Prostitution of the pen and the dark side of the free market

[fpb]

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.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No, no, no, no, no, no. You simply refuse to see the obvious difference between then and now. Historically, the purpose of guerrilla warfare from King David (who was a guerrilla leader in his early days) to Josip Broz Tito was always to create large haven territories in which increasing masses of armed men could form real armies and sweep into the plains or the cities or whatever, eventually turning guerrilla warfare into war proper. This was guerrilla as practiced by Giuseppe Garibaldi or Pancho Villa. The purpose was always, one, to engage the enemy militarily, and two, to fight and win a war. The purpose of the modern mujahid is simply to cause chaos. The terrorist intends to blackmail society at large to prove that it cannot go on functioning unless it appeases him; an ambition that Emiliano Zapata or General Giap would have despised. He is not a soldier; he is a blackmailer. And modern terrorism, do not forget, is a Palestinian invention, began by Arafat after the catastrophe of 1967 proved once and for all that the most elaborate and massively armed Arab armies could not stand up to Israeli skill and discipline. The strategy shifted from fighting a war to making life impossible for the enemy. And the sad thing is that it seems to be paying.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I believe that the ambitions of Al Qaeda and its allies reach farther than you imply. Yes, extortion of tribute, or of favorable diplomatic, political or social changes is one of their tactics and strategices, but it is not the only one; nor are terrorist teams their only type of forces.

The Terrorists do have national armies on their side; at present in the Mideast, the armies of Iran, Syria and the Sudan. Before our campaigns from 2001 to 2003, this included the armies of Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq. The Terrorists field various guerilla as well as terrorist units; the reason why you have seen more use of terrorism than of guerilla or main force enemy operations in the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars is not because of some doctrinal avoidance of guerilla or main force operations, but rather because our forces have been so active and competent in the field that the enemy has found any concentration of his own forces, even into guerilla bands, to be near-suicidal.

There have been periods of more traditional guerilla operations, by the way. In Afghanistan, where Allied forces are thin on the ground; in Pakistan, where a treacherous "ally" is providing a sanctuary (aided in this perfidy by the very main-force element of nuclear missiles); and at points in the Iraq campaign itself, when the Terorists tried to create a "liberated zone" in Fallujah (and did successfully coalesce into urban guerillas and small main force formations).

And modern terrorism, do not forget, is a Palestinian invention, began by Arafat after the catastrophe of 1967 proved once and for all that the most elaborate and massively armed Arab armies could not stand up to Israeli skill and discipline.

Note that the Palestinians climbed the insurgency ladder to guerilla and have now reached main force levels, as soon as they safely could. There are advantages to being higher on the ladder: main forces can do things that guerillas cannot; and guerillas things that terrorists cannot; what is more, higher-stage forces can always detach elements to carry out lower-stage missions, while the reverse is not true.

The strategy shifted from fighting a war to making life impossible for the enemy. And the sad thing is that it seems to be paying.

The point at which the payoff comes is when it induces withdrawal of our own forces -- letting the enemy build guerilla and main force units. Without main force units, in particular, the enemy cannot capture (or in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, recapture) any countries, to use as bases for further operations.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, right, and the Iraqi and Afghan armies have been so brilliant on the field. The truth is that the terrorist strategy is natural to the Muslim because (though they will never admit it) bitter experience has taught them that they cannot cope with regular troops. Pakistan is a peculiar case: the army is the central institution of the country, in a way that it is in no other Muslim country - not even Turkey or Egypt - and this for two interconnected reasons. First, Pakistan is part of the former Indian Empire, and shares with India the basic historical experience of watching immense Indian armies torn apart again and again by British armies one-tenth their size. This historical shock, whose force never abated down the centuries, has shaped the minds of both countries, in different ways; it was especially significant since most of the time the victorious British armies were only officered by native Britons, and most of their soldiery was Indian. The lesson was burned into local memories, and meant that when two new states coalesced out of the abandoned Empire, they both adopted wholesale Western instintutions. IN India, it was the whole structure of a Western country, with federal democratic institutions, and - much against Hindu traditions - equality before the law. In Pakistan, it was the Army, with army and staff colleges, barracks, iron discipline, and all the peculiar features of western military life. And, second point, this army found itself facing a similar but vastly stronger army on the Indian side, against which it lost a number of wars. Purely in order to survive, the Pakistani army had to preserve its basically Western traditions. The trainees of the staff colleges at Islamabad and Rawalpindi know too much to presume that mere popular anger of the kind that makes mujaheddeen could stand a chance against disciplined and prepared Indian troops. However, beneath the army is an immense, undereducated populace, whose natural leadership is not the Army but the mullahs. It is for their own survival as much as to make trouble for opponents, that the Army has allowed thousands of mujaheddeen down the years to cross over into Kashmir and Afghanistan: this relieves the pressure against the Army from below, which would otherwise lead to civil war and even possibly to the collapse of Pakistan. It is typical of the absolutely peculiar position of Pakistan in the Muslim world that it has been the only country capable of successfully producing an atom bomb (we are still to see whether Iran will be able to, even with massive Russian help).