A Blow For Freedom

In a recent court ruling, a district court judge ruled certain aspects of a Presidential decree using terrorist blacklists unconstitutional. The case had been percolating for years, and was brought by the Humanitarian Law Project on behalf of two groups, Kurdistan Workers Party and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. This is undoubtedly not the end of the case. Although the government has not yet decided on an appeal, it is likely to do so. However, regardless of whether the government does so or not, its results should not be confused with a victory for freedom against tyranny. No doubt it will be a good thing for the specific groups affected, and who were bizarrely included in the list of 'terrorist organizations.'

But no defense of liberties is serious and lasting if it is won in the courts alone. Indeed this case, brought by a liberal organization that self-consciously styles itself as political, and which includes David Cole, a widely visible liberal public intellectual, is one of a smattering through which liberals continue to try and defend civil liberties through judicial activism. The shift from a mass movement for civil liberties towards an elite activity taken up almost exclusively in the courts is a long term historical process. And at one time, one can imagine judicial activism having been one part of a broader movement for the expansion of liberty. Now, however, cases like the recent decision might limit the arbitrary powers of the President in some small way, and help a few individuals out. But its broader significance is, in the present climate, not progressive. Rather, this kind of judicial activism, and especially the politicized lawyers organizations, are a sign of the degree to which these groups have retreated from winning their arguments in the court of public opinion. Indeed, the emphasis on judicial activism now registers a distrust of the public, and an unwillingness to engage in the more difficult, but more important and enduring work of convincing the public that these cases are not just individualized instances affecting specific political groups, but matters of concern for the health of politics in general. A society that favors judges over the public is not free no matter how rigorously and fairly those judges apply the law.

With Friends Like These...

In yet another effort to find a new direction in Iraq, Bush and Rice prepare for a summit in Amman on Wednesday with Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki. The Amman meetings also serve to announce the Administration's plan to call on "Arab friends" for help in the region. And who better than the eternally compromised Jordanian state to act as friend and host?

On Sunday, Jordan's King Abdullah called for "a strong step forward" by the international community in order to avert a crisis in the Middle East. Without it, Abdullah warned, we face the foreboding possibility of opening 2007 with "three civil wars" in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq. It is no surprise that the Jordanian government, which owes its existence and longevity to its status as client-state (not to mention its recent economic boom due to the US invasion of Iraq), would call for increased action from the West. But the notion that international intervention can improve the situation or stabilize the region is beyond wishful thinking.

The crises that Abdullah describes are each the direct result of international "strong steps." The West's own fears of Islamism has led it to take measures, at times clumsy, at times heavy-handed, to counter what it sees as growing Islamist power. In Palestine, the international community intentionally crippled the democratically-elected Hamas government by cutting off the funding sources that enable the Authority to operate a government. International pressure has followed a similarly disastrous course in Lebanon--willfully attempting to quash the political influence of Hezbollah, which represents Lebanon's majority Shi'a population (who have, although the majority, been limited in government by the structure of the Lebanese state since its inception). And of course, the US invasion of Iraq is the direct cause of that country's descent into chaos (who's long-term causes are sanctions, and US support of Saddam Hussein against more democratic forces in the 1970s and 80s). At every turn, the international community has shown utter disdain to the notion of self-determination and popular will.

Thus it is predictable that the US wants to call upon its "Arab friends" to help resolve its current regional problems--the same authoritarian regimes that have survived for decades by virtue of US support. The result of this initiative will be more of the same, seeking as it does to neutralize all actors that appear to reflect a degree of popular will or regional autonomy.

Iraq: Who's on Trial?

A recent Human Rights Watch (HRW) report condemning Saddam Hussein's Trial for being unjust and unfair has been making headlines across the globe. HRW notes numerous procedural irregularities, signs of bias, and violations of standard civil rights in the trial. The report concludes that the main problem was that Iraq lacked the "capacity to fairly and effectively try these massive crimes in a manner that is consistent with international criminal law and fair trial standards." HRW's report is presented as an impartial analysis of the trial, but one should not be fooled. The report is an incredibly self-serving, political document that puts the interests of international human rights organizations and international lawyers first, and Iraqi political needs second.

