Henry

There’s good reason to be wary of applying historical analogies to current events – comparing the Iraq war and Vietnam is usually as loaded and unhelpful as, say, comparing the Iraq war and World War II. However, there’s one way in which the US debate about Iraq is starting to look like the debate about Vietnam. It’s becoming ever less focused on Iraq as an actual place (to the extent that it ever was) and ever more concerned with Iraq as a battlefield in a vague and ill-defined war against the forces of evil, in which any setback gives succour to the enemy.

Even after the conduct of the Vietnam war became indefensible, many argued against pulling out because they said that a US defeat would embolden the forces of international Communism. Similarly, there’s a lot of talk today among the war blogs about Spanish “appeasement” and how a Spanish withdrawal from Iraq will strengthen and encourage al Qaeda. As John has already “said”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001514.html, this interpretation does some violence to the actual motives of Spanish voters. Nor are the Socialists wimps on terrorism – the main reason that they lost power in 1996 was because of their vicious and illegal tactics in the ‘dirty war’ against ETA (torture, kidnapping, murder etc). If this is a victory for al Qaeda, it’s not a victory because the Spanish are seeking to appease terrorism. It’s a victory because it will be perceived by the current US administration and its supporters as being a defeat.

Update: see also “Jim Henley”:http://www.highclearing.com/archivesuo/week_2004_03_14.html#005161.

Update 2: Also “Jacob Levy”:http://volokh.com/2004_03_14_volokh_archive.html#107937019778104920, a supporter of the Iraq war, who’s written the most sensible and judicious post on Spain and ‘appeasement’ that I’ve read so far.

It’s now almost certain that I was wrong when I suggested a couple of days ago that Al Qaeda was unlikely to be responsible for the horrible bombings in Madrid. This is worrying, not only because of what it means directly, but also because it may spur a very unpleasant cross-European backlash against immigrants. Even if US perceptions of rampant anti-Semitism in Europe are overblown, support for the far right is growing in many European countries on the back of anti-immigrant – and often, specifically anti-Muslim – sentiments. It’s not only the far right either; ‘mainstream’ European conservatives too are muttering dire imprecations about the enemy within. Witness, for example, Niall Ferguson “channeling Oswald Spengler”:http://www.aei.org/news/newsID.20045,filter.foreign/news_detail.asp two weeks ago, in his sub-Huntingtonian ruminations about European cultural decadence and the minarets being raised amid the dreaming spires of Oxford.

Europe’s relationship with its non-European immigrants is an open sore, and it has been for decades. My worry is that the bombings are going to give succor to the far right, and make anti-immigrant arguments more respectable in mainstream political debate. We’re also likely to see more policy measures that purport to combat terrorism, but are really aimed at making life tougher for illegal immigrants. Europe already has a bad record on many civil liberties; I fear that it’s going to get substantially worse over the next couple of years. Even if the left wins today in Spain, as seems likely, there may be a pronounced general shift towards the nastier aspects of right-populism over the longer term.

As more news filters through, it looks as though the Madrid train-bombings are going to be one of the worst terrorist atrocities in modern European history, if not the worst. More than twice as many people have been killed as in the Bologna train station bomb; there are nearly an order of magnitude more casualties than there were in the Birmingham pub bombing. If ETA is responsible (as it almost certainly is, “Glenn Reynolds'”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/014568.php speculations to the contrary), it’s a move born out of desperation. Paddy Woodworth, who knows as much about the Basque country as any English speaker, suggests that ETA have been in trouble for a while. Their political wing’s support among voters was cut in half when ETA went back to terrorism, and many of their established leaders are in jail, so that the current active leadership is young, radical and politically inexperienced. It’s hard to imagine how they could have more effectively discredited a cause that was hardly very creditable to begin with.

Update: This may turn out not to have been an ETA attack after all, in which case my arguments above would be quite beside the point – there’s some evidence pointing to Islamic terrorists. I should also note that Glenn Reynolds, in fairness to him, is now sounding considerably more equivocal about the likely perpetrators.

“Bill Tozier”:http://williamtozier.com/slurry/comment/academia/adviceToYoungScientists.html and “Cosma Shalizi”:http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/archives/000208.html on the tough-love approach to academic peer review. Cosma opts for the frank and brutal – “This MS. is completely lacking in scientific interest and should be rejected.” I’ve never had the heart to do this myself, but I don’t know that my slightly more hesitant approach to stinkers (usually something along the lines of “this manuscript may have had some merit, but I couldn’t see it”) is any more pleasant or helpful for the author.

Also via Cosma, this admirable “Michael Chabon piece”:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17000 on Philip Pullman’s _His Dark Materials_ series in the _New York Review of Books._ Chabon captures precisely the strengths of the first two volumes, and the weaknesses of the third. Nor does he worry about catching genre-cooties – he unapologetically situates the books in a wider fantasy/sf tradition dating back to Vance, Moorcock and others.

