Lee Harris defines the enemy as follows:
The Enemy is someone who is willing to die in order to kill you. And while it is true that the Enemy always hates us for a reason -- it is his reason, and not ours.
Why should human beings need novel incentives to, as I put it, "get up in the morning and get on with life"?
[....]
In reality, new challenges — and new temptations to abandon the struggle — must have arisen with each advance in biological complexity. The fact that we and other living species are here today is testament to the fact that we have each evolved to find, on our own terms, reasons to carry on. And I think it's obvious that our terms, human terms, are quite unlike any other.
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Suffice it to say that I believe that about 50,000 years ago, the human species faced a crisis: human beings were in danger of becoming victims of their own mental evolution. Under pressure from ideas they were beginning to lose heart.Human minds had been extending progressively — and safely — into areas never yet visited by our ape ancestors. But everything changed once intelligence and culture crossed a certain threshold. The critical event was the development of a mind that, on the one hand, demanded meaning and, on the other, was capable of the dreadful realisation that human existence ultimately has none — that life ends as nothing. From that point on, no one was safe from the destructive self-questioning: why bother? what's the point?
What saved us? I can do no more than tease you with my answer here. To balance the reasons for embracing death, human beings had to discover a good new reason to value life. And they found it, I believe, right in front of their nose: through reflection on the nature of selfhood.. In short, we were saved by phenomenal consciousness — or, at any rate, by a new-found relation to it.
Kevin Kelly clarifies:
The self is a survival mechanism for high intelligence. A rapidly expanding intelligence growing in power and dimension would be awfully confusing to a growing mind, particularly if it offered multiple views, and well... out of the body experiences. An emerging sense of self would be calming, focusing and attractive, a place to rest from wild ideas (like death and pain), allowing a more stable and effective human to survive.An increasing intelligence would also reach a point where it became aware of its own intelligence — and that's a highly dangerous spot because an intelligence that was naked and transparent would be susceptible to intellectual manipulation. The first thing that a mind smart enough to see itself would do is start to hack itself.
What was true of individual humans is also probably true of larger human aggregates. European civilization probably reached the critical point in the late 18th century with the advent of the French Revolution and the creation of nation states. The French Revolution reflected French society attempting to hack itself (hack off its heads?). The nation-state was the response. It gave geographic areas and cultures "a self worth having."
The problem with the transnational progressives at the societal level and the transhumanists at the individual level is that they fail to pay attention to the requirements on intelligent organizations that they believe in themselves. Giving national power to EU or UN bureaucrats perhpas increases our ability to hack society or humans the power to hack themselves may sounds attractive, but absent the countervailing requirements of self-love, it is a recipe for disaster.
My friend Stephan, a very anti-Bush Democrat makes the following insightful point in an email:
Alex said:
> If Kerry takes over now, then each party will be able to blame the other one and no one will trulybe accountable.Exactly my point :)
In any case, in my opinion, facts & policies have become nearly irrelevant -I actually don't think this election has much to do with Kerry.
It's all about Bush. People who don't like Bush, hate him. It's no longer a policies thing, it's an identity thing. People who don't like Bush view him (as I do) as a ruthless, born again religious nut, deeply anti-intellectual,surrounded by ideologically-driven cronies, and deeply sympathetic to business interests at the expense of the working man's interests, women's issues and the environment.
At this point, it almost doesn't matter what he says or does, or what Kerry says or does, because it's extremely unlikely that I will change my mind about Bush.
I think it's a little bit similar to the religious people's reaction to Clinton - deeply visceral hatred, blaming him for representing a morally relativistic, 60's world-view. And having him "steal" a number of items from the moderate right agenda enraged them even further, and it became an identity thing.
I think Nicholas is among my readers who believes that better diplomacy would have corralled the French into supporting the war in Iraq. To me this seems really dubious. French policy has been to balance the Anglo-sphere for at least a generation. Via a comment at "The American Thinker, Here is the origin document.
