia; possibly chunks of Africa; but yeah, close enough as makes no difference.
Gary: I was wondering about that, but I thought that coming after the wolves/Jews comment, I thought it ought to have something to do with I/P.
Been an interesting set of threads, despite the heat on offer. Taking myself as a prototypical liberal (which may or may not be a great liberty), there is an aspect to this explanation/justification thing that I think has been missed (though I may just be flattering myself) I know that I really do want to know why people do things. This stands in opposition to comments by others (some of them liberal) that they don’t really care why OBL does what he does. But I figure that if a chain of events can be determined (or at least posited) that lead to him being him, because it is possible that a similar chain of events might lead to a new OBL. And, by extension, we would be stupid not to take steps to break that chain, which I think some ‘conservatives’ (note the scare quotes there) might view as ‘appeasement’.
Part of this might be the tension between the great man theory of history versus history as a process. I think that if history as a process is a staple of the left, and the great man theory is the ground for much thinking on the right, it is unavoidable that this sort of conflict is going to surface.
To move it to perhaps less contentious ground, I’m wondering if anyone has read Haruki Murakami’s Underground, which is his non-fiction book about the Aum Shinrikyo Sarin attack. The first part is transcripts of interviews with the victims, the second part, interviews with AUM members. The second part might be taken to be the liberal ‘explanation as justification’ syndrome, but to me, that is what makes it powerful. From the Guardian review
In other reviews (in generally more conservative publications), the reviewers are struck more by Japanese features noted by Murakami (lack of panic, poor crisis management), and this seems to reflect the dichotomy that Seb notes. However, this interview, done with Murakami while he was in the process of finishing up the interviews of the AUM members, can be taken as supporting the Guradian’s take.
Interesting for me is the fact that part one was translated by Alfred Brinbaum and part two was translated by Phillip Gabriel. I wish I were sensitive enough (and had the time) to sit down with the Japanese version and compare the two translators, especially after this discussion of Murakami translators.
Apologies, here is a link to the Guardian article
“Gary: I was wondering about that, but I thought that coming after the wolves/Jews comment, I thought it ought to have something to do with I/P.”
Nonetheless, it seemed to be a complete non-sequitur, although I imagine NeoDude has a connection in mind.
“…for the most immoral behavior on earth?”
I really don’t think, incidentally, that any immoral behavior in Iraq, by anyone, compares to, say, acts under Pol Pot, or Mao Tse-Tung, or Hitler, or Stalin, or Idi Amin, or Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Empire (as it was then), or a number of other places. For the record.
lj: that’s really interesting. — I have also always been interested in trying to understand what makes people do really horrible things. (The first article I ever published was on a line of thought prompted by Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience, and that’s no accident. At all.) I suspect, in my case, the part of it that isn’t just morbid curiosity has to do with knowing, as a kid, a bunch of people (Jews) who had fled Germany ahead of the Nazis. It was impossible to talk to them without getting the sense that the Nazis were both the most horrible people imaginable, and also, somehow, their compatriots in a country they had loved; that not just people with horns but (for instance) their neighbors or classmates, who had always seemed to be OK before, had turned on them; and, generally, that Germany was full of real people who had really gone on to do the most evil things imaginable, or to sit by and watch those things be done. And it seemed very important to me to understand how that could be, not least so that I could avoid becoming such a person myself.
“I think that if history as a process is a staple of the left, and the great man theory is the ground for much thinking on the right….”
Unsurprisingly, I believe history clearly shows that both are true, and there’s no conflict. There are historical process that are, if not immutable, extremely powerful and sometimes dominant, but nonetheless, history is also replete with instances of single people or small numbers of people making a crucial difference in hugely important events which set other trends and events and ideas in motion.
Denying either the influence of individuals or the power of trends and processes (urbanization, suburbanization, industrialization, whatever) would be to deny reality, in my view, which isn’t to say that this doesn’t happen.