“Ellen Fremedon”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/ellen_fremedon/204107.html on ‘grading with Gollum’ (via “Chad Orzel”:http://steelypips.org/principles/index.php).

And “sometime blogger”:http://www.mclemee.com/id4.html Scott McLemee “savages”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/books/review/07MCLEMET.html?ex=1393995600&en=50b3a9cdab447859&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND William Vollmann’s multi-volume ‘treatise’ on violence in a review for the NYT. My favorite bit:

bq. Vollmann’s prose has a distinctive way of cycling between two styles. In one, the sentences snake through dense thickets of figural language, wrapping themselves around elephant-size metaphors, which (jaws unhinged) they try to swallow. In his other voice, the tone is flat, narrating the scene in a detached and almost affectless way, like some cross between Alain Robbe-Grillet and Joe Friday on ”Dragnet.”

although

bq. Appreciation of ”Rising Up and Rising Down” properly begins — and will, for most people, immediately end — with awe at its physical presence. Whatever the genre, it is a remarkable example of the book as furniture.

is rather well put too.

“Andrew Sullivan”:http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2004_02_29_dish_archive.html#107851564542206172:

bq. THANK GOD FOR KRAUTHAMMER: Charles Krauthammer has never written a dumb column, to my knowledge. Even on emotional subjects such as civil marriage, he brings to the debate a calm reasoning that wins the respect of his opponents as well as his supporters.

See “here”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A56315-2004Feb19&notFound=true, “here”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A37125-2003Dec4&notFound=true and “here”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A17610-2003Nov27&notFound=true for a few recent examples of the calm reasoning that Krauthammer’s opponents value so much. And then file this one along with the crackpottery of the bloke who was trying to convince us all a few months ago that Steven Den Beste was the Nabokov of the blogosphere.

It’s extraordinary how quickly the blogosphere has become a significant channel for political donations; Atrios has raised “$25,000 in five days”:http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_03_07_atrios_archive.html#107879845206303065 for the Kerry campaign. I’ve no doubt that this will be a big issue of debate at the blogging panel that Dan Drezner and I are organizing for the APSA meeting this September. My spur-of-the-moment impression – to the extent that this favours one side, it’s going to favour the Democrats. Regardless of whether the blogosphere tilts left or tilts right (your guess is as good as mine), the most-read blogs on the liberal-left side of the spectrum are much more closely aligned with the Democratic party apparatus than the blogs on the right are with the Republican machine. They also have the precedent of MoveOn, and of the Dean movement to build on. Rightbloggers, even the ones who support the administration, tend to self-identify as libertarians rather than Republicans, and maintain a little distance from the formal aspects of the Republican party. I could be wrong, but I don’t see Glenn Reynolds hosting appeals for donations to the Republican National Committee, let alone Eugene Volokh. Andrew Sullivan might have up to a month or so ago, but not today.

How big a deal this is remains to be seen; my guess is that its consequences will be significant, but not enormous. Where it will have an impact is in terms of the agenda-setting power of the few bloggers who can and will raise large amounts of cash for the cause. If Atrios can keep on getting people to donate that kind of money, the powers that be in the Democratic party are going to start taking him quite seriously indeed. Especially if the FEC starts cracking down on soft-money contributions to 527s. Developing, as they say.

Building from Belle’s “post”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/03/if_wishes_were_.html on end-state anarcho-libertarianism, a question for the floor. Everyone’s favorite libertarian SF author, Vernor Vinge, makes the case for private ownership of nuclear weapons as an important bulwark of liberty in his short story, “The Ungoverned” (it can be found in his recent “Collected Stories”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312875843/henryfarrell-20). If you’re a serious anarcho-libertarian, do you agree that individuals should be able to have their very own nukes? If you disagree, on what grounds do you justify your disagreement? Discuss.

“Ireland 19, England 13”:http://www.rte.ie/sport/2004/0306/ireland.html

Another, quite spectacular example of “revealed”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001446.html “preference”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001447.html theory in action. This time, it’s “David Brooks”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/opinion/06BROO.html?hp, who uses Bush and Kerry’s privileged backgrounds to prove that Americans prefer to be ruled by blue-bloods.

bq. we don’t actually want to be governed by people like ourselves. We want the bloodlines.

It all goes back to primate social structures, you see.

This is almost so asinine an argument as not to be worth the refutation. Brooks doesn’t admit the possibility that ‘blue bloods’ might have structural advantages that go beyond commoners’ genetically hardwired instinct to yank forelocks in the presence of their superiors – money, connections anyone? Nor does he bother trying to explain how his thesis can be reconciled with viable Democratic candidates (Edwards) from humble backgrounds, or, indeed, Presidents like Clinton. Like Dan Drezner, I was quite pleased when the NYT gave Brooks a slot; some of his longer stuff is well argued and interesting. However, his op-eds have been a huge disappointment; sugary candy-fluff for the most part, but with a hard, bitter little center. The Times could and should do better.

