taratemima | A political blog I like

Demosthenes' provacative theses, after this lj-cut

It's important to remember not to blow things up into something that they aren't; not to indulge in paranoid fantasies that turn the mundane into the exotic, and the merely distasteful and disturbing into the horrific and profane. This is true whether one is really in a fight or not...after all, what good is a soldier who expends all his ammo shooting at shadows, animals, and decoys? The belief that one is surrounded by enemies is a good way to ensure that the real enemy will likely look on in stunned amusement and then calmly dispatch you.
Sully makes a legitimate point, one that I've been pointing out for a while- that if Arafat is elected in a free and fair election as part of an similarly free and fair electoral system(which is possible), he becomes a very different animal than what we're dealing with right now. He becomes a leader with both the foreign (read: American) perception of legitimacy and responsibility, and both are double-edged swords that can as easily cut the beneficiary as the voters who convey it.
ok, actually, I do have to agree with one thing that Safire does: he makes a distinction between the "small minority of terrorists" and the Palestinian people as a whole. While the latter group may currently support the former, they have extremely divergent interests, and I doubt the Palestinians are going to retain much patience for the Hamas veto if and when peace talks start happening again sometime soon. After all, it's exploiting those differences of interests that is at the heart of the "pound 'em until they submit" style of diplomatic negotiation; sooner or later there will be enough Palestinians in danger who aren't willing to blow themselves up that they will throw up their hands and cry "hold, enough".
(On the current meme of that political chart, where he dissects flaws) The chart I've seen used by real political scientists is a little more accurate than this, but is also based on two axes. One is egalitarianism vs. elitism/meritocracy; the idea that everybody is equal measured against the idea that some are superior to others (whether due to ability, birthright, class, or whatever). The other is based on how one views society: whether one believes that it is a collection of atomistic individuals, or whether it is a more organic body, with each human serving as a part of the greater whole. It does not involve any value judgements (unlike the extremely biased-sounding "authoritarian" label)

Placement of different political movements on this chart leads to some interesting findings: among other things, it shows that there is a corellation between old-style toryism and socialism, because both are based on an organic conception of society; the only difference is that toryism is more elitist, whereas socialism is more egalitarianism. Liberalism also ranges back and forth- classical liberals (or current libertarians) lean towards the individual-elitist corner of the map, whereas modern liberals lean towards the individual-egalitarian corner of the map. (Anarchists would place at the extreme of individual-egalitarianism). It is also useful in clearly defining the difference between a liberal and a socialist; it's not in whether they believe in egalitarianism or not, but how they see society.

(Liberal readers should remember that the next time some idiot bleats about egalitarianism being "inherently socialist".)
I find it telling, by the way, that he seem to be advocating the thermonuclear version of suicide bombing. I had thought he believed that repression would do the trick.. that the terrorists would give up if enough pressure was brought to bear. If repression would work in Palestine, then so be it- as I said earlier, I'm interested in solutions, not idiotic finger pointing, and if that's the only workable solution then I'll entertain it as much as any other. I'm not a pacifist, nor an unthinking Palestinian partisan... I just did not and do not believe that it's anything close to a long term solution, although it may be useful and sensible at the present time.

But I'm sorry, Privateer, destroying a fair chunk of the planet and irradiating half of the rest is no solution. "Thought Experiment" or no. The Jews wouldn't be gone, and you would have doomed your compatriots. A halved and living population is not a nonexistent one... but you seem to want to doom your people to an "honorable death", killing millions, possibly billions of innocents. In that scenario, it's not as if "the terrorists won"... nobody wins. Hell, nobody survives. Perhaps my "death before dishonor" point was also more prescient than I had thought at first, and I'll stand by what I said earlier... a thousand dishonours is preferable to one death.
I think part of this problem, however, comes from, oddly enough, a conversational habit on the part of westerners. There is a difference between the ideas of "I understand" and "I agree". They are similar in some respects, and agreement can often stem from understanding, but they are fundamentally different. Some cultures understand this intrinsically: Japanese business negotiators, for example, are notorious for saying "yes, yes, yes" when they're merely indicating they understand, to the enternal exasperation of American businessmen who think they agree. North American culture, however, seems to emphasize the connection between the two. It subconsciously embraces the idea that "if only you understand me, you'd agree with me", rebelling against the thought that someone could completely understand you and yet (sometimes violently) disagree with you. Understanding and agreement are, of course, not the same thing, but we tend to forget that.

So, where does this enter the current debate? Well, there is a tendency on the part of those on the right side of the Islamic debates to believe that those who argue for "greater understanding" are trying to find ways to justify whichever acts they have the grievance against... that the left is trying to find "moral equivalency". It is true that some people who are try to understand the "other side" end up sympathizing with them, as they discover elements in the other party's lives, beliefs, and experiences that resonate with their own, identify too strongly with them, and forget that there are other people involved as well who might have as much or more in common with them. That does not mean that such things should be generalized to the entire left, however, or especially to anybody who seeks to understand those they are opposed to. Understanding why someone is doing something does not logically translate into agreeing with the moral justification for their actions: even if one can discover how the party itself justifies its actions, that doesn't necessarily mean that those attempting understanding agree with the choice of reasons that they've decided to use, the reasoning that they employ, or the conclusions that they've made. One can empathize with one's enemy; indeed, if Sun Tsu was correct, that is necessary for victory.

(That was, appropriately enough, Ender Wiggin's key skill in Ender's Game. Ender could understand his enemies better than they understands themselves. Only then, after he had come to know (and even love) them... only then did he destroy them, crushing them so badly that they could never hurt him again).
In quite another venue, C-SPAN aired Graham Fuller's talk at this week's USNA Foreign Affairs Conference. Fuller is a CIA/RAND greybeard, expert on Middle East, Central Asia, and the Muslim world. You don't want to hear what Fuller has to say.

He'll tell you the world you live in is more complicated than the one you prefer ... "obvious" direct solutions blow up in your face ... not everyone who digs you is your friend, not everyone who dumps on you is your enemy ... you can't do just one thing. The kind of things you always knew were true ... just things you never want to hear. Resist, and he'll bury you in supporting detail.

One especially provocative thesis: By default, Islamic fundamentalists are the vanguard of democracy in their respective settings. Kingdoms, military regimes, one-party democracies can stamp out political movements ... but they can't go in and crush the mosques. All the natural "juice" that flows into asking "why aren't things different from the way things are?" ends up pooling and souring in fundamentalist cellars.