The current issue of the Hoover Institution's Policy Review has the first English translation of a remarkable document ("Outline of a Doctrine of French Policy") written in 1945 by French philosopher Alexander Kojeve, and given to Charles de Gaulle. This appears to have become a guiding light to French diplomats and politicians over the last 60 years.The thesis begins with an understanding that the post WW II world will be split into a US-dominated bloc and a Russian-dominated bloc. Kojeve called on France to develop a third bloc -- which he called the Latin bloc. This bloc would be composed of groups of nations bordering the Mediterranean and which share a certain cultural sensibility. He advocated for an economic alliance which presciently resembles the European Union. Tellingly, he also called for an accommodation and partnership with Islamic nations, and stated that this unity can be based on a mutual opposition to other trends (the enemy of my enemy is my friend).
In the glorious future he foretold, France would reign over this transnational alliance of nations as primus inter pares. Only this transformation would ensure continued French power in opposition to the Anglo alliance lead by America.
A worthwhile read-even if studded with occasional flights of philosophical fancy.
In the comments of a prior post, liberal safety-net man, claims that we have done no damage to Al Queada through our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq because "Al Queada in NOT a place". In a dinner conversation I had a while back, another interlocutor claimed that blogs were great because they could not be censored by the government. At the same time, government does a sem-effective job as stopping money laundering and substantially restricts consumption of illegal drugs (but obviously very incompletely).
So, the question on the table is, in an imperfect world, how useful/effective is going after the physical manifestations of threatening organizations. In the case of blogs, the government can always shut down DNS or DDoS the server. In the case of money laundering the government has effecitvely gone after the Islamic "charities" that were a big part of Al Queada fundraising. In the case of terrorism, captured Al Queada leaders have specifically claimed that US operations in Afghanistan have disrupted plans. The invasion of Iraq prevented Saddam from executing the terrorists attacks on the US that Russia's intelligence service said he had planned (and which may or may not have involved chem/bio pathogens). It also cowed Libya into abanding its nuclear program and revealed the Khan nuclear proliferation network organized out of Afghanistan. Speaking of Afghanistan, the steady progress of closing in on Al Queada in southern Afghanistan/northern Pakistan has forced the leadership into the cities of Pakistan resulting in the capture of Noor Khan (Al Queada's CTO) and the disruption of terrorist plans in progress to attack downtown New York City. Much of the remaining Al Queada leadership is hiding out in Tehran and in military bases on the Caspian Sea. We may or may not actually do something to Iran, but there is no question that if we did, Al Queada woudl be even more disrupted.
And, by the way, the Isrealis don't think attacking the physical leadership of an organization is ineffective. Their targetted killing of the leadership of Hamas has dramatically reduced terrorism in their country. Perhaps an organization is not a place, but it does have headquarters and locations and they matter!
Via WinterSpeak and apropos my last post I just found David Warsh's review of Robert Frank's What Price the Moral High Ground? Ethical Dilemmas in Competitive Environments He notes:
The title essay argues that moral satisfaction often can explain salary differentials better than the differences in education and training traditionally employed by economists. Many people settle for lower-paying government or non-profit sector jobs, Frank argues, because they see them as being socially responsible and are compensated by increased self-esteem: school teachers, police officers, nurses, community organizers and the like. Women in particular often earn less for jobs they consider morally responsible.
There are jobs for janitors, cafeteria workers, security guards and the like, that pay poorly and offer little chance of advancement. There are more of these jobs than there used to be, but the greater growth has been among higher-paying jobs -- managers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and technicians.
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About the lowest-paying jobs, Murnane and Levy have relatively little to say. It has long been noted that technological change creates losers as well as winners, and mechanisms whereby winners can make life easier for losers without seriously diminishing their own gains. Often these take the form of tax-financed retirement and health insurance systems. Combined with a little day-to-day respect, such measures can go a long way in conferring dignity on menial work.Why should anyone worry about basic fairness? Because "Our market economy exists in a framework of institutions that requires the consent of the governed," they write. "People doing well today have a strong interest in preserving this consent. If enough people come to see the US job market as stacked against them, the nation's institutions will be at great risk."