At one level, the document is the newest entry in a wide-ranging series of publications by organizations and individuals trying to distance them from the general Iraqi debacle in which they are implicated. Human Rights Watch and other human rights groups did a great deal to foster the prewar climate in which it was only possible to think of Hussein as a genocidal tyrant who needed to be overthrown, nevermind all the troublesome political issues involved with violating another country's sovereignty, smashing its state, and being an unwelcome presence to those people supposedly being liberated. And ever since Bush started leaning more heavily on humanitarian justifications for the war, and reminded the public of the connection between the Iraq war and prior humanitarian interventions, the human rights community, such as it is, has been in a small scale crisis of legitimacy. Developing a human rights critique of various aspects of the invasion and occupation has been a way of trying to salvage the international human rights project from this morass. For the liberals who run these organizations, these moves have been a way of preserving the idea that human rights contain some kind of (weakly) critical edge, rather than serve as imperial apologetics.

Factually, the report is disingenuous. The various international trials relating to the former Yugoslavia and to Rwanda were also highly irregular. It was with a sigh of relief that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia saw Slobodan Milosevic die before his trial was completed. Not only had he run circles around a surprisingly incompetent prosecution, but he exposed just how unfair and unequal his trial was (including radical disparities in the resources available to prosecution and defense, attempts to speed up the trial, and dubious evidence, not to mention being tried in an ad hoc court established by the victors). And as an exercise in instituting the international rule of law, Milosevic's trial dragged on so long, most had forgotten about it and moved on. It utterly failed as a legitimating act, neither helping to recognize the public suffering caused by human rights abuses, nor establishing faith in the (international) rule of law - both claims widely made by human rights organizations. Many of the same advocates who are upset about Saddam Hussein's trial said little or nothing about irregularities in prior signature trials, and certainly did not do so as immediately and decisively as they have done with Hussein.

More to the point, HRW's report criticizes Hussein's trial mainly as a way of attacking local justice, not the idea of highly politicized human rights trials. The report claims "that trials that meet international human rights standards of fairness will be more likely to ventilate and verify the historical facts at issue, contribute to the public recognition of the experiences of victims of different religious groups and ethnicities, and set a more stable foundation for democratic accountability after periods of conflict and/or repression." There is no evidence for any of this, but what they are really trying to say is that we can only trust international lawyers and human rights experts to handle dictators appropriately, not local populations. In fact, as we have noted before, the central problem with Saddam's trial was not that it failed to conform with "international human rights standards" but that it was utterly removed from any kind of Iraqi political movement and democratic process. The trial, though held in Iraq, was outside of Iraqi control, and managed in a way to ensure that those actually repressed by Saddam were unable to hold him to account, perhaps using such accountability as part of a process whereby a new order was established. Indeed, the curfews imposed on various parts of Baghdad after the verdict was handed down demonstrates how little Iraqis were allowed to participate in holding their former oppressor to account. Removing Saddam's trial to some international court would only have exacerbated this political problem and further proved to Iraqis that their future is not under their control.

Human Rights Watch knows this, and its guilty, narcissistic consciousness peeks through its own report. At one point it states, "The significance of the trials before the IHT is difficult to overstate. For the first time since the post-Second World War Nuremberg trials, almost the entire senior leadership cadre of a long-lived repressive government faces trial for gross human rights violations committed during their tenure. At stake is not only justice for hundreds of thousands of victims, but, as at Nuremberg, the historical record itself." The breathless excitement at the prospect of parading an "entire senior leadership" of a Third World country before an international tribunal is so evident that it's almost perverted. And the invocation of the 'historic record' makes clear that what HRW really cares about is not the future of a Iraqi democracy and justice, but the future of the human rights project itself. They are upset that the Iraqis 'botched it' because it is a setback for a rare opportunity, made possible by the American invasion, of instituting the authority and expertise of human rights lawyers and activists as the ultimate arbiters of all conflicts. (HRW seems to forget that Nuremberg was basically a failure - extremely legally flawed and wrapped up hastily once denazification was seen to destabilize Germany in the face of a resurgent postwar left and emerging Cold War tensions.)

