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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The Israeli state appears to be doing the same thing that the British state does when it accidentally shoots the wrong person. The latest horror in which a Palestinian family were hit by a shell whilst on a beach is a case in point. The Israeli military is now claiming that it was not a naval shell that had caused the unintended deaths but rather some unexplained mine or old buried shell in the sand which just happened to go off at or about the same time as an Israeli gunboat was shelling a terrorist target in the Gaza strip.
Well that story is coming unravelled and it is a marvel that they thought any reasonable person would believe that during a bombardment from the sea over the heads of the innocent victims, this explosion just ‘happened’ by complete coincidence.
Any critical observer should realise that the Israeli military had no interest in killing the hapless Palestinians who died when one of their rounds went short, so why not admit it was a terrible error and move on?
All concocting fairy tales does is confirm the prejudices of those who see the official Israeli line as being fundamentally untrustworthy. Hamas and their useful idiots in the west will not believe anything done by the Israeli state is not done out of pure malevolence regardless of the facts, so they can be ignored. Israel’s ethno-nationalist cheerleading squad will just assume anything Israel does under any circumstances is completely justified regardless of the facts, so they too can be ignored. However between those two poles of mindless unreason exists a large group of people who tend to judge things on the basis of ‘reasonableness’ and the likely facts.
What the Israeli military spokesman should have said was: “Whilst firing on a legitimate terrorist target, one of our shells went short. It is unclear if this was due to a firing error or a defective round, and as a result some innocent bystanders were killed. We are truly sorry that happened and we wish like hell that the sons of bitches we really were trying to kill did not keep putting us in the position of having to do things like this”.
Mistakes happen and in war, mistakes cost lives. Admit the truth and move on because in the long run it actually helps your cause if people have reason to believe what you say.
However this time it is nice to hear of Islamic extremists killing themselves in ways that do not involve blowing themselves up on a bus in London or in a pizzeria in Israel in order to murder a bunch of civilians. More of this and faster please.
Some weapons are marvels of technology, such as laser guided bombs or an F-22 fighter. Other weapons however use much older technology, based on something invented by Johannes Gutenberg in 1447. Such a weapon can do more damage to the cause of puritanical Islam than a thousand well aimed bombs.
Tim Blair is one of the first bloggers to note the killing of Abu Musab Zarqawi – the target of an American bombing raid. I feel a little ghoulish celebrating the death of anyone, however this is brilliant news. Zarqawi’s untouchability had grown into a legend; he represented an on-the-ground inspiration for many would-be jihadis. Many touted him as the true head of al-Qaeda, vital in his position and leading from the front – in contrast to Osama bin Laden – the largely sidelined nominal leader. The removal of this valuable piece from the game is a major coup for American forces.
UPDATE : Iraqi blog IraqTheModel claims
Zarqawi’s identity was confirmed through his fingerprints.
Reports of his death seem a lot more unequivocal this time, as opposed to earlier claims that turned out to be false. The man is almost certainly dead.
I was interested to read Condoleeza Rice’s remarks about Iran which flagged the possibility of the US joining the European “Group of Three”‘s so far futile talks with Iran about that country’s nuclear weapons program. While answering questions from reporters, Ms Rice seemed to imply that there was some sort of ‘understanding’ with Russia and China on this issue:
QUESTION: To follow on that, do you have agreement then from Russia and China that if you got to that point, having made this overture, sort of, taken the last best hope here for diplomacy, that if it fails at that point they would be willing to back what they have been thus far unwilling to do?
RICE: I think there is substantial agreement and understanding that Iran now faces a clear choice. This is the last excuse, in some sense. There have been those who have said, “Well, if only the negotiations had the potential for the United States to be a part of them, perhaps then Iran would respond.”
So now we have a pretty clear path. We have negotiations if Iran is prepared to suspend. If Iran is not prepared to suspend — and by the way, this an understanding that comes out of New York — that there is another path.
RICE: And while we have worked to get agreement on what had been some tactical differences, I think you can be sure that our friends and our partners understand the importance of the step and the importance that the Iranians must now see of making a choice and making that choice clearly.
