December 2003

So, with reference to the weekend’s big news story, Norman of Normblog writes that a particular pleasure has been

“The sight of some people trying to say ‘hooray’ through gritted teeth.”

If I understand this correctly, Norm is expressing his pleasure in some other people’s displeasure in having to express their pleasure in yet a third group of people’s expression of their pleasure in a separate individual’s displeasure. I don’t know what to think about this at all. Which is just as well, I suppose because at least it means that the chain of meta-levels ends here. I tell, you, this is why expected utility theory will never catch on ….

Saddam’s capture has all sorts of implications.

The biggest is that it will greatly accelerate the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. This is obvious enough if the resistance fades away and large numbers of troops aren’t needed. But suppose this doesn’t happen. It’s hard to see the US public putting up with a continued stream of casualties when the main objectives on which they were sold the war have either been achieved (get Saddam) or proved illusory (WMDs). The instant reaction Good. Can we go home now, is going to be fairly widely shared as time goes on.

On the Iraqi side, as Juan Cole points out, this will only strengthen the Shia demand for proper elections and a US withdrawal. Now that the fear of Saddam’s return is gone, the dependence of a future Iraqi government on the US is significantly reduced. Shias might well judge that they could do a better (because more ruthless) job of suppressing the insurgency on their own.

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From almost any viewpoint, including that of opponents of the war such as myself, the capture of Saddam Hussein, represents good news, made better by the ignominy of his surrender. When the Iraq war and its justifications , spurious and otherwise, are forgotten, the image of the great dictator being dug out of the hole in which he had hidden will remain, along with the inglorious ends of Mussolini, Hitler, Ceausescu, and others, as a warning to those who might plan to follow the same path.

When we set up this blog, several of us were inspired by the “Volokh Conspiracy”:http://volokh.com/, which has done a quite remarkable job in combining smart political and intellectual commentary. We’re now taking another leaf from the Volokhs’ book; from here on, we hope to invite the occasional guest-blogger to join us for a week or so. We’re all very grateful to “John Quiggin”:http://mentalspace.ranters.net/quiggin/, who has very decently agreed to be our inaugural guest-blogger. We hope that most of you are already reading his blog (if you aren’t, you ought to be) – he’s one of the smartest economic and political commentators out there. We’re pleased to have him on board.

“Atrios”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_12_14_atrios_archive.html#107140956918560290 has further thoughts on Hussein’s capture – as he says, the capture of Hussein doesn’t change the fact that this was a war of choice, and was a mistake. But he then says

bq. it isn’t clear he’s any worse of a guy than some of the folks who are a part of our “Coalition of the Willing.”

which I find quite unconvincing. Even as squalid dictators go, Hussein was quite spectacularly nasty. I don’t know how many other rulers in recent history have deployed poison gas against their civilian population. Hussein’s capture is cause for unalloyed good cheer.

Great news that “mass-murdering dictator Saddam Hussein has been captured in Tikrit”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3317429.stm . With any luck the Iraqi people will get to try him for his crimes against them over so many years. One thing he won’t be charged with, tried for, or convicted of is involvement with 9/11, despite some reports in today’s Sunday Telegraph from the if-you-believe-that-you’ll -believe-anything department. As “one”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr114.xml of the “two”:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr14.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/14/ixnewstop.html pieces says:

bq. For anyone attempting to find evidence to justify the war in Iraq, the discovery of a document that directly links Mohammed Atta, the al-Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks, with the Baghdad training camp of Abu Nidal, the infamous Palestinian terrorist, appears almost too good to be true.

Leaving out the “appears almost”, I’d agree with that. And it gets better …

bq. In the memo, Habbush reports that Atta “displayed extraordinary effort” and demonstrated his ability to lead the team that would be “responsible for attacking the targets that we have agreed to destroy”.

bq. The second part of the memo, which is headed “Niger Shipment”, contains a report about an unspecified shipment – believed to be uranium – that it says has been transported to Iraq via Libya and Syria.

In next week’s episode Instapundit excitedly links to an article alleging the discovery of a Post-it apparently connecting Jacques Chirac, Noam Chomsky and Stavro Blofeld to a Cuban bioweapons project….

[UPDATE: This should really have been two separate posts – I had started writing on the absurd Torygraph story when the news of Saddam’s capture came through and ended up adding to the beginning. But the effect on some readers of my combining the two things may be to suggest that I’m somewhat grudging in my reaction to the tyrant’s arrest. I’m not — it really is great news.]