HRW's document is in no way an impartial analysis based on purely legal principles. The thrust of the document and its criticism is to suggest that only international experts and advocates are capable of dealing appropriately with former oppressors. It demonstrates no appreciation for the idea that the people themselves can and should, especially in times of extraordinary change, determine how to deal with the prior regime. A 'proper' international criminal tribunal would have only further exacerbated the political vaccuum and more deeply instituted the general idea that popular political processes are not to be trusted. What was wrong with Hussein's trial was not that Iraq lacked the capacity and expertise to deal appropriately with him, but that Iraqis were never given the chance in the first place.

Conference Call

If the question of an earlier period was ‘What is to be done?’ the slogan of contemporary politics is ‘Something must be done!’ This week something must be done about the Middle East apparently, with numerous calls for an international conference to resolve the ongoing crisis of Iraq, the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Iran nuclear stand-off.

Notable heavyweights lending themselves to this cause include Henry Kissinger and British PM, Tony Blair. Both used television interviews to publicly despair of the situation in Iraq; Blair declared the occupation ‘pretty much a disaster’ while Kissinger stated that he didn’t believe a military solution to the situation was possible. The alternative solution? According to Kissinger: “At some early point an international conference should be called that involves neighbors, perhaps the permanent members of the Security Council and countries that have a major interest in the outcome like India and Pakistan.” Blair also sought more involvement from Iran and Syria in stabilizing Iraq.

Such backsliding by the cheerleaders of the Iraq war is now commonplace. With no idea of how to extricate themselves from the situation, our leaders are seeking to drag in others to take the strain. Although Blair attempted to talk tough, declaring “If you [Iran and Syrian] are prepared to be part of the solution, there is a partnership available to you. But at the moment…you are behaving in such a way that makes such a partnership impossible,” this is pure bluster. A Syrian or Iranian dominated Iraq would once have been the worst case scenario for Bush et al; now it is their greatest hope.

If Kissinger had trouble thinking up a name for his international conference, Robert Skidelsky comes to his aid in The Guardian this week. “We need a new Congress of Berlin” he writes (not to be confused, incidentally, with the Berlin Conference; that misreading caused this editor to double-take), and in so doing reveals the theme underlying attempts to garner international cooperation on the issue. The Congress of Berlin, assembled by Kissinger’s inspiration Bismark, was tasked to resolve European tensions arising from the ascendance of Russia and the decline of the Ottoman Empire. Terms were essentially dictated to these weaker powers by an alliance of stronger states.

While others might be more careful about invoking an era of great power politics in their pronouncements, the logic is the same. While we might even invite members of the ‘axis of evil’ to rule Iraq, nobody has any faith in the ability of the Iraqis themselves to decide their own future. And therein lies the problem. The issues of the Middle East cannot be resolved through greater internationalization; such crises already result from the refusal of outside powers, regional or global, to allow people to determine their own politics. Using Iraq’s neighbors as proxy policemen, sending in more troops, or sending in United Nations, will not end the violence. No outside force can reconstruct an Iraq for the Iraqi people.

Finally, in case anybody thought that the admitted failure of the Iraq invasion might have caused a deeper questioning of the principles behind humanitarian intervention, they need only cast a brief eye over these two editorials from the last three days. First, The Guardian, vocal critic of the Iraq war that it is, calls for increasing ground troops in Afghanistan. Apparently the problem is that, thus far, the Western alliance has relied too heavily on air power. Meanwhile, the New York Times, calls for an expansion of the US army to over 500,000 men so that they better participate in peacekeeping and ‘unconventional wars’. We have argued many times on this blog that the overly narrow focus on both the Bush administration and the Iraq war would eventually prove counterproductive to those who seek an end to the military domination of the developing world. It seems like the mid-term defeat for the former project might pave the way for the resurgence of the latter.

When the Throne is A Chair

"Naive minds think that the office of kingship lodges in the king himself, in his ermine cloak and his crown, in his flesh and bones. As a matter of fact, the office of kingship is an interrelation between people. The king is king only because the interests and prejudices of millions of people are refracted through his person. When the flood of development sweeps away these interrelations, then the king appears to be only a washed-out man with a flabby lower lip. He who was once called Alfonso XIII could discourse upon this from fresh impressions."

So wrote Leon Trotsky about the Spanish king displaced by the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. And one Saddam Hussein, now languishing in an Iraqi jail awaiting execution, might add some further insight.

