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Prostitution of the pen and the dark side of the free market
Four years ago, the government of the French Republic took the lead in refusing to support the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. The French, who had taken a very active and successful part in the first Iraq war, simply did not think that an invasion followed by the occupation of an Arab country was a good idea. That was their prerogative (see under "sovereign state").
(My position was that I loathed Saddam Hussein so much that anyone who wanted to drive him out was fine by me. I would even have supported an Iranian invasion. But I would not have started to insult people who disagreed.)
The idiot part of the American right suddenly made France the bout of all their hatred. Someone spotted a market opportunity, as Americans do (the French do that as well, but when the French do it, that's evil!) and prostituted a certain amount of historical knowledge in the search for a quick buck, producing some sort of tract which rewrote history with the claim that "France have always been our enemy, but they have concealed it under a pretence of friendship".
I would dismiss this intellectually contemptible and factually fraudulent thesis in as many words, and not even bother about it, were it not that one of the finest minds in my f-list seems to have been taken in by it. As it is, I want to ask how you imagine you can trace a consistent attitude of hatred, and what is more, of subtly disguised hatred, in a nation that has, since the foundation of the United States, experienced three royalist constitutions, five republican ones, two bonapartist ones, and one fascist tyranny, and completely boxed the compass in terms of attitudes, views, and alliances. This is the kind of things that rabid anti-Semites postulate about Jews - attitudes consistent across the centuries, constant vicious subtlety in carrying them out, hatred fertile in invention but completely barren of reason. The French ought to be proud: they have been promoted to the rank of Chosen People, next to that other target of unreasoning, blind, stupid, despicable hatred. In case anyone had any doubts, I regard Jew-bashing as a stain on the face of mankind.
No doubt the prostitute or prostitutes who set out on this bit of free enterprise got out of it what they wanted - money, admiting letters from ignorami and fanatics, and the odd spot on TV talk shows; rewards that serious historians get rather less often. But as we are still free people here, I want to use my own freedom of expression, rather less despicably than the prostitute or prostitutes concerned: first, by calling whoredom by its proper name; and second, by stating clearly that there shall be no pity here for such views. The historical slag or slags who sold their integrity for popular success will not be treated as anything but filth, and anyone who takes them seriously is warned that I will do what is in my power to restore them to sanity.
(My position was that I loathed Saddam Hussein so much that anyone who wanted to drive him out was fine by me. I would even have supported an Iranian invasion. But I would not have started to insult people who disagreed.)
The idiot part of the American right suddenly made France the bout of all their hatred. Someone spotted a market opportunity, as Americans do (the French do that as well, but when the French do it, that's evil!) and prostituted a certain amount of historical knowledge in the search for a quick buck, producing some sort of tract which rewrote history with the claim that "France have always been our enemy, but they have concealed it under a pretence of friendship".
I would dismiss this intellectually contemptible and factually fraudulent thesis in as many words, and not even bother about it, were it not that one of the finest minds in my f-list seems to have been taken in by it. As it is, I want to ask how you imagine you can trace a consistent attitude of hatred, and what is more, of subtly disguised hatred, in a nation that has, since the foundation of the United States, experienced three royalist constitutions, five republican ones, two bonapartist ones, and one fascist tyranny, and completely boxed the compass in terms of attitudes, views, and alliances. This is the kind of things that rabid anti-Semites postulate about Jews - attitudes consistent across the centuries, constant vicious subtlety in carrying them out, hatred fertile in invention but completely barren of reason. The French ought to be proud: they have been promoted to the rank of Chosen People, next to that other target of unreasoning, blind, stupid, despicable hatred. In case anyone had any doubts, I regard Jew-bashing as a stain on the face of mankind.
No doubt the prostitute or prostitutes who set out on this bit of free enterprise got out of it what they wanted - money, admiting letters from ignorami and fanatics, and the odd spot on TV talk shows; rewards that serious historians get rather less often. But as we are still free people here, I want to use my own freedom of expression, rather less despicably than the prostitute or prostitutes concerned: first, by calling whoredom by its proper name; and second, by stating clearly that there shall be no pity here for such views. The historical slag or slags who sold their integrity for popular success will not be treated as anything but filth, and anyone who takes them seriously is warned that I will do what is in my power to restore them to sanity.
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It certainly shows a strong degree of French hypocrisy, given the far less egregious acts for which the French have condemned America. I've also never appreciated the French stance of moral superiority over Indochina, and their continued trade with North Vietnam during America's Vietnam War, given just who messed the place up so badly that the Communists were able to convince a significant number of Vietnamese to follow them as an alternative. And the French behavior during the War on Terror has been despicable, with the sort of short-term cunning and long-term sacrifice of French interests that France has been famous for since they bit at that telegram in 1870. I say "long-term sacrifice of French interests," because it never seems to have entered their pretty little Existentialist heads what position they are putting France in should they succeed in pushing America back into an isolationist mode.