The Economist has an “article”:http://www.economist.com/World/europe/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2478574 this week on John Kerry’s popularity with Europeans. The argument is twofold – Europeans are rooting for Kerry to win, but they’re likely to end up disappointed if he does.

bq. whoever is in the White House, tensions between European and American approaches to the world seem sure to persist. The heyday of Atlanticism came to a close with the end of the cold war. … Indeed, in some areas, such as trade, the quarrels between the sides could get worse … Mr Kerry might explain American views more tactfully than Mr Bush. He might even do it in French. But transatlantic tensions would endure.

As a piece of international relations analysis, it’s an odd mixture of the obvious and the wrongheaded. Of course, transatlantic disputes aren’t going to go away if Kerry becomes President. But they’re likely to be transformed – much of the sting will go out of them.

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“Juan non-Volokh”:http://volokh.com/2004_02_29_volokh_archive.html#107834026231790507 and “David Bernstein”:http://volokh.com/2004_02_29_volokh_archive.html#107820064555793050 suggest that the recent brouhaha over the Bush administration politicization of science is only to be expected; whenever the government funds scientific research, it’s liable to get politicized. Their proposed alternative – a “separation of science and state.” This proposal rests on an implicit claim that is, to put it kindly, contestable: that scientific research on politically topical issues is liable to be less politicized when it’s funded by the private sector. Judging by the sober and disinterested contributions to the public scientific debate coming from junkscience.com, Tech Central Station, and, in an earlier era, the good old “Council on Tobacco Research”:http://www.prwatch.org/improp/ctr.html, I reckon that Bernstein and non-Volokh have their argument cut out for them.

And while we’re on the subject … Erin O’Connor’s blog performs a useful service; a bit one-sided to be sure, but then we all have our particular bugbears to belabour. Still, could she _please_ cease and desist from calling her ham-handed academic “comedy-by-installment”:http://www.erinoconnor.org/archives/000876.html (apparently contributed by an anonymous reader), “Pictures from an Institution”? Poor old Randall Jarrell‘s corpse must be up to 1,500 rpms by now. Jarrell certainly had his conservative side, and a caustic turn of phrase when skewering academic pomposity, but he wrote like an angel. He could never, _never_ commit a sentence like:

bq. Erwin R. Sackville had made a career out of staying ahead of the field’s steep curve of philosophical abandonment.

to pick just one of many. It’s flabby, saggy, and doesn’t really mean anything. The reference to Jarrell’s novel doesn’t do O’Connor’s ersatz academic satire any favours; she’d be much better off abandoning it. Read the original instead; it’s a delight (an academic comedy of manners that is one of the saddest books I know).

“Tim Dunlop”:http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/surfdomarchives/002045.php tells us about another signal contribution to the “David Bernstein school”:http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/002568.html of revealed preference theory.

bq. It’s hard to take Keith Windschuttle seriously when he says things like this, apparently without irony:

bq. “In other words, since the ’60s the great majority of Aboriginal people have voted with their feet in favour of integration with white Australia.”

bq. Same way I used to vote with my fork and eat my Brussels sprouts when told I couldn’t eat anything else for the night if I didn’t.

(minor corrections and reformatting of original)

I see that Tom DeLay is “trying to push forward”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20867-2004Mar1.html one of the Republican talking-points that has been doing the rounds the last couple of weeks.

bq. DeLay used his weekly news briefing to denounce Kerry’s Vietnam War record, citing what he described as the senator’s “accusing his brothers-in-arms in Vietnam of wholesale rape and murder, and his bizarre refusal to answer questions about his disturbing record.” Kerry, a decorated war veteran, testified before Congress in 1971 about reports of atrocities committed by U.S. troops.

Leaving aside DeLay’s dubious reporting of what Kerry said, there’s an interesting question here – what is the precise slur that he’s trying to cast? Is he claiming that there weren’t instances of wholesale rape and murder by US troops in Vietnam? If so, he’s lying. Is he saying that that US soldiers shouldn’t testify about true instances of rape and murder to Congress, because they’d be betraying their ‘brothers’? Rather hard to defend that one if you think about it. Indeed, the question could be turned back on DeLay. Either he’s making the mendacious claim that US troops didn’t commit atrocities in Vietnam, or he’s arguing that rape and murder should be hushed up when they’re committed by men wearing US army fatigues. I don’t know which is the more disgusting position. I’m not precisely enthusiastic about Kerry’s candidacy (or about the US Democratic party more generally), but given the behavior and positions of the other crowd, I don’t think there’s much of a choice.