We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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There is an excellent editorial in The Telegraph called Not your business, Mr Straw which makes the points that need to be made about the Al Qaeda prisoners in Cuba
Yesterday’s Mail on Sunday [Ed: mouthpiece of the British Idiotarian right], on the basis of a few photographs, told its readers that the suspects had been “tortured”. This has sparked some predictable howls of rage from America’s traditional foes on the Left – may of whom were oddly silent when the Taliban were practising genuine torture on their own citizens.
Although the US is understandably being careful with potentially dangerous men, there is no evidence of human rights violations. These, after all, are not prisoners of war, but terrorist suspects.
The whole point is that these people are accused of either terrorism or war crimes, neither of which accord them the protections of the Geneva Convention, not that such legalisms are all that important. What is important is that they be treated in an objective, appropriate and reasonable manner according to the nature of what they are: extremely dangerous terrorists.
Our very own Balkan Blogger, Natalija is showing signs of life once more, so expect a wave of post-illness Croatian candor and Slavic snideness from the banks of the River Sava
Welcome back.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
USS Clueless gives a series of baffling remarks about Somalia. As far as I can figure, Steven seems to think the USA was the primary aggrieved party in 1993 when it tried to carry out the UN’s behest and help impose a central government on Somalia at gunpoint. Forget the daft movie, read the excellent book for a more balanced view.
So if the Somali government is now to be the next target, where exactly is this ‘Somali’ government? Exactly why is Somalia about to be attacked and in what manner? Somalia does not have an army like the Taliban did, it is just a heavily armed society. Does the US attack everyone with a gun? Well, that is pretty much everyone. I expect they will tend to shoot back unless a great deal of political finesse is used.
Unqualified Offerings wrote an article a while ago pointing out why the UN/US actions pretty much guaranteed a fight with the so called ‘warlords’ in Somalia. I have always thought this part of his analysis was spot on
No, the racism of the Somali intervention had more to do with the familiar liberal/left “soft racism of low expectations.” Because the reason some Somalis were starving was that other Somalis, with guns, wanted them to starve. Starvation was a weapon of war. “Warlords” were the root cause of starvation, and starvation was a means to an end, and that end was power. “Warlords” are nothing more nor less than politicians; if the claim offend thee, call them “politicians of a type.” By making it its business to “prevent starvation” the Bush administration put itself in the business of thwarting warlord ambitions. That’s not the racist part. The racist part is that, as was clear at the time, the idea that the warlords would take exception to this took the US government, media and public completely by surprise. Then the US announced its plan to disarm the warlords, which is to say, turn them into non-warlords, which is to say, vitiate their claims to power. Again, it wasn’t racist to try to disarm the warlords as such. But one could only imagine the warlords not objecting to this, and violently, if one somehow couldn’t imagine that these swarthy foreigners took themselves and their own ambitions seriously. One had to believe either that the warlords were attempting to shoot and starve their enemies into submission by mistake, and would be grateful when shown the error of their ways, or that they had made the decision to try to shoot and starve their way to power lightly, and that once US attention turned like the gaze of a stern yet kindly parent upon these errant children, they would cast their little eyes down, mutter “Sorry, mom,” and go play right. In US perceptions, the warlords could have been idiots, children or cowards. What US policy could not have been based on was a sober appreciation that the US was setting itself against serious, adult power brokers who cared more for their own plans than American ones.
Yes indeed. This may have come as a shock, but folks do tend to act in what they think are their own interests, even black folks in Africa. How about that?
Hawkish G.I. pundit Sgt. Stryker replies to my views on Steven den Beste’s article. His remarks are essentially an expansion on Steven’s thesis and amount to a quite accurate detailing of what is the received historical wisdom from the American point of view. I don’t really have any grouse with Steven’s assessment of why the US rightly tends to ignore European views, it is his historical analysis I disagree with and the same applies to my views of Sgt. Stryker’s. It is quite a lengthy post so I will only address what I think are the most egregious bits.
1. There wouldn’t be any Poles, Chechs and Hungarians were it not for Wilson’s supposed, “trashing all vestiges of the potentially stabilising old order.”
That is a gross misreading of the nature of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire… it was not called the ‘dual Kingdom’ for nothing: the Hungarian part jealously guarded its Magyar identity and Imperial areas of administration from Austria. Likewise the Czech and Croats and Slovenes and Slovaks may have been administered from Vienna or Budapest but were always quite distinct ethnic groups within the Empire.