But they certainly aren't as bad as the Russians and Chinese. The countries the French are pushing around are half- to quarter-civilized African joke-nations which probaly need some recolonization anyway if they are to avoid slipping into total anarchy. And they haven't engaged in a wholesale massacre of their own people since World War II, and that was under duress from Germany (another country that really should shut up and get out of the way of our war).
Perhaps France annoys us more than Russia, China, or Germany because the French are not only so incredibly arrogant about their role in history, but (unlike the Chinese) make their claims based on concepts of what constitutes excellence similar to our own. We can laugh at the Chinese idea of being "the Middle Kingdom" -- France, however, challenges us on grounds we have to take seriously.
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Because "the Third World" became such a source of "authenticity" to the academic Left, there has not been much examination of the incredible folly, perpetuated not only by the Truman but also the Eisenhower Administrations (so it was bipartisan), of American support for decolonization in the two decades immediately following World War II.
This support originated not only in outright Communist moles such as White and Hiss, but also in a general American hostility to empire which still exists today (the reasone we didn't really fight a "war for oil," which might have worked better in terms of American interests). Our nation having originated in an anti-colonial secession movement, we tended to uncritically support the anti-colonialists in our first essays at Great Power postwar diplomacy, both under Wilson at Versailles and under Truman and Eisenhower through the United Nations.
This had disastrous consequences. The small states of Central Europe that Wilson helped create were but appetizers to Hitler and Mussolini; the Third World nations that emerged from the post World War II breakup of colonial empires were not only small, and hence similar treats served up for the delectation of Stalin and his successors, but also barbaric, and hence barely able (in some cases unable) to even rule themselves.
We tended to draw analogies between the new Third World states and the nascent American Republic of the late 18th century; between their secession struggles and our own Revolutionary War. We missed the important difference: we were civilized and struggling to achieve liberty; they were barbaric and struggling to achieve local tyrannies. It was this confusion that led to the misguided American tolerance extended to Ho Chi Minh, Gamel Abdul Nasser, and Fidel Castro, in the beginning of their reigns.
The worst consequence of this was not our lack of support for France in 1945-54, but rather our lack of support for Britain, France and Israel in 1956 in the Suez Crisis. Here we took the side of Nasser against our own NATO allies and the only democracy in the Mideast, mostly to curry favor with the Third World.
To salve their pride the British and French have decided now that they were in the wrong, but they were clearly in the right -- Nasser was in violation of the teaty that had returned the Canal to Egyptian control. We gained nothing by this betrayal, and we paid heavily for it -- this is one of the reasons why Europe was willing to trade with North Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Indeed, this was one of the direct provocations that turned France anti-American.
The lesson we should take from this: Never betray long-time allies to curry favor with potential allies.
That's the lesson I take from it, anyway.
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There is more, and you are not being nearly forceful enough. Eisenhower did not show "lack of support" in 1956 towards his own NATO allies: he stabbed them in the back, and incidentally allowed the Soviets to get away with their contemporary murder of Hungary. And from Versailles in 1919 to the Suez crisis, the American claim to be an anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist power has only one real meaning: to reduce the major European powers to impotence. Like Wilson, Eisenhower wanted Europe to be essentially an American toy. The thrust of the Suez crisis was to make an independent European foreign policy impossible, and, thanks to British cowardice and subjection (the French and Israelis would have gone on), it succeeded for a few decades.
Essentially, however, Eisenhower had bet on the wrong horse. The Arabs were going nowhere - as Israel dramatically demonstrated in 1967 - and, in the long run, Soviet domination over Eastern Europe was untenable. Conversely, the vicious historicistic jargon of "declining powers" and "old Europe" does not allow people to notice the enormous concentration of economic power between Lisbon and Berlin and between Oslo and Palermo, a concentration that has done nothing but grow, and that, with the collapse of Soviet power, has received an extra boost. People are looking at China with wonder, but the real centre of the world's economy remains Europe. London has recently surpassed New York City as a trading centre, for the first time in ninety years. Europe is slowly awakening, confused and bewildered by fifty years of subservience, to its own enormous power. The only tool it is using to extend its reach, for the present, is money; but it has so much of that that its reach is constantly growing. European governments are having to make decisions on a world stage for the first time in fifty years, and no wonder that many of them move stupidly, ignorantly, or like men in a dream. But the legend of "declining" and "rising", "old" and "young" nations, must die once and for all, before people begin to realize what the world really is like.
I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Really? How would you describe them?