Whether or not to negotiate with an entity does not rest on whether it is a "death cult" or a "(virtual) state". It depends on whether there is a geniune zone of agreement where both sides can agree, and whether negotiation is preferable or not to not-negotiating. Personally, I cannot see any possible zone of agreement between jihadis and the rest of the world, which means there can be no value to negotiation. If jihadis want a state, they can contest for one in countries that allow elections, or they can fight for one in states that do not allow elections. And they are fair game for those who protect states -- armies and police.
via Bruce Eckel via a slashdot thread on programming:
In 1960, a researcher interviewed 1500 business-school students and classified them in two categories: those who were in it for the money – 1245 of them – and those who were going to use the degree to do something they cared deeply about – the other 255 people. Twenty years later, the researcher checked on the graduates and found that 101 of them were millionaires – and all but one of those millionaires came from the 255 people who had pursued what they loved to do!Now, you may think that your passion for Icelandic poetry of the baroque period, or butterfly collecting, or golf – or social justice – might consign you to a permanent separation between what you love and what you do for a living, but it isn't necessarily so. Vladimir Nabokov, one of the greatest novelists of this centurey, was far more passionate about butterfly collecting than writing. His first college teaching job, in fact, was in lepidoptery. REsearch on more than 400,000 Americans over the past 40 years indicates that pursuing your passions – even in small doses, here and there each day – helps you make the most of your current capabilities and encourages you to develop new ones.
Arguably this just shows that passionate loving people are more likely to get things done in general. However it neglects the cost money-making people pay for not doing what they love. If you do a job you hate, how much does that cost you in terms of things you love. If you quit and did what you love, you might be wealthier (and you would not pay taxes on that income!).
Nicholas and Robert in the comments on previous posts complain that Bush was did not get international support for the war with Iraq and that Kerry would be more multilateral. In response to these sorts of claims, Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post notes:
As former Clinton administration official and current Kerry foreign policy adviser Richard Holbrooke put it to the Post, the Bush administration advocated "extremist ideas" that had "never had a voice in the policymaking bodies of the executive branch." One such idea, the Post paraphrased, was "acting unilaterally." But what does "acting unilaterally" mean? It does not mean "going it alone." After all, there are several dozen other countries actively involved in US operations in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan.Neither does "acting unilaterally" mean that in Iraq the US is acting outside of a clear UN Security Council mandate. Ahead of the US-led operations in Kosovo in 1999, in which Holbrooke played a key role, Russia used the threat of its Security Council veto to prevent the US from taking action under a UN umbrella. Yet no one has ever accused the US of acting unilaterally in Kosovo.
What "acting unilaterally" actually means to Holbrooke and Kerry is that the multilateral coalition Bush assembled in Iraq does not include France. It was France that prevented a UN Security Council resolution backing the US-led invasion, and it was France that led the EU and NATO to reject US requests to forge coalitions under whose aegis the US would lead the war against Saddam's regime.
(Via Powerline) David Bedein reports that Kerry's appointed Arafat shill Martin Indyk has his new Middle East Advisor.
The very mention of Indyk, who served two stints as ambassador to Israel, sends shudders down the spine of senior members of the Israel defense and foreign policy establishment. For the past year, Indyk, in his new capacity as the head of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, has conducted a campaign to dispatch U.S. troops to intervene in the Middle East conflict. Indyk has gone so far as to say that the U.S. should sent troops or create a protectorate over the West Bank and Gaza. Such a step would place the U.S. in a virtual state of war with the Israeli army, which has always viewed some of the West Bank and Gaza as vital to the security concerns of the state of Israel.