Although this ‘November surprise’ did the Bush administration little good at the polls, it should not pass without comment. In fact, it is interesting because at this point, it seems to underline the jaded attitude widely held toward the Iraq invasion, both here and in Iraq. For Iraq, what might once have been a landmark in the construction of a new political order was insignificant when determined by forces outside the control of their control. The old man condemned to death by the court was simply that, an old man. His death no longer has the symbolic value it would have done had the Iraqis themselves overthrown an oppressive political order.

Compare the last week to the 1958 Iraqi Revolution that overthrew the British-backed monarchy. In his monumental history of Iraq 'The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq', Hanna Batatu records that, within minutes of the military coup that summarily dispatched the royal family (gunned down as they were marched out of the palace):

"...the capital overflowed with people...many of them in a fighting mood and united by a single passion: "Death to the traitors and agents of imperialism!" It was like a tide coming in and at first engulfed and with a vengeance Nuri's house and the royal palace, but soon extended to the British consulate and embassy and other palaces...When in the end, after nightfall, the crowds ebbed back, the statue of Faisal, the symbol of the monarchy, lay shattered..."

[Nuri As Sa'id, the sycophantic Prime Minister, was a particularly hated figure of the Hashemite regime. After his execution his body was disinterred, dragged through the streets, and then burned].

By comparison celebrations of this latest announcement were muted, partly due to a US curfew (no doubt a similar tidal wave was feared). But what would be the common cry of Iraqis today? And what would the hated symbols and figures of contemporary Iraq be? Flailing in a political quagmire of somebody else’s making, Iraqis can no longer unite over a vision of the future. Thus Saddam’s execution can only invoke an ambiguous response.

Reaction in the US is also complicated. In some circles the Hussein trial has been dismissed as a show trial, designed to vindicate the US invasion by exposing the worst crimes of the Saddam regime (ideally, while avoiding any discussion of US involvement in those crimes). There is no doubt some truth to this. But this was also a ‘showcase’ trial, whereby Americans, and perhaps more importantly, a skeptical international audience, would get to see the establishment of rule of law in Iraq. It was an attempt to present the occupation as an apolitical, ethical intervention, adhering to the norms of 1990s humanitarianism. These audiences would also observe that American power had not brought about a revolutionary moment with the violence and instability such an idea entails, but a smooth transition, replete with a therapeutic process for coming to terms with the past.

This has failed. Even groups who routinely push for the trial of international criminals, such as Human Rights Watch, have criticized the proceedings and questioned the outcome. In some ways, the trial has fallen between the cracks. For Iraqis the moment is not authentically political; they have never been agents in the downfall of Saddam and so, however much they dislike their former ruler, they are alienated from this process. Meanwhile for external observers, the trial can only seem illegitimate and designed to serve the purposes of the US, or the factional politics of Iraq. Once more the US founders in its Iraq project, unable to escape the distorting influence of its own power.

What Happened to the Republican Ideologues?

Last Wednesday, Bush participated in a press conference which was among the most memorable in his time as President. When asked about the incongruity between Rumsfeld's resignation and his comments only a week earlier, he said in all seriousness, "I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign." Certainly, we can all agree that campaigns shouldn't be about actual politics -- you know, ideas, beliefs, commitments. When asked about the conciliatory tone toward Democrats after repeatedly declaring that a victory for the Dems would be a victory for terrorists, the President responded, "What's changed today is the election's over. And the Democrats won."

For pundits, Bush's comments seemed to be a startling admission that his previous remarks had been lies. He had known all along that Rumsfeld was on the chopping block, while telling reporters that he was doing a "fantastic job" and would stay until 2009. Perhaps the most telling moment was when Bush was asked about Pelosi's very harsh words about him. The President replied, "I've been around politics a long time. I understand when campaigns end and when governing begins." In essence, Bush was saying that everyone lies during political campaigns and you can't take seriously anything politicians say to get elected.

Yet, in a deeper sense, Bush's remarks suggest that he really doesn't know when campaigning ends and governing begins. One of the political truisms since 9/11 is that the Bush Administration is unswervingly ideological, committed to policies regardless of their pragmatism or popular support (either domestic or international). But, the rhetorical about-face since the election indicates that maybe the Administration isn't nearly as ideological. What Bush is committed to is winning elections. In other words, all he knows how to do is to campaign. To the extent that Rove's base strategy and Bush's hardline language and policies were electorally successful, the Republicans were therefore ideological. When the approach no longer worked at vote-getting, the approach was changed. The last six years may have actually just been about branding, treating citizens like consumers and figuring out the best way to shape electoral preferences -- and in the process create a permanent Republican majority. Nothing more, nothing less.