Once again, I’m not saying that all Democrats ARE IN FACT reflexive appeasers, I am saying that those who are not do not successfully stress the differences between the ‘peacenik’ side of the party and themselves. Just like Republicans and racists–only more so.
I’ll assume you didn’t mean to imply that being [perceived to be] a ‘peacenik’ is as bad or worse than being [perceived to be] a racist.
In any case, there’s a logical problem with this comparison. If you can demonstrate even one instance of racist behaviour/rhetoric on my part, then I am a racist. Period. Saying something like, “but I still think it’s okay for black people to use the same drinking fountains” won’t excuse me.
On the other hand, being a “reflexive appeaser” is a much more universal condition. You’d have to show that I not only opposed the wars in say, Iraq and Afghanistan, but also every other war, ever. And if I merely point out conditions A, B and C under which I would support a war, I’d be off the hook.
Thus, while I could plausibly be labelled a racist after a single post on say, affirmative action, the burden of proof for labelling me a ‘peacenik’ is much, much higher. I agree that Democrats need to do a better job of countering the Republican weak-on-defense labeling, but in a sane world they wouldn’t need to do much.
hilzoy
I suppose that my epiphany was related, but in the inverse sense, in that my father’s office was transferred from DC to Bay St. Louis when I was in junior high school. I remember thinking that I had been assigned to the end of the earth, especially after my parents, being unable to find a house in Slidell, Louisana, ended up moving to Picayune, Mississippi and was shocked to find that people were generally the same there as elsewhere, which has generally led me to the notion that we all have the unfortunate capacity for doing horrible things and it is thinking that we are somehow immune to it is where the problem starts.
Denying either the influence of individuals or the power of trends and processes (urbanization, suburbanization, industrialization, whatever) would be to deny reality, in my view, which isn’t to say that this doesn’t happen.
Of course, which is why I attributed the views to different sides of the political spectrum rather than realis and irrealis. The problem is that even if you arrive at the same place, the fact that there are two different roads to get there creates two different narratives for each event.
Sorry, still trying to get back in the hang of commenting. That last statement is gary’s, no hilzoy’s
“I’ll assume you didn’t mean to imply that being [perceived to be] a ‘peacenik’ is as bad or worse than being [perceived to be] a racist.”
No, I’m implying that the stereotypical linkage between Democrat and peacenik is at least as strong if not much stronger than the linkage between Republican and racist. So when foreign policy issues come to the fore, Democrats have to work really hard and very publically to overcome it–which they typically do not bother to do in any but the most superficial of ways. This probably happens because they think: “I’m not a peacenik, everyone knows that”. In thinking that, they are almost certainly wrong.
“Thus, while I could plausibly be labelled a racist after a single post on say, affirmative action, the burden of proof for labelling me a ‘peacenik’ is much, much higher.”
I don’t think so. With the racist charge you only need one charge of behaviour which the common person would think is racist. With the peacenik charge you only need to oppose one war that the common person thinks is justified.
To advocate a war, that includes a violent invasion and then a violent occupation, would have to be based on a sturdy moral foundation. And then there are the plans, a draft, raising taxes—to get it done right.
Not preparing for the inevitable responsibilities of an occupier is immoral negligence. On the run up to the war, there was more time spent on PR and little, if any, on the after-math. Since so many pro-war types insisted on the WW2 comparisons, one would think they would have noticed that the administration was NOT obsessively planning, like the United States did for the Great War.
This war was done on the fly…that’s immoral.
About the tail remark:
There used to be stories, concerning crypto-Jews in Portugal and Spain,…they had tails. On top of being God killers, they had horns and tails.
They were also accused of leeching off of Christian civilization…they were incapable of assimilation and spread revolutionary and anti-Christian ideologies through the underbelly of proper European culture.
With the peacenik charge you only need to oppose one war that the common person thinks is justified.
No: one would need to oppose a war that not only “the common person”, whatever the heck that means, thinks is justified but to which legitimate opposition cannot be fathomed.
With the racist charge you only need one charge of behaviour which the common person would think is racist. With the peacenik charge you only need to oppose one war that the common person thinks is justified.