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And in late November 2000, when Israel issued a “white paper” on intercepted intelligence from Arafat’s headquarters that showed documentary evidence that Arafat and his mainstream PLO gangs were indeed facilitating the campaign of terror, Indyk made a special trip to Jerusalem to demand that the Israeli government withdraw its report. Indyk had just reported to the U.S. Congress that the Palestinian groups organizing the terror campaign were NOT under Arafat’s control.
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Eight months later, on May 21, 2001, in an address to Ben Gurion University, Indyk stuck to his guns and continued to position Arafat and company as U.S. colleagues in the War on Terror by telling Israel: “What you do is you get Arafat to act against the perpetrators of the violence, Hamas, Tanzim gangs, the Islamic Jihad and you get the Israeli government to hold back the Israeli army while he does so. But that requires a great deal of energy and commitment on Arafat's part -- in very risky circumstances to take on the very angry Palestinian street -- and that requires a great deal of restraint and forbearance on the part of the government of Israel.”
This is of a piece with Kerry's whole foreign policy, isn't it? That is, wishful thinking as foreign policy. Kerry gave a speech today in which he blamed President Bush for the existence of Islamofascist terrorism. We've been provoking them, apparently. For a really, really, long time. Just like Israel: surely, if only Israel would stop defending itself, the Palestinians would see the light and behave reasonably. The world would be so much more manageable if our enemies, instead of being murderous, self-motivated fanatics, were merely reacting to our (our Israel's) foreign policy "mistakes." Were that the case, we could make the whole problem go away by tweaking our foreign policy a bit. Wishful thinking--it's always a temptation.
Powerline also links to a depressing article by Efraim Karsh outlining Arafat's grand strategy:
For Yasir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, the Oslo process has always been a strategic means not to a two-state solution—Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza—but to the substitution of a Palestinian state for the state of Israel.
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The Oslo accords enabled the PLO to achieve in one fell swoop what it had failed to attain through many years of violence and terrorism. Here was Israel, just over a decade after destroying the PLO's military infrastructure in Lebanon, asking the Palestinian organization, at one of the lowest ebbs in its history, to establish a real political and military presence—not in a neighboring Arab country but right on its doorstep. Israel even was prepared to arm thousands of (hopefully reformed) terrorists who would be incorporated into newly established police and security forces charged with asserting the PLO's authority throughout the territories.
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In September 2000, Arafat launched a war of terror against Israel with precisely the objectives he had set for the Palestinian movement in 1968. Some analysts now argue that the Palestinians have lost that war. But the very fact that Arafat could wage it and plunge Israel into one of its greatest traumas constitutes a triumph of his strategy. Certainly the Palestinians have suffered reversals and losses. But Arafat has achieved his goal: he brought the Palestinian war from Israel's borders into Israel proper by the politics of stealth. He has every reason to hope that the work he began will be continued by the next generation of Palestinian leaders. That work is nothing short of the dismantlement of Israel.
In his acceptance speech, Kerry made it clear that he prefers to keep the front of the war on terror at home and not attack the terrorists abroad:
And the front lines of this battle are not just far away - they're right here on our shores, at our airports, and potentially in any town or city. Today, our national security begins with homeland security.[...]
We will add 40,000 active duty troops - not in Iraq,[...] And we shouldn't be opening firehouses in Baghdad.[...]
That's the right way to get the job done and bring our troops home.
the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.[...]
Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. [...]
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Before you go to battle, you have to be able to look a parent in the eye and truthfully say: "I tried everything possible to avoid sending your son or daughter into harm's way. But we had no choice. We had to protect the American people, fundamental American values from a threat that was real and imminent."
It is heartening to know that Kerry might do something when we can see Iran fueling nuclear missiles on their launch pads and programming them to attack us. But even then, how do we really know that they will actually press the launch button? Perhaps its all just a drill and not a real attack. At very least, once we know for certain that it isn't a drill, we know that he would not give the UN (or France) a veto over us acting. However, I wonder why it is even a subject for discussion. Is he implying that he would give them a veto otherwise or that he would not do anything otherwise that would even cause the veto issue to come up?