If all this sounds distasteful, it should. Having bad ideologues run the government is certainly a grave problem. But, if those ideologues are actually genuinely committed to their position, at least it presents the possibility for debate and disagreement. What Bush's about-face indicates is something more subtle and perhaps more sinister. It's a vision of the citizen as purely a tool or instrument of campaign managers, and politics as indistinct from advertising any consumer good. For Bush, the substance of politics is literally just the campaign -- the sell. And as long as it works, virtually any brand (compassionate conservate, war-president, decider, neoconservative, social conservative, democratic revolutionary) fits the bill.

In a context where the only criticisms made of the Administration are pragmatic ones -- these guys are incompetent -- and Republican ideology is deployed cynically (gay marriage, war on terror, "stay the course" in Iraq), perhaps the Onion's recent headline offered the most telling critique: "Politicians Sweep Midterm Elections." Today, we've already begun talking about 2008. The Dems are moving to the center to win the next election, and Republicans are positioning themselves to re-take Congress. For both parties, politicians are products and ideology just a brand.

A Must Read on the Baker Commission

Michael Kinsley has one of the best op-eds yet written about the Baker Commission, and the Iraq War generally. He nails every theme - Bush's abdication of responsibility, Congress' abdication of responsibility, and the way democracy suffers when an anodyne, aimless and 'bipartisan' commission decides matters of war and peace. Kinsley has put his finger on a deeper, anti-political tendency in our society, which prefers independent commissions to political debates and positions. A few quotes from Kinsley's ope-ed below, the whole thing is a must read:

"Ordinarily a commission such as this has two possible purposes: action or inaction. Sometimes a problem is referred to a prestigious commission so that the commission can recommend doing things that everybody knows must be done but that nobody has the nerve to propose...On the other hand, sometimes a problem is referred to a commission simply to get it off the table. Action is widely perceived as necessary, and the creation of a commission can be made to look like action...But the Baker commission may be nearly unique in that there is no obvious solution waiting to be imposed. People actually hope that it will come up with something that no one has thought of."

"The chance that this group of aging white men, plus Vernon Jordan and Sandra Day O'Connor, will come up with something original is not enormous. It's a nutty and not very attractive idea to turn an urgent issue of war and peace over to a commission. Commissions have usually been trotted out for long-run social problems: immigration, debt, health care. Going to war is something that ought to be decided by the people we elect.Congress, in recent decades, has virtually abandoned its duty under the Constitution to make the decisions about when American soldiers are sent to kill and die."

Democrats Between Past and Future

The question on everyone's mind right now is 'having won, what are the Democrats going to do?' Leading Democrats have dropped strong hints that there will be no bold initiatives for the future. A discussion of the Patriot Act, of perhaps repealing some of its provisions, is not even priority enough to have been mentioned in any of the major dailies - let alone suggested as a possibility by incoming House and Senate leadership. A recent New York Times article reports Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, saying they will "re-examine" the lop-sided tax structure, but make no promises, and won't even get to that for at least six months.

Meanwhile, although the Democrats ran on the 'platform' of holding Bush and the Republicans accountable for their mistakes on Iraq (and elsewhere), the incoming House leadership have bent over backwards to make clear that impeachment is not an option. This was predictable (and impeachment was a bad idea to begin with). But Schumer has done even more to suppress expectations, saying on CNN recently that "we’re not going to hold a whole raft of hearings pointing a finger back at 2001." No doubt this is in part because any hearings, if conducted properly, would reveal just how complicit the Democrats have been in creating the current situation, both in their 'ayes' and unwillingness to 'nay.'

But the deeper question is this: if the Democrats are not planning on presenting an bold initiatives for the future, and don't want to investigate the past, then what is left for the present? Prepare for the 2008 election, which, if they win, will no doubt position them well for the 2010 mid-terms...Many Democrats insisted that once the Democrats were elected, they would begin to act like an opposition. But the opposite seems more likely to be the case. The more committed you are to winning elections every two years, the more unwilling you are to take political risks and stand on principle. The election cycle has a tendency to induce a false pragmatism and unnecessary moderation - the imperative of winning overwhelms all else, leaving you eternally trapped in the present, neither reflecting on the past, nor contemplating the future.