Then the Iraq war certainly doesn’t count, since at best only just over half of the American “common persons” were ever in favor of it, and public opinion worldwide and in other “coalition” countries was overwhelmingly against it.
In any case, this is wrong. The opinion of the common person doesn’t count, the facts do. Often the “common person” is not in full possession of the facts.
If I write a post arguing that, say, miscegenation is bad, the common person would probably think of that as racist. But what if my opinion is based on some difficult to understand, not widely publicized, but scientifically sound study showing somehow that miscegenation, is, in fact, bad?
I’m with Anarch. I have supported wars that a significant number of people opposed (Gulf 1), and opposed wars that significant numbers of people supported (Iraq, and I forget which of the mini-war-feel-good exercises of the 80s, whose details blur in my memory.) How many such people it would take for the ‘common man’ to be involved, and whether either of these qualify, I don’t know, but I think I might, by Seb’s criteria, qualify as both a peacenik and a warmonger at once.
“In any case, this is wrong. The opinion of the common person doesn’t count, the facts do. Often the “common person” is not in full possession of the facts.”
We are talking about stereotypical understandings, correct? If so, the opinion of the common man counts quite a bit.
“How many such people it would take for the ‘common man’ to be involved, and whether either of these qualify, I don’t know, but I think I might, by Seb’s criteria, qualify as both a peacenik and a warmonger at once.”
We all know that stereotypes are not perfectly rational constructs, so this is not surprising at all.
Grrr. War. Pass the steak tartare.
We are talking about stereotypical understandings, correct? If so, the opinion of the common man counts quite a bit.
No, I was referring to the definition of racist/peacenik.
We are talking about stereotypical understandings, correct?
We are?
Grrr. War. Pass the steak tartare.
“Hello, hilzoy! I’m Genghis Khan. You’ll go where I go, defile what I defile, eat who I eat!”
As a latecomer to this thread (over 140 comments and still a-risin’ so far) I’m reluctant to go back and comment on the one sub-thread on which I have a modicum of expertise, i.e., Pol Pot’s Cambodia and its fall. But I cannot resist making a couple of points:
1) There are indeed certain parallels between Vietnam’s 1978 invasion of Cambodia (deposing the Khmer Rouge) and our current invasion of Iraq. There is also one major difference. Cambodia was attacking VN. Iraq was not attacking us. Thus, aside from the general benefits of getting rid of a nasty piece of work (in both cases), from a Vietnamese security perspective the invasion was _necessary_. For the US, it was optional. (See also the ousting of Idi Amin from Uganda, by Kenya, IIRC.)
2) Someone upstream tried to argue that Reagan never actually supported Pol Pot (in exile). That dog won’t hunt. [Now that I’m living in the South, I’m trying to get the hang of “Southron” idioms, but I don’t think I’ve quite got it yet.] Aside from the question of who got what relief aid in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnamese invasion, admittedly complex, the US – along with ASEAN and the PRC – systematically, over the next *decade*:
(a) supported the retention of the UN seat for Cambodia by Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea [and its successor governments in exile] so as to keep *out* of the UN, and thus ineligible for most kinds of UN aid, the de facto government in Phnom Penh, with its Vietnamese backing;
(b) with the same partners supported (an open secret) the various Cambodian “refugee” camps and armies just over the border in Thailand, from which they made regular forays into the People’s Republic of Kampuchea and thus tied down Vietnamese troops.
Neither of these policies, sustained throughout the Reagan years, had any plausible connection at all with helping Cambodia or its people. OTOH, I doubt very much whether the US or ASEAN (or even the PRC) wanted the Pol Pot-led resistance to succeed and actually take over again. What they (we!) wanted – and what they (we!) got – was to “bleed” PRK, and thus Vietnam, basically to punish the latter for their temerity in beating us, and for aligning with the Soviet Union.
As realpolitik, it achieved a certain kind of success, weakening Vietnam by increasing suffering in Cambodia. As a representation of our (= Reagan’s) supposed commitment to freedom, it was the rankest kind of hypocrisy.