I think we have very good understanding with our partners about that.
A very good understanding, huh? I can not imagine what understanding that the United States could come up with that that would compensate Russia for oil being north of $70 a barrell.
Needless to say, Iran has accepted the US offer with conditions of its own, namely that it will continue its business with nuclear research at its own pace. The slow slide towards US surrender on this issue is starting to gather a momentum of its own.
I have come across an allegation I am unable to verify because I am a linguistic curmudgeon, unable to read (or even speak!) Swedish or Danish. Sorry, everyone. A late night trawling through a comments thread over at Tim Blair’s unearthed this very interesting comment from reader “TOGITV” :
I have just read that the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten is about to republish the Mohammed cartoons!
I can’t find any reference to it in any English language press. But here is the link to the article in the Swedish press
TOGITV later posts :
I just read the Swedish article a bit closer. It isn’t the same newspaper (Jyllands Posten) that will re-publish the cartoons, it will be another Danish newspaper called Politiken.
I can’t read Danish quite as well as Swedish, but I think the article in Politiken says that Harpers Magazine will also publish the cartoons in their June edition also accompanying an article on Art Spiegelman.
Interesting, if true. Perhaps someone versed in Swedish or Danish could enlighten the rest of us as to the articles’ content. If it is true, and the cartoons are published again in another Danish magazine, the seemingly obvious consequence would be another explosion of fundamentalist Islamic vitriol against Denmark, freedom of speech, the West and Western values, you name it. However, the furore over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons occurred several months after publishing, and was certainly incited by a few conspiring Islamic leaders, who provided the nexus between a liberal European paper and the protesting Middle Eastern mobs. On reflection, it is hard to see what good the rabble-rousing has done for the Islamic cause. In response to the disgusting behaviour of the Islamist mob, the silencing veil of political correctness was blown off various issues surrounding Islam in quite remarkable time. I’ve noticed that the educated middle class – possibly the social group most conscious of PC mores – are these days far more likely to openly discuss and criticise the ugly sides of Islam and its (in)compatibility with modern Western society. I’d go so far to say that, post cartoon-rage, even tracts of the left are less willing to defend Islam’s excesses.
I rather think that those who scurrilously incited the cartoon rage did not expect the mob to claw and bay with such intensity. Certainly, the hideous scenes we witnessed on our televisions at the time turned many erstwhile allies in the West away from the Islamic cause. More importantly, an enormous number who had no opinion one way or the other regarding Islam now see it in a negative light. It is most evident that the individuals who all-too-successfully activated the mob dealt themselves an almighty propaganda defeat – possibly one of the more spectacular tactical backfires we’ve seen in recent times. Surely, even the most benighted, zealous Islamic leader has the limited perspicacity required to concede that point. Hence, if the cartoons are soon published in another Danish newspaper, we may hear nothing more of it.
I have been criticized a few times for using the popular term ‘Islamo-fascist’ to describe, well, Islamic fascists such as the Iraqi & Syrian Ba’athists as well as the theocratic Iranian regime. Well if this report is correct (Iranian sources are denying it), they are planning to adopt a measure which should dispel all doubt as to the appropriateness of the term.
The claims of the Saudi government that is has ‘modernised’ their state mandated educational system so that it does not encourage violence against non-Muslims is debunked in the Washington Post. The article also includes a few choice translations of current ‘educatiional’ texts, such as:
As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus.
How fortunate we are that the Saudis are the West’s allies. Read the whole articles.
The details of this story are still unfolding. Irrespective of these, the Dutch appear to have lost a brave, eloquent and credible voice against the backward Islamic extremism that is threatening their liberal traditions.
The price of undue restraint in war is always paid in the blood of your own soldiers. The Moqtada al-Sadr’s ‘Mahdi Army’ has previously given the US/UK forces all the justification it ever needed to crush them militarily and put Sadr’s head on a pike for all to see. He took up arm against the British and Americans, his people killed allied troops and yet rather than wipe out his supporters when they were cornered in Najaf, crushing his organisation once and for all and removing him from the political equation by putting a bullet in his head, he was allowed to make a deal , rejoin the political process and rebuild his armed strength.
And now the price for that idiotic restraint is being paid. It was demonstrated when Sadr’s militia were allowed to just walk away free at Najaf after making a few empty promises to lay down their arms in order to end the fighting, that the consequences of taking on the allies in Iraq are not military annihilation with no possibility of being accepted as a legitimate political figure.
On the contrary in fact, so not surprisingly Iraq’s warlords see little downside to strengthening their credentials with nationalist and Islamist elements by taking intermittent swipes at allied troops in the knowledge they can always mend fences later of the US or UK looks like they are putting them under serious military pressure or if they corner more of your people than you can afford to just write off.
To the surprise of no one who is not a professionally optomistic spin-doctor in the pay of the US government, the situation in Iraq has settled into a messy attrition war. Although the US cannot lose this contest militarily, it most certainly can lose politically.
However I think this as this latest bit of true propaganda (almost but not quite an oxymoron) shows, the other side in Iraq may be determined but that does not mean they are all that competent.
That said, I would not read too much into this… Churchill was also a fairly indifferent shot by many accounts.
John Mearsheimer is a Professor at the University of Chicago who has attracted a great deal of attention in the blogosphere recently for a paper he co-authored about the role of the Israeli lobby and its influence on the policy of the United States towards the middle-east region. I think it fair to say that, at the very least, the paper was not his finest hour.
But it attracted me towards some of his other work, and the estimable Winterspeak, posting at Jane Galt’s blog, recently went to a speech where he outlined some of his views on his theory of international relations. Winterspeak was not entirely convinced.
Of course, political science is even more of a ‘black art’ then economic science. A scientific theory in the natural world can be demonstrated or refuted by scientific verification. In the social ‘sciences’ such verification is much harder. Therefore, making predictions about the future is hard. But one I still a worthwhile exercise. Readers can judge for themselves.
One of the aspects of Professor Mearsheimer’s work that has drawn particular attention is his view that the internal composition of states does not matter, democracy or dictatorship, theocracy or monarchy, they will have the same foreign policy goals. Given that in the United States, democracy is seen as a sacred cow, this is bound to be a provocative stance.
In considering this point of view, it may be helpful to make a distinction between ‘strategic’ foreign policy thinking, and ‘tactical’ foreign policy thinking, just as a chess-player does. Strategic is ‘this is what we want’ and tactical is ‘this is how we are going to get it’. If you view Professor Mearsheimer’s work in that light, I understand why he thinks that way. Take, for example, his recent debate with Zbigniew Brzezinski on the future of China’s policy. It seems to me that the internal composition of China’s government will not make a great deal of difference towards China’s desire to regain Taiwan.
It does of course make a great deal of difference about how they go about getting it, though. I am not very knowledgeable about China or its people, so I am not at all sure about how a future Chinese democracy would go about trying to reclaim Taiwan from the mainland. It may be thought that a democratic Chinese government would be sensible enough to eschew war, but given what the Chinese people seem to think about their neighbours, and watching other Asian democracies in action, gives me reason to doubt the good sense of a Chinese democracy.
It does seem to me that the tactics a state employs though are extremely important, and have massive and wide-ranging implications. Therefore, if one may be critical of Professor Mearsheimer’s theory, it is that he under-rates the importance of tactical moves in foreign policy goal setting. The classic example of this would be the transformation of Prussia into Imperial Germany in the late 19th century, and its effects on France and Russia. A more contemporary one, and more pointed given his latest academic effort, is that vital one of United States support for Israel. This policy is effected precisely because the United States is a democracy and, like it or not, the American public opinion is far more favourable towards Israel. This expression of American opinion thus translates into a massively different policy position towards the Middle East then would be the case if United States foreign policy was principally conducted with the interest of the government only in mind, as would be the case if the United States was a dictatorship.
And that support has a huge bearing on the foreign policy strategies of Arab states. So in the long run, democracy matters.
That does not mean that a democracy is likely to pursue more sensible or rational foreign policies. Democracy is no guarantee of good government. It simply means that governments in democracies have different political considerations to bear in mind when they make diplomatic decisions. I would welcome readers views on this matter.
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