New York Salon Event, November 14th

One consistent theme for our blog has been a broad culture of fear that seems to afflict America. And we are not the only people discussing it. The New York Salon, in conjunction with the Wolfson Center at the New School, have organized a series of events on this theme, entitled 'Don't Panic.' Their next event will take place this Tuesday, November 14th. Details below.


Therapeutic Society or Therapeutic State?

Increasingly we are encouraged to see ourselves in therapeutic terms: in denial, co-dependent and suffering various traumas. When the National Institute of Mental Health can announce that one in four Americans suffer from a diagnosable mental illness, something clearly has changed.

Have we all become damaged goods? Is the current vogue for medicalising our lives a postive thing or more problematic? What are the implications for our idea of civic society and political change?

7pm at The Theresa Lang Center, The New School, 55 W13th st, NY NY

To read the speakers' papers go to www.nysalon.org

TGA Longs for Jihad

In light of the Democrats' victories in both houses on Tuesday, we should wonder what changes will take place in the war on terror? In last week's Los Angeles Times, Oxford professor Timothy Garton Ash gives us some idea of where liberal sentiments lie on that topic. Ash claims that, whereas "most Democrats don't challenge the central concept of the war on terror," most Europeans do. Yet his argument is a peculiar one, focusing exclusively on opposing the term "war on terror." He puts forward what seems to amount to a simple re-branding of the war on terror, as if use of the term "war" itself begat the violent nature of the enterprise. Ash explains, "it wasn't a good term to start with...What would we lose by dropping it? However, then we need an alternative."

It seems that, according to Ash, we need an alternative term not an altogether different political project. The purpose is either a more palatable-sounding war on terror (but he must surely remember that the Bush Administration tried that already, recall last year's "global struggle against violent extremism") or to further the hope that we can transform the nature of the project semantically.

Ash would like to suggest "struggle," but for the unfortunate connotations in German. Apparently, if we think of it as a "struggle" (a jihad, perhaps?) rather than a "war", we can alter the focus to "a long-term struggle against multiple threats to free and open societies." Of course, as is common today, Ash is unwilling to jettison the project itself. He too is guilty of not challenging the war on terror's central concept.

In fact, the alternative that Ash poses is quite telling. Along with a host of others, from the neo-cons to Peter Beinart, liberal Ash seems to be longing for a "long-term struggle" over the essence of our society, and moreover, one that can come to encompass all issues we consider important, including prevention of natural disasters and ethnic cleansing. The appeal of the war on terror (or of the long-term struggle) is precisely this two-fold character, both an epic, morally unambiguous battle, and a malleable, ill-defined project that can be deployed in the face of whatever concerns us on a given day. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Ash has happened upon the very term to define the war on terror, "struggle", that Bin Laden has been claiming for several years now ("jihad"). Bin Laden has an equally incoherent grab-bag of concerns: at times the corruption of Middle East states, at other times the Western military presence in Muslim lands, on occasion the Palestinian cause. His "jihad" addresses itself incoherently to whatever is the ailment of the day, a struggle so ill-defined, so cosmic, that it could theoretically encompass any passing grievance of modern life.

What makes such seemingly incoherent sets of "struggles" compelling, or at least unopposable, to such a broad and differing range of people? This is a question we all need to examine these days. However, simply dropping the term "war on terror" will not bring us closer to the truth, and instead risks obscuring the underlying dynamics that have led to the seeming interminability of a rather unpopular political project. Avoiding the war on terror, either as a term or an issue, actually diminishes our ability to address it front and center, to understand what gives it strength and hopefully, to transcend it.

Neocons and the Sinking Ship

Over the weekend, Vanity Fair released excerpts of a series of interviews with prominent neocon architects of the war in Iraq. These excerpts made the rounds on the Sunday news shows and reinforced just how vulnerable Republicans are heading into today's elections. It's hard to defend "stay the course" when even Ken Adelman is saying that the Bush Administration "turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era."

The first thing that should perhaps be said about the neocon about-face is the sheer need to save their own skins. As Juan Cole comments, "Talk about rats and a sinking ship!" Really, how else can one take Richard Perle's remarkably disingenuous claim to have had nothing to do with formulating Iraq war policy. Absolutely nothing, he tells you! "Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this: They were not made by neoconservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad." It almost breaks your heart the extent to which Mr. Perle and his friends were marginalized and disenfranchized by the process. It's as if they were treated with the same contempt as the Iraqis being saved.

But beyond this, two points are particularly telling. First, these criticisms are virtually indistinct from what the Democrats are saying, or for that matter what conservative critics like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have said (remember the oft-quoted "pottery barn rule"). They amount to a disagreement not over principle but over competence. The war is bad because it's run by a bunch of knuckleheads. The fact that competence has so driven the debate is troubling for a number of reasons. It means that few are actually questioning the ideology behind the war -- especially the diminished vision of democracy and the commitment to social revolution from above. Perhaps even more importantly, it means that opposition to the war has no real social content today. It is disconnected from both a conception of domestic politics and of the U.S.'s role in the world. It has almost become a free-standing recognition that the Bush Administration is just really bad at fulfilling its goals; a belief that anyone can hold, no matter their political affiliation or commitments. So in Virginia, Webb can be a strong anti-war candidate, even though his actual politics on everything outside the war -- the war on terror, foreign policy generally, social and economic issues at home -- is virtually indistinct from his republican opponent. It is enough to recall that the man himself was Reagan's secretary of the navy.

The second point about the neocon turn is ultimately the most tragic. At this point nobody supports the war. Not the democrats. Not the military. Not even the war's intellectual defenders -- the neocons. Certainly not all those Republicans who'd otherwise have happily coasted to victory without the albatross of utter chaos in Baghdad. Yet, despite this fact, the war will continue indefinitely, for who knows how many more years. Clearly, one reason for this is that none of the remaining options is totally palatable, as none seems likely to end the violence in the country (even immediate withdrawal). But the real reason why this war will continue is that it has become a domestic football. It exists in Washington through the prism of electoral politics, and not as an Iraqi tragedy for which we as a nation are responsible.

Much has been made of how October 2006 was the turning point akin to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, when American citizens finally realized that the war was bankrupt. In a sense, that suggests that we're stuck in 1968. Everyone knows the war's wrong, bungled, a millstone, whatever. But, the war isn't ending anytime soon. More American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians died under Nixon's watch than under Johnson's, and it would take five more years for the U.S. to withdraw and seven more for Saigon to fall. In other words, the U.S. spent more time figuring out how to have "peace with honor" for politicians, then they did actually fighting the war proper.

So, in the aftermath of the elections, it seems necessary to state the sad and the obvious: enough of the gamesmanship, whether it is talk of staying the course, or setting timetables, providing benchmarks, redeploying, etc, etc. End the war now.

More than Machines

Today, as the electorate goes to the polls, any number of rumors and allegations will fly about new election laws, fraud, intimidation, and dirty tricks. Obsession with Diebold voting machines, in particular, has reached an all time high. Journalists and film-makers have flooded the market with exposes, tell-alls, and even do-it-yourself cheating manuals, to point up just how imperiled the vote is.

It is hard to see how this declaiming is doing much to improve our democracy.

In fact, it is likely to have at least an opposite effect than that intended. The more you convince people their vote won't be counted properly anyhow, the more you play into already existing cynicism and apathy. The unintended message - 'voter stay home', not 'voter go protest.'

Moreover, some of these problems are no doubt real, and dismaying, but they also smack of the parties getting their excuses ready. A bit of corruption here and there might throw the odd district to one side or the other, but the Democrats and Republicans can't blame their election (mis)fortunes on dirty tricks. They live and die by the quality of their campaign and their candidates. We should not give either party an excuse to shift responsibility for their political fortunes elsewhere.

The above two arguments are even more true considering that, historically, disenfranchisement and corruption are most likely at historical lows. The most notorious examples - of restricted suffrage, poll, literacy and property taxes, public voting - aside, we should recall just how corrupt elections used to be. In the 19th century, it was common to have the partisans of one party hire gangs to beat up anyone going to the poll who was suspected of voting for the other side. Mass naturalizations of immigrants by partisan judges the week before an election was a regular procedure in northern states. These are but two of many examples of how much corruption there was in prior elections. This is not to dismiss real limitations on the