“Since so many pro-war types insisted on the WW2 comparisons, one would think they would have noticed that the administration was NOT obsessively planning, like the United States did for the Great War.”
Uh, “The Great War” was World War I.
Anarch: when I was little, my grandmother gave me what had been her sons’ collection of Landmark history books. I adored them. My absolute favorite was Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde, which I had more or less memorized by the time I encountered the steak tartare. So if you were Genghis Khan, I would have to work very hard not to follow you anywhere. (My post-childhood reading on Genghis would help.)
Did you know that in Turkey, Genghis ( or Cengiz, as I think they spell it) is still a common name? I got laid up with really, really bad gastroenteritis, and I had this incredibly high fever, and the doctor came in and said: “Hello, I am Dr. Genghis”, and I thought: I am hallucinating.
(One more unrelated story, then off to bed. Background: my Dad’s mother had a knack for befriending all sorts of writers and artists who lived in LA. My cousin, whom she brought up, was watching Frankenstein when she was a kid, and in the middle of it, the phone rang, and she picked it up, and a voice said, in a thick accent: ‘Hello, this is Igor.’, and my cousin screamed and hung up the phone in terror. Then the phone rang again, and my grandmother picked it up, and after a bit came in and asked my cousin: did you pick up the phone just now? No, said my cousin, who was still spooked. ‘How odd’, said my grandmother; ‘my friend Stravinski says he called a few minutes ago, and someone just picked up the telephone and screamed.)
“…and opposed wars that significant numbers of people supported (Iraq, and I forget which of the mini-war-feel-good exercises of the 80s, whose details blur in my memory.)”
Grenada? Panama?
“No, I was referring to the definition of racist/peacenik.”
I know it is going to sound strange for me to invoke post-modernism, but focusing on the platonic ideal of definitions of ‘peacenik’ or ‘racist’ misses the whole point of how stereotypes operate in real life. For example, despite the fact that I was raised with so little race-conciousness that I was unable to comprehend why people thought it was odd that I had a Japanese ‘grandmother’ and that my black elementary school friends were being teased about something which was obvious just a normal variation on skin tone, I can regularly be accused of ‘racism’ because I oppose affirmative action. In a purely logical world that wouldn’t make sense. In a purely logical world Democrats could oppose or support certain wars without having to worry about an overall appearance of being wimpy. We don’t live in that world. I have to fight tooth and nail against the racist charge every time I mention affirmative action. I am white and Republican. There are certian stereotypes about those categories which do not apply to me, but which I have to be prepared to fight. That is the world of how people actually think.
Democrats can’t present foreign policy as in a matter of fact way. If they want to be taken seriously they have to overcome the association with peaceniks. Hilzoy’s comment about appearing to be a peacnik or warmonger depending on the war is trying to look at stereotypes as if they were purely logical. They aren’t. A Democrat who wants to speak and be heard on foreign policy has to overcome the decades of wimpy foreign policy stereotype. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away.
This is not a criticism of Democrats. I desperately wish the current dynamic in the country offered two parties with high levels of public trust on foreign policy rather than zero such parties. But the public loss of trust for Republicans is in the competence area. The public lack of trust for Democrats is on the aims area. If you competently aim at the wrong target, you aren’t ever going to hit the right one. So if your aims are seen to be wrong, you aren’t going to be trusted. Democrats are seen as having alarmingly passive aim tendencies. It isn’t fair, but if Democrats want to be heard on foreign policy, they have to overcome that stereotype. Pretending that it will just go away doesn’t work.
one would need to oppose a war that not only “the common person”, whatever the heck that means, thinks is justified but to which legitimate opposition cannot be fathomed.
Yes, but this is a very high bar indeed, since I think even opinions based in good faith on incorrect or inadequate information have to be considered legitimate. For example, evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear program was thin at best before the war. Opposition based on the considerd opinion that they simply didn’t have one would have been perfectly legitimate — even if those accusations had actually later turned out to be true.
