Samizdata

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.

I note that I have been ever-so-gently upbraided for my lamentations over the apparent pacification (and pansy-fication) of marxist rebels; more particularly the FARC of Colombia who appear to have retired after a long career spent decapitating villagers and moved to the negotiation table

Surely, this is a step in the right direction, no? Surely, pursuing peace is better than pursuing a savage war? I regret to say that my answer is no. As for it being the ‘right move’, well, I’m sure that the FARC consider it to be the ‘right move’ as the negotiating table will assuredly take them far further then their AK-47s ever did; from fetid jungle encampment to lording it up in the halls of Colombian power within 10 years at most, I’d say

The FARC have learned these lessons well from their European and American comrades who made this transition 30 years ago and just look how far it’s taken them.

They handed in their guns, bombs and incendiaries and equipped themselves with altogether more stealthy (and infinitely more lethal) weapons of inclusivity, diversity and sustainability. So ended the the dream of revolution and began the grim determination of the long march. The fiery radicals of yesteryear became the outreach workers, counsellors, legal-aid lawyers, community activists, environmental campaigners, journalists, professors, social workers, teachers and union delegates. Carlos the Jackal became Charles the Educator and he lives next door to us now. He wears a well-tailored suit, expensive shoes, drives a car, sends his kids to private schools and writes a column in the Guardian

Thus many of us, nay, most of us were fooled into believing that the marxist rebs had finally grown up and ditched their war with civilisation. Tosh and horsefeathers, I say. We were merely blinded by the brief incandescent light of Thatcher; deafened by the noise of tumbling bricks in Berlin. The Third Way was not so much a coming-to-terms with reality but, rather, a tactical realisation that reality had to be upended by other means. The programme remains on course; it is merely the method that has changed

And, in a sense, they were right. Now it is they who rub shoulders with those in power while we squat in our cyber-camps, seething and scheming. Hell, in many cases they are the ones in power. What an extraordinarily successful application of the black art of cognitive jiu-jitsu that left the rest of us lying spread-eagled on the mat, bruised, dazed and wondering how that happened. Well, now we know how that happened; the marxist radicals chose peace instead of fighting

So I say, let us return to the bad old days when the interminably neurotic children of the bourgeoisie were yomping around the countryside blowing up electricity pylons. It made it so much easier to put their lifeless bodies on display to a grateful public without so much as a hint of equivocation. They were them, we were us and the only decision anybody ever had to make was to pick a side. We knew exactly upon whom we had to set the dogs and, more importantly, why

The triumph of civilisation has always lain the in the vigourous trumping of stupidty by reason and it is only the purblind obsession with ‘peace at any price’ that has caused us to forget this biblical simplicity. ‘Stop making wars’ they implored. What they meant was ‘Stop making wars we can never win’

Come back, Che Guevarra. Lead your comrades out into the jungle again. You can have back your sweaty T-shirts, your ghastly berets and your molotov cocktails. We’ll have back our moral certainty, rule of law and our armed citizens. You can be free again to shout Long Live the Revolution and we can shout Let’s Roll

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.

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.

Yes indeed. It seems to me that September 11^th 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?

Over 3000 mostly American civilians die when Al Qaeda terrorists hijack four civilian airliners and crash two of them into office buildings in New York. A 22 year old Catholic postman is gunned down in the street by the ‘Loyalist’ Red Hand Defenders in Northern Ireland. Six Israeli Jews are gunned down during the bat mitzvah of a 12 year old girl by a Palestinian terrorist with the Al Asqa Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of Fatah.

In none of these cases was there any pretence that the people being murdered were military targets or in any meaningful way part of the apparatus of state. They were just members of the wrong collective group.

Collectivism is the real world manifestation of the subjective, emotion based feral animal origins of humanity, like some recurring echo emanating from the primitive reptile brain that physically exists in all of us. It is the antithesis of rational objectivity, something that no amount of fancy verbiage from Marx or Chomsky or Himmler or Plato or Rousseau can disguise in their respective paeans to force and unity over intellect and evolution. Collectivism is a fancy word for tribalism. It is a hold over, an atavistic throw back to times before the modern civilisation of the extended order.

And then I see a huge protest against violence in Northern Ireland like the one today. A great and wonderful angry howl against sectarian violence by both catholics and protestants together, all revolted by the madness in the hearts of paramilitary murderers. And there, amongst the grim faced ranks of ordinary people standing under their umbrellas in the rain, I catch sight of members of the Orange Order, of Sinn Fein, of the SDLP, of various well meaning ‘left’ and ‘right’ wing groups, all calling for unity.

Wrong.

Tragically, terribly and utterly wrong.

The world already has enough ‘unity’ to kill every man woman and child one hundred times over. The lasting repulse of tribal violence will not come from ‘unity’, which is just an appeal for the creation of a different, larger tribe to combat the ‘other’ tribes, but rather individualism: the explicit rejection of every tie that comes not through choice but from force. Do not mistake collective action for collectivism, for it is the latter, not the former, that both ‘left’ and ‘right’ has on offer.

The answer is not ‘Unity’, which is just short hand for ‘join us, not them’… the answer is ‘Don’t tread on me’

Jim Henley over on Unqualified Offerings has turned a private exchange between us into a very interesting open letter to yours truly. He makes some very interesting points!

I’ve got to tell you, Perry, I get infuriated too. What we have is, on one side, Rothbardians arguing that prophylactic war is incompatible with limited government. On the other, self-described “anti-idiotarians” who claim to believe that it is. The identity of the actual idiots here is less clear to me than it is to some others. When you factor in the Rothbardians’ least tenable thesis – that “aggressive defense” can never be anything but a smokescreen for imperialism – neither side seems to brim with promise.

Sort of Anti-anti-antiwar.com… but only sort of. I have always thought Unqualified Offerings was a daily ‘must read’ and this confirms it if you enjoy the illuminating spotlights of reason and insight. Thought provoking stuff.

Amidst the hand-wringing of the chattering classes about the fate of the Al Qaeda members now enjoying an extended break at Club Fed in Cuba, it may be useful to examine the claim that they are prisoner of war and, therefore, should be treated in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Convention.

The Convention they are referring to is Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War and the defintion of ‘Prisoners of War’, contained in Article 4, includes ‘…militias and volunteer corps’. However, important provisos are set out in Subsection A (2):

“(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war”;

In order to be classified as ‘Prisoners of War’ militias or volunteer corps must satisfy all of the above conditions.

It is my view that Al-Qaeda fails to satisfy any.

(a) Al-Qaeda operates by means of an autonomous or, at least, semi-autonomous, cell structure. They are therefore not commanded by any identifiable person.

(b) Anybody seen the Al-Qaeda flag/symbol/pennant/banner? No, neither have I.

(c) Whilst the combatants in Aghanistan most likely did bear arms openly, other Al-Qaeda operatives moving and living undercover in up to 60 different countries around the world cannot possibly be carrying any arms openly.

(d) The attacks in which Al-Qaeda is implicated have, in most cases, been against civilian targets and devoid of any obvious or identifiable tactical or strategic purpose other than to cause terror and widespread fear. It is my view that is not within the laws or customs of war.

Therefore, it is my view that the US government has a very good case that the Al-Qaeda members do not qualify as ‘Prisoners of War’ and are, therefore, not entitled to the protection of the provision of the Geneva Convention.

Of course, this does beg the question of the status of the US actions. Do they constitute ‘war’? Well, possibly not but call it a ‘military action’ or a ‘police action’ if you will. For that matter, call it a ‘Ballroom Dancing Competition’; the point is to prevail.