2. You seem distraught that these peoples lived under 50 years of Communist rule; yet having them live under the rule of a foreign Hereditary Monarchal Empire is just fine with you because it would bring stabilization. Yet the Communists, for all the wrongs they committed, did stabilize Eastern Europe. All those Eastern Europeans were for all intents and purposes under the domination and influence of a non-democratic foreign power. So what, I ask, is the difference between Communist foreign domination and Monarchal foreign domination that makes the latter more pleasing to you and the former an abomination?
You presuppose that a democratic-republic is by definition a preferable state to that of a monarchy with local government. Your views were of course shared by Woodrow Wilson, but not me. Britain evolved into a true democracy quite successfully, but an attempt to force the pace resulted in the proto-fascist Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. Democracy works where it evolves naturally, which is why in the long run I am so pessimistic about Europe now. The Great War was just a territorial dispute and did not truly become an ideological one until the arrival of the Americans. The rise of fascism was as a result of unstable alien democratic regimes being forced on nations that did not even have traditions of being independent nations, let alone democracies and for that Woodrow Wilson was the prime mover. It was hardly surprising that democracy in the 1920/30 was a fiasco in much of Eastern and Central Europe as it was imposed rather than evolved. The last echo of Woodrow Wilson’s folly was the recent Balkan Wars.
It was not even the American military involvement in the Great War that was so damaging but Wilson’s disastrous ‘Fourteen Points’. If the USA had been content to assist crushing the Central Powers in response to its U-boat attacks and then go the hell home, history might have been very different and probably not worse. I would take the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns over the Nazis any day.
Over on AintNoBadDude, our pet pinko Brian Linse makes an excellent case for why TV cameras have no place in a court house.
If I were on trial for my life, I’d want to be sure that the prosecutor wasn’t campaigning for DA on my time. I’d want to be certain that the judge wasn’t auditioning for a syndicated series. And I’d want to be damn sure that the lawyers weren’t trying to get booked on Larry King. If there is even the slightest chance that a citizen might be deprived of their life, or even their freedom, then the possible impact of cameras must be seen as a threat to the Sixth Amendment. The impact on the press and the public of keeping cameras out of courtrooms is insignificant by comparison.
It is pretty hard to argue with that.
Over on Dodgeblog, there is a short post about a panel of guests on a talk show who had much sympathy for the Taliban and Al Qaeda but none for their victims.
Can any rational human living in Britain who is not a 24 hour somnambulist have failed to notice the overwhelming support for the USA by people across this country?
I am all for airing a wide range of views, I am a libertarian after all, but why is it that such a high proportion of views shown on television of the various talking heads is so at odds with the views of society at large? If the show Andrew Dodge was referring to was just on some commercial channel then that would be alright… after all, I can always surf off to another channel.
But it is not just another commercial channel, it is the channel that the British state uses the force of law to make me contribute to financially for the ‘privilege’ of owning any television in Britain. It is the tax funded BBC. The official state media. The voice of state establishment. I am being forced to pay for the propagation of this poisonous shit and that is not alright.
USS Clueless has a lengthy article about US unilateralism which makes some interesting points. He also makes some rather dubious ones.
We gave Europe one chance, after WWI, to dictate their own terms and the result was another bloody war. So the second time, we did call the tune — and the result was a hell of a lot better.
As for Britain and France dictating its own terms, what about Woodrow Wilson’s role in dismembering the Austro-Hungarian Empire and trashing all vestiges of the potentially stabilising old order? America shares some of the blame for the instability in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s. And the ‘second time’ was better for who? I don’t think too many Poles, Czechs and Hungarians would agree with Steven as they ended up with nearly half a century of communist rule. Does Steven think Yalta was America’s finest hour?
But that’s because we are willing to try the unconventional. For example: after WWI, France insisted that Germany, with its ruined economy, pay drastic reparations to France. The result was hyper inflation, collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of the Nazi Party.
All of which may never have happened if the US had stayed out of the Great War and a negotiated settlement had been reached in 1917 or early 1918.
And even in the recent past the Europeans have proved that their counsel sucks. That’s what we learned in Yugoslavia, something I’ve discussed here at great length. Years of dithering where the US lobbied for military action and the Europeans counseled diplomacy and sanctions, and what it got us was years of slaughter and civil war there. Finally the US issued an ultimatum; and after 6 weeks of bombing, and the war there ended. Milosevic was deposed, and the Serbs went back to democracy and ceased to be imperialistic. And it’s been reasonably peaceful there ever since.