Sebastian: Note the end of my initial comment up thread: “I agree that Democrats need to do a better job of countering the Republican weak-on-defense labeling, but in a sane world they wouldn’t need to do much.”
I’m well aware that we’re ultimately discussing mass opinion. My point was only that, logically, it should be much much harder for a given common person to conclude someone is a ‘peacenik’ than a racist. Naturally, public opinion is formed by vast numbers of such common people. Not all of them make full use of their logical faculties, and to that extent Democrats clearly have a problem.
Actually, to be fair, if everyone started using all of their logical faculties both parties would be in some trouble…
A Democrat who wants to speak and be heard on foreign policy has to overcome the decades of wimpy foreign policy stereotype. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. This is not a criticism of Democrats.
No, it’s a criticism of Republicans. Although probably an unintentional one.
“No, it’s a criticism of Republicans. Although probably an unintentional one.”
No, if anything it is a criticism of human nature.
Hey Gary, if you’re still here,
1967 war:
Richman has this:
Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_day_war for more context.
Again, a close call, but nothing like what you’re saying here: a few days for the Arab coalition to attack first. That’s just not true.
On the 1948 war, what does it have to do with the post-war arrangements? I am not arguing that the Arab League rules were humanitarians (and we don’t even know – maybe the west bank population would’ve chosen to be a part of Jordan); I am only arguing that they had a fair case to intervene militarily, certainly a better case than, say, Europeans (not to mention Americans) in Kosovo.
Quarter-million refugees, massacres (Deir Yassin was located outside of the 1948 Israeli borders, btw), destabilization of the whole region – and all this created by a group of white Europeans and at the highest point of the world-wide anti-colonial struggle.
I mean, it seems hard to deny that they had a case, unless you choose to completely ignore their side of the story, which is what happens in the West, unfortunately.
No, if anything it is a criticism of human nature.
Well, now wait a minute. These perceptions don’t arise sponaneously from the common man’s study of perceptions. There’s folks with megaphones and incentive to misrepresent, and they’re out there misrepresenting to the best of their abilities.
I suppose a certain amount of assholery could be considered ‘human nature,’ but it shouldn’t be tolerated, much less celebrated. You might explain that they are trying to win, but the fact that it works doesn’t justify it.
“study of events” I meant to write.
CharleyCarp–
“You might explain that they are trying to win, but the fact that it works doesn’t justify it.”
And with that we’re back on topic! I love ring composition.
Another late (and uninvited) entrant to this thread. It seems to me that that invoking Republicans and racism when discussing Democrats and foreign policy does some useful work, but falls short of providing any real answers. Whereas racism is a binary situation, where its absence is good and its presence bad, the middle is the only sensible place to be with respect to warfare. How do you clearly, rhetorically, claim your place in the middle when you’re being considered an extremist?
Repudiating racism means playing away from it and toward its absence – vouching for tolerance, kinship with the whole of humanity, and lots of other warm sentiments. You can work toward this by listening to jazz music, reading Toni Morrison, going on Oprah (back in the day), promoting non-whites, kissing hispanic babies, visiting black churches, or saying “I celebrate the diversity of America”. Do all these things and you might be criticised for political crassness, but certainly no-one would claim that they are anything other than good things.
Repudiating the tag of peace-nik – well, there’s something equally (to put it mildly) bad at the other end of the scale, no? “I celebrate our history of warfare” would sound strange from any lips. Talking up all the countries we could be bombing, being seen with books on “Warfare as Statecraft”, listening to Wagner – these are things which could be classified as bizarre, or worse. I admit this is partly a consequence of my examples, but could we have some clearer examples of how democrats could, and fail to, transmit a non-peacenik persona, without simultaneously risking coming across as bloodhungry? It seems to me that the burden of Republicans is an easier one to shed than that for Democrats – because racism should not be accepted in a modern society, whereas in fact reluctance to go to war is just a shade on a continuum where there are no easy solutions.