In the real world, certainty is something we have only after the fact and imminence means waiting for the danger to gather to the point that another country thinks an attack might actually be succesful. I prefer a President that recognizes that we have to act long before a threat is imminent. Bush has conducted amazingly successful wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan and combined those achievements with amazingly succesful diplomacy to encircle Iran, a country that is hosting Al Queada leadership, training other terrorists, developing nuclear weapons, and threatening to attack both the US and Israel. Allowing the threat from Iran to develop and bringing our troops home is about as stupid a policy as one can think of!
In the comments on the prior version of this post, Nicholas argues that "We need a bipartisan, multilateral policy. That's what Kerry offers. We need more troops in uniform and on the ground in Iraq. That's what Kerry offers." Except Kerry specifically denied that we need more US troops in Iraq (see above quotation!) and failed to specify what other troops are capable of replacing ours. Lets be clear here, non-US-NATO members together have a grand total of 55,000 troops deployable for expeditions. These troops are, by and large, poorly equipped and poorly trained. (see here for more info). Given that we do have troops and contractors from many other nations already helping us in Iraq, absent some specific sense of what troops we are talking about, I'm going to take this multilateralist rhetoric as completely platitudinous.
As for bipartisanship, it would be nice if Kerry and the Democrats base gave some hint that they didn't view Bush as a greater evil than Osama or Saddam. The repeated lying about this administration in an attempt to win an election is unseemly. The fact that much of the mainstream of the Democratic party has actually joined the tinfoil hat crowd is downright scary. Appealing for bipartisanship on behalf of a Senator who voted for the war before and after he voted against it and who retained Joe Wilson and Richard Clarke as major forien policy advisors is just rich with irony.
I have multiple friends working at or near the targets specified in the most recent terror alerts. The notion that we would not to everything possble to prevent an attack strkes me as nutes. The notion that if they do attack, we would not respond actively and vigorously to hunt them, their families, their friends, and their sponsors down is even more nuts. But thats what Kerry seems to believe, and thats is why I will vote for Bush in November.
It is a commonplace that the major difference between Communism (Utopian/International Socialism) and Nazism (National Socialism) is that the former favor radical change to give power to new elites while the later favor radical change to "restore" power to old elites. The former favor the rhetoric of a mythic future while the later favor the rhetoric of a mythic past. Richard Wagner, the composer, spent his youth as a utopian socialist, but became disillusioned with it after the failure of the socialism revolutions of 1848, and shifted his art to the creation of a German mythic past that would form the foundation for Hitler's National Socialism 75 years later.
The rhetoric of isolationists like Pat Buchanan has a similar quality of hearkening back to a prior more rural era before Americans were contaminated by international trade, culture, and power. In his nomination speech Kerry chose to take the Democratic Party in the same direction: "As president," Kerry declared, "I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: The United States of America never goes to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. That is the standard of our nation."
Time-honored tradition!? Can anyone identify a time America honored anything like that tradition? As Donald Kagan notes:
The United States has sent forces into combat dozens of times over the past century and a half, and only twice, in World War II and in Afghanistan, has it arguably done so because it "had to." It certainly did not "have to" go to war against Spain in 1898 (or Mexico in 1846.) It did not "have to" send the Marines to Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Nicaragua in the first three decades of the 20th century, nor fight a lengthy war against insurgents in the Philippines. The necessity of Woodrow Wilson's intervention in World War I remains a hot topic for debate among historians.
Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, and John Kerry are much closer together on the issues of the day than any of them is to George Bush. I fear how these people will react to the next major terrorist attack, especially because as isolationsists, the only outlet for them to respond is to increase "homeland security." All I can think of is the Committee of Public Safety and the Jacobins whose rhetoric also matches that of Kerry.
Note: This post is just rumination. I am not claiming that a vote for Kerry is a vote for fascism. Just exploring intellectual linkages.