Yeah, and they all lived happily ever after dreaming good dreams about nice Uncle Sam. That is an… interesting… analysis of the intricacies of the recent Balkan Wars. Whilst I am not fan of European diplomacy (to put it mildly), US actions in the Balkans were at best only half right and Kosovo was a rather more ambigious matter than you seem to think. Do you not think the fact the Croatian and Bosnia Armies (not the USAF) had defeated the aspirations of a Greater Serbia might have had more than a little to do with Slobo’s declining political fortunes? He was politically very vulnerable due to the fact he had lead Serbia to catastrophe, horror and defeat in Bosnia and Croatia, unemployment was running at over 30% (50% by some estimates), the currency was fast turning into toilet paper and so is it really so surprising that he collapsed after yet another military defeat, this time at the hands of the largely US strategic air offensive that resulted from the Kosovo affair?
I am afraid Steven’s analysis contains some grossly simplistic elements and seems to ascribe almost magical qualities to the application of US military force: the USAF turns up and shazam… peace breaks out all over the Balkans. It is rather more complex than that.
[Editor: Link fixed. Now goes to correct article on USS Clueless]
Over on Live from the WTC, blogger Megan McArdle writes in favour of the abolition of taxation on corporate income. It is a good albeit lengthy article that is well worth reading.
And Megan, the truth is “When the revolution comes, she’ll be the first one with her back against soft silk sheets.” Forget the empty threats of the left, the future belongs to the radical evolutionaries.
This test, being prepared all sorts of people, will be to see if the Bush administration is actually as sophisticated as I think they might be.
Somalia is being suggested as the next course on the menu after Afghanistan by all manner of odd bed fellows, from the Ethiopian government who would like to see their neighbour destabilized for their own ends, to oil companies looking to redeem worthless Siad Barré era concessions, to certain conservative US revanchists looking to avenge the bloody 1993 repulse of US Rangers by Somali militiamen.
My guess is that if there is any US military action at all, it will be highly targeted, rather than just blundering in and picking a fight with a Somali clan over an absurd UN derived desire to reorder Somali polity more to Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s liking, as happened last time.
Dr. Frank on the Blogs of War has blogged an article called Group Think which raises all sorts of interesting issues to those of a libertarian persuasion. He also touches upon one of my earlier bloggings.
I have no stake in the “whither libertarianism” question that appears as the background to many such arguments, and I’m probably missing some of the subtleties of it; but just because the idea of attacking Iraq is a hobbyhorse of “National Greatness” conservatism doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad idea. Saddam Hussein is dangerous. He’ll have to be dealt with in some way sooner or later, whether or not doing so would be in line with the official principles of libertarianism (whatever they turn out to be.)
Libertarianism is not a political party, it is a social but non-statist meta-context within which political though occurs: a ‘vibe’ if you like. There are no ‘official’ principals and by its very nature there are only a loose series of underpinnings as the ends of libertarianism is simply liberty, rather than, say, tractor production or discouraging one-parent families. In my view at least, all forms of genuine libertarianism revolve around this:
You are not a libertarian unless you accept as axiomatic that, at its core, society must allow individuals to make their own choices in the pursuit of self-defined ends.
I have always thought all the other sundry libertarian principles often quoted, such as ‘Propertarianism’ and the ‘non-initiation of force’ principles all flow from that. Other libertarians see it the other way around.
Can the “aggressive defender” sub-species in de Havilland’s aviary legitimately launch pre-emptive strikes without turning into an Imperialist “predator?”
For sure. The big difference would be going in to destroy a threat and then going home or going in and making all of Arabia and Iraq into an American satrapy, as some seem to be suggesting.
There are those who maintain that any military action on behalf of US/British/Western security is automatically suspect; this, as de Havilland points out, is often elaborated into a belief that “anyone the American and/or British states opposes must therefore be one of the good guys.” That’s the shared target of “anti-idiotarians” where this issue is concerned, isn’t it?
Yes indeed. It seems to me that September 11th was a watershed in that it resulted in an event so stark in its moral simplicity and lacking in the ambiguity that shades Iraq, Israel, Kosovo etc. that the true nature of many was revealed in the shadowless light of the burning twin towers. Much to my astonishment some on the left, like Christopher Hitchens, turned out to be critically rational whilst many who I had thought far better of, were revealed to be crypto-subjectivists so emotionally attached to their unalterable world views as to be incapable of rational moral judgement.
And by the way, I wonder why all my recent articles seem to feature birds in some form or other? Is someone e-mailing me subliminal messages?
Sean McCray has an interesting de-construction of the New Black Panther Party over on Next Right. Judging by Sean’s analysis, the Panther is just a soggy little crypto-Marxist pussy cat.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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