Sebastian’s original puzzle: why has there been so much effort in explaining the actions of Arab terrorists since 9/11, when there was so little effort to explain McVeigh after the Oklahoma City bombing?
My approach is to try to extend the set of examples that we’re looking at. Consider the USS Cole attack – that didn’t inspire much explanation. What about the failed WTC bombing of the early 90s? Not much explanation there, either. What about the school shootings (e.g. Columbine)? There was a lot of explanation there – violent video games, classmates picking on the shooters, the shooters living in a town that manufactured weapons of war, the actions of gun manufacturers, etc.
What’s the difference between those that received lots of explanation and those that did not? The key difference that I see is that the unexplained attacks were generally seen as isolated incidents, while the heaviliy explained attacks were part of a larger struggle. There was a wave of school shootings, people felt like more such shootings were coming, and people felt like we needed to do something about the shootings (like tougher school security, lower availability of guns, more counseling for troubled students, etc.). If there is an ongoing struggle, then there are obvious reasons for wanting to understand why the bad guys are doing what they’re doing – how can you stop them if you don’t even know where they’re coming from? This is especially true if we aren’t dealing with a fixed set of bad guys, but rather with a larger disaffected population off of which the bad guys are drawing “recruits”. Why are so many kids becoming school shooters? Why are so many Muslims becoming terrorists? Oklahoma City always seemed more like a senseless, isolated incident, and the USS Cole and the early 90s WTC attack didn’t seem like parts of an ongoing struggle, so they didn’t spark the same kind of concern about the attackers’ reasons. Attacks by the Unabomber or some other individual serial killer draw a different kind of search for understanding, generally something of a psychological analysis or “why is this guy so crazy?” But since 9/11, and in the wake of Columbine, many people thought we had to figure out what went wrong and then act to correct the problems.
It’s also worth noting that explanations of bin Laden and the terrorists on his side are coming from all sides. The right is more apt to say “they hate us for our freedoms” or “they thought we were a paper tiger because we failed to respond to the USS Cole, etc.”, but these explanations only intend to imply that our response should be perseverence and toughness. The left’s explanations have different implications for what we should do, and to much of the right these implications are obviously wrong, which is one reason why the right rejects these explanations and the people making them.
Well, so much for my attempt to reform and stay on the original topic. Tangents keep popping up all over the place.
Hilzoy, (cough, cough), if you’re going to drag in Chomsky as a whipping boy, as your coughs may reveal you gotta expect people who like him most of the time to come to his partial defense. It’s true he was late in recognizing the full extent of Pol Pot’s genocide, but he always recognized that the Khmer Rouge were, in his words, guilty of substantial and gruesome atrocities. The very first thing by Chomsky that I ever read was his chapter on Cambodia in “The Political Economy of Human Rights” and I was skimming it in a book store, curious to see what this horrific defender of Pol Pot would say about him. He was calling him a mass murderer on the first page. This belongs in your other thread, but this was also a political epiphany for me–you can’t trust what the mob mentality of mainstream opinion says about a person’s views, especially if that person stands outside the mainstream and says very bad things about it (virtually all of them true). Chomsky thought in 1979 that the scale of killing in East Timor and Cambodia were the same (but in his view a much higher percentage in the case of East Timor), which meant somewhere in the 100,000 range and his main point was to point out the sheer hypocrisy of the press, which talked a great deal about Cambodia and said very little about Timor, when in the latter case we were actually supplying the murderers with weapons.
I still think Chomsky was a bit of an idiot about Cambodia and one or two other things. He acknowledged the possibility that the genocide charge was true, but clearly didn’t believe it when he wrote PEHR, as shown by the fact that he condemned the invasion by Vietnam as an act of aggression. He obviously thought that the scale of killing you’d get with an invasion would be greater than the 100,000 or so that his East Timor = Cambodia equation would suggest. I’ve never once seen a Chomsky critic make this point, in part because they’d have to acknowledge that Chomsky all along admitted that Pol Pot was a mass murderer, and that he compared it to East Timor and that he was being principled (if misguided) in condemning the Vietnamese invasion.
That would mess up the storyline. A year later as the evidence came out he’d changed his mind, acknowledging that Pol Pot had committed genocide. Slow, probably due to ideological bias, sort of like the way it took the Abu Ghraib photos to get some people to admit the US was involved in torture. Anyway, by that time the US government was supporting the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia and as Chomsky has pointed out ever since, the contradiction he saw in the East Timor and Cambodia example had been resolved–the US had come to support the mass murderers in both cases.
Chomsky initially underestimated the scale of Pol Pot’s killing and I think it’s fair to criticize him for that, but what I object to is the way his name is constantly linked to the issue in this way when
A) the legitimate criticism he was making (the Western support of killing in East Timor vs. handwringing about Cambodia) is always ignored in this context
B) and anyway, if we’re going to talk about support for Pol Pot in the West, we should be talking about Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, not Chomsky.
The moral of the story–if you’re going to make a big mistake, always make it with the hive mind, not in opposition to it.
To Gary,
Regarding using Saddam’s killings to justify the invasion, Human Rights Watch demolished that argument. You don’t start a war to stop mass murder that went on years earlier. Also, of course, the bulk of Saddam’s killing was done when he was a US ally, so if the idea is to bring the criminal to justice then if we’re serious we should be examining whether US administration officials should be brought up on charges of supporting a genocidal killer, in this and other cases. Not to mention charges for crimes committed directly by American officials, both current and previous. It’s weird that Rumsfeld is one of the people involved in overthrowing the man whose hand he shook in the 80’s.
On the 5000 figure, obviously Saddam killed far more than that. But it’s interesting that as of last year (when I think that Guardian article came out), Blair and the US government were talking about 300,000 bodies in mass graves and it turns out that of the 50 or so (out of less than 300) mass graves examined at that point, only 5000 had been recovered. And one article quoted a worker as saying that the locals tended to greatly exaggerate the number of bodies that would be found in a given location. Yet people still report the initial claim, including Aaron Glantz, leftwing “Democracy Now” reporter, who credulously states it in his recently published book on Iraq. I don’t doubt that Saddam killed very large numbers of Iraqis, far, far more than 5000, but it’s a little annoying when mistakes like this (not to mention outright lies) pop up.
Uh, “The Great War” was World War I.
Posted by: Gary Farber | August 31, 2005
I didn’t want to use “WW2” twice, in a sentence…but a Freaked Up anyway.
I’ve noticed that many folks are afraid to label pro-war extremist — “Pro-War Extremist!” is that a posting violation? What if it catches on in MSM, would that be ok, then?
“It seems to me that the burden of Republicans is an easier one to shed than that for Democrats – because racism should not be accepted in a modern society, whereas in fact reluctance to go to war is just a shade on a continuum where there are no easy solutions.”
Sure. It is one of those life isn’t fair moments. Like the idea that you can quit drugs through abstinence with social support but losing lots of weight through dieting can be difficult because you can’t just not eat. It sucks, but it is true.
Sebastian,
So when did you become a pro-war extremist?
Or to use even more similar alternatives, it’s easy not to become a heroin addict because you just have to not take heroin, but hard to manage diabetes because you have to administer insulin, just not too little or too much. Its a day-in,day-out consideration.
To stay in that analogy, there is no “Just say No!” available to Democrats, as theirs is a diabetes-type problem. So how should they be proving that their treatment schedule is better equipped to deal with the demands, other than, say, argue that that’s how they do it? It seems silly for them to act more hawkish than they think is actually right, just as you shouldn’t overadminister insulin to prove you’d never do something so stupid as to underadminister insulin. What, apart from having a foreign policy and discussing it in grown-up terms, should the Democrats be doing?
Apologies for over-egging my metaphorical pudding…
“I admit this is partly a consequence of my examples, but could we have some clearer examples of how democrats could, and fail to, transmit a non-peacenik persona, without simultaneously risking coming across as bloodhungry?”
Like this.