"Failed states" is just a more polite way of saying the same thing.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
You're ignoring a whole mess of Sub-Saharan African states here, including (offhand) Zimbabwe and Rwanda. Anyway, I never said that Africa was the only home of failed states; simply that it is one of the places they are commonly found. Which is true.
I have no prejudice against black people. I have a lot of prejudice against post-colonials sub-Saharan African states, however, based on the historical examples. They tend to be incredibly violent and sadistic dictatorships, with their origin in atrocious civil wars. This is reality; the idea of sub-Saharan Africa as "just another part of the world" is a comforting fantasy.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
She had little good to say about her home country. She spent a great deal of time telling me about the problems with local warlords that the government was either unable or unwilling to put down, about fighting between muslims and Christians, about the extreme poverty and lack of education, and about how, in her view, the current government of the country is run by "thugs". She used the word "barbaric" to describe the state of her own country, more than once.
And she lived in the city, where most of the time they had electricity, running water, public transportation, and the internet. I imagine in rural areas, it was even worse.
So, "quarter-civilized", while a rather rough and rude description, may not necessarily be a bad one. At least, for Zona's experience of Nigeria, anyway. (She is back there now, and stuck, due to problems with extending her Student Visa.)
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
If we lose the War on Terror, that becomes when the Muslims start a major civil war, with the Muslim faction aided from the outside by the Terrorist States.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
The conflict in Cote d'Ivoire (formerly one of the _most_ civilized nations in sub-saharan Africa) also involved spill-over from the Liberian disaster, financed by blood diamonds and, oh yeah, the French hardwood industry.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
If other countries "may see fit to intervene", then the US may see fit to invade Iraq (whose war with the Kurds and Shia was only held in check by continuing US presence -- this was one of the points in JHR-114), and France should not criticise, given that it was also engaged in intervention.
If the US invasion was not legitimate (warmongering cowboyism, remember, not just a bad idea), then neither was France's, and France should not criticise.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Let me make it quite clear: I loathe people who put words in my mouth. It is the one thing that makes me see red. This is the last warning. Either answer what I wrote, or get out of here.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
In general, my entire argument has been: if it was legitimate for France to invade Cote d'Ivoire, then it was hypocritical for France to criticise the US for invading Iraq. Thus those who criticize France for said hypocricy are at least somewhat justified.
In this particular thread, you expressed distaste at the characterization (by another poster) of African countries as "half- to quarter-civilized African joke-nations", etc.
I then said that if such African nations are in fact civilized, then France should not have invaded them.
You then said that one may invade even a civilized nation if necessary.
I responded with a syllogism (note the "if" beginning the two clauses, denoting a counterfactual) that showed that regardless of whether one thinks it might be legitimate to intervene in other countries' affairs or not, French criticism of the US's invasion would be hypocritical.
I have so far responsed exactly and precisely to what you wrote. You have still not addressed my core argument, instead dismissing it as a "red herring".
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
What is more, the French and European objection was not necessarily to war as such. It was to the notion of invading and occupying an Arab country. As everyone knows, all western secret services, certainly including the French and German ones, were convinced that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction. Their point was simply that to invade and occupy an Arab country was to ask for trouble. And I remember saying, at the time, that the Americans will only succeed in this war if, within a year from victory, they will have withdrawn from Iraq; otherwise, I said, their whole army of occupation will become nothing but the biggest body of hostages in recorded history, there to be assaulted and murdered by the locals. When I saw the incredibly fumbling early steps of the occupation, I expected the worst - at least, the worst I could imagine (even my imagination did not stretch to monsters hideous enough to repeatedly massacre their own fellow-countrymen merely in order to make the occupation harder for the enemy). So tell me I was wrong; tell me that Bush did not go into this military adventure with criminal light-headedness; tell me that he did not deserve, whether or not Chirac applied it to him, the epithet of a warmongering, empty-headed space cadet. There is no evidence whatever that the Americans had any plan at all for the after-Saddam. And just exactly because the French have some considerable experience of intervention in foreign countries, they ought to have been listened to in this. Their intervention in Africa is always to support existing government or to put specific and clearly identified parties in power. This may be hypocritical, but it is less criminally inept than to march into an Arab country and expect a finished democratic government to drop from heaven.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
If Rumsfeld's words were insulting, what were Chirac's, when he said that England, Poland, Denmark, Romania, Georgia, Czech Republic, Latvia, Albania, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Estonia, Macedonia, Moldova, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Spain, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Iceland, and, oh yes, Italy, "missed a good opportunity to sit down and shut up."
As an aside, you will note that much of my personal revulsion towards French hypocricy in foreign policy stems from their economic support of Charles Taylor in Liberia (which informs and supports my opinion of their stance on the Iraq war), a point I've raised here several times without response.