Good to see “Ophelia Benson”:http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/ “writing in the Guardian”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/editor/story/0,12900,1106159,00.html on the topic of academic bad writing. Her piece contains the following quote from a volume edited by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin: as open an admission of deliberate obscurity as you’ll find anywhere:

bq. Any discourse that was out to uncover and question that system had to find a language, a style, that broke from the constraints of common sense and ordinary language. Theory set out to produce texts that could not be processed successfully by the commonsensical assumptions that ordinary language puts into play. There are texts of theory that resist meaning so powerfully – say those of Lacan or Kristeva – that the very process of failing to comprehend the text is part of what it has to offer.

(noticed via “normblog”:http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/ )

UPDATE: John Holbo has “yet more on bad writing”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/12/are_you_now_or_.html to supplement his earlier efforts and reply to critics.

Out to see the Welsh National Opera’s magnificent performance of Parsifal last night in Bristol. It was brilliantly conducted by Anthony Negus who brought out the shimmering beauty of the music. There were — as there always are — problems with the production, which both accentuated the specifically Christian aspects of the libretto and included absurdities such as Kundry towering over Parsifal in an enormous red dress (about 10 feet high!) in Act 2. But that shouldn’t diminish what was a very powerful experience both musically and dramatically — I’d single out, despite the red dress — the sexual tension of Act 2 as especially well done. As for individual performances: Sara Fulgoni as Kundry and Alfred Reiter as Gurnemanz both shone. (Spotted in the audience: Bryan Magee.)

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Question: Is there a way to automatically close comments threads in Movable Type after a fixed period of time? I know this can be done when your MT installation runs an SQL backend, but ours doesn’t. I suppose we should have used SQL from the get-go, but what can I say?

One of the drawbacks of “Development as Freedom”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385720270/junius-20 is that it really is very repetitive and very similar points supported by the same examples and quotations recur less than 100 pages apart. In several places, though, he makes a good and important about markets and the freedom to transact:

bq. In recent discussions, the focus in assessing the market mechanism has tended to be on _results_ it ultimately generates, such as the incomes or utilities yielded by markets. This is not a negligible issue ….. But the more immediate case for the freedom of market transaction lies in the basic importance of that freedom itself. We have good reasons to buy and sell, to exchange, and to seek lives that can flourish on the basis of transactions. To deny that freedom in general would be in itself a major failing of society. This fundamental recognition is _prior_ to any theorem we may or may not be able to prove … in showing what the culmination outcomes of markets are in terms of incomes, utilities and so on. (p. 112)

Dean wraps up the youth vote.

William Dalrymple has “a review of a collection of Patrick Leigh Fermor’s writing”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/travel/0,6121,1105876,00.html — “Words of Mercury”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0719561051/junius-21 — in the Guardian. This contains, for the first time, Leigh Fermor’s own account of the SOE’s abduction of the German commander on Crete, General Kriepe, and, within it, one of the best wartime anecdotes:

bq. … the climax comes not as the general’s staff car is stopped at night by a British SOE party dressed in stolen German uniforms, nor as the Cretan partisans help smuggle the general into the Cretan highlands and thence to a waiting British submarine; but instead as “a brilliant dawn was breaking over the crest of Mount Ida” : “We were all three lying smoking in silence, when the General, half to himself, slowly said: ‘Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Socrate’. It was the opening lines of one of the few Horace odes I knew by heart. I went on reciting where he had broken off … The General’s blue eyes swivelled away from the mountain-top to mine – and when I’d finished, after a long silence, he said: ‘Ach so, Herr Major!’ It was very strange. ‘Ja, Herr General.’ As though for a moment, the war had ceased to exist. We had both drunk at the same fountains long before; and things were different between us for the rest of our time together.”

If there were a list of Crooked Timber suggested Christmas presents, Leigh Fermor’s “A Time of Gifts”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140049479/junius-21 , his account of his wanderings on foot across pre-war Europe (or at least the first volume of that unfinished trilogy) would be one of my recommendations.

Via Alan Schussman (it’s great when your RAs have blogs) comes an interesting review by Steven Shapin of Camembert: A National Myth by Pierre Boisard. The book shows how there’s rather more — and rather less — to the famous cheese than meets the eye and nose. Unlikely though it may seem, Camembert’s development mirrors the evolution of the French state.

A friend of mine once raised a skeptical eyebrow, and smirked a bit, when I told him about that there was a fascinating subfield on the sociology of food. But one only has to think of the place of food in all parts of life, from daily meals to key events like weddings and wakes, to see how rich a topic it is. My only contribution so far to the field is a 45 second talk occasionally delivered to Americans explaining that Irish people do not, in fact, eat corned beef and cabbage.

It’s pretty vague and unformed so far, but here’s the Big Idea I came away with from the World Summit on the Information Society.

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