On the question of the forseen or actual difficulty of the invasion, indeed I will tell you flatly that you were wrong. Bush invaded Iraq as part of a multifaceted global military, economic and humanitarian strategy (again I suggest you read Kaplan's _Imperial Grunts_, to start), which has been elucidated time and again by him and his administration. As for Iraq in particular, there were 23 separate counts in Joint House Resolution 114, 17 UN Security Council resolutions, several of them authorizing military action, one broken treaty from 1991, and _six months_ of diplomatic wrangling with France, Germany, Russia & China. Hardly light-headed. Do you really think that Saddam would have stayed quiescent once the sanctions were down, given his history of repeatedly attacking his own citizens as well as his neighbors? You are concerned about American military "hostages"; what about the 30,000/year of his own people that Saddam killed, according to Human Rights Watch? Bush himself repeatedly said, in his 2003 State of the Union address and elsewhere, said that the road would be long and difficult.
As you will know, the US has some small prior experience with invading countries and imposing democracy on them. Just because the process has been difficult and fraught with error and difficulty so far does not mean the goal is not worth trying for! Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good.
The American occupation of Japan lasted almost 7 years, until April 28, 1952, and American troops are there to this day. The American, British and French occupation of West Germany lasted four to ten years, depending on your definitions, and American troops are there to this day. I'll bet you a (Canadian) dollar that the situation in Iraq will be much different in 2013 than it is today.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Not a single one of whose public opinions favoured intervention. This was strictly a matter of political leaderships following the Americans, and, in most countries that matter (the presence of Bulgaria or Moldova in the field does not offer anyone much of anything), being punished for this. The Tory Blur has been forced out of his seat by his own party, who fear disaster at the next elections because of the immense unpopularity of the war (not improved by the recent humiliating display in the face of Iran); Aznar and Berlusconi are gone; it is only in Poland, and strictly for internal reasons, that a more pro-American government is in the saddle. Indeed, this may be said of the war: that without it the odious and incompetent Prodi and Zapatero governments, with their viciously divisive policies, would never have reached power. They will probably - please God! - lose the next elections, but that will not make Iraq any more popular in Italy or Spain.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Why should Arab countries be granted special passes on account of their "Arabness?" Given the demonstrated military incompetence of the Arabs, I would argue the opposite -- and I think that Dubya's "Bring it on" was one of his few intelligent statements; it laid down a gauntlet that so far has resulted in a lot of Arab terrorists who might have hit New York or London and Paris leaving their bones sprayed into a lot of other Arabs, keeping the dying in dar al Islam -- where it BELONGS.
Re: I'll leave you and <lj user = kulibali> to argue this out
Quelling the Infection
Then ... given your assumption ... we should invade them all, and make the experience so unpleasant for them that the next time one Arab country is tempted to come to the defense of an Arab aggressor receiving its just punishment, the leadership thinks "Hmm, nope, I remember the last time we did this and we lost twenty years of economic development, we'll sit this one out.
But I find your assumption not borne out by history. Historically, Arab countries have repeatedly been defeated in isolation, with no or few other Arab states coming to their defense. Right now, in Iraq, our problems are with Syria (Arab) and Iran (Aryan), while Jordan (Arab) and Egypt (Arab), to take two examples, are not only not helping the rebels but are actively helping suppress attempts to aid them. In the Arab-Israeli Wars, non-frontline Arab states generally delivered only token and ineffectual aid to the Arab side: in some of the wars, no aid at all.
In Afghanistan, we do indeed have a problem with an "ally" actually providing sanctuary for Al Qaeda and the Taliban -- but that ally is Pakistan, an Aryan (not Arab) country. Indeed, one of the just critiques of the Iraq Campaign is that we should have finished off the Taliban first, and if we had not been involved in Iraq we could have exerted far more pressure on Pakistan to deny sanctuary to the foe.
Arab borders are porous, and it takes no effort at all for mujaheddeen and suicide bombers to cross them.
Neutral Arab states should act to capture and imprison such malefactors: those states which do not should be considered as our next targets. I see no problem with widening a war against those who believe that they can claim neutrality while aiding our enemies ... though, as I mentioned, that's a smaller problem than you're implying.
I think that the much-dreaded fanatical fury of the Arabs, and of Islam as a whole, is a gigantic bluff, with just enough reality behind it to cow the timorous. In fact the "fanatical" Arabs have been easy meat in both conventional and guerilla wafare, and even as terrorists mostly ineffectual, save against their own civilian populations. So far in Iraq we have taken very light losses and inflicted horrendous losses upon the enemy: and every young Terrorist killed in Iraq is a virus no longer able to spread.
Think of the US Armed Forces as the planet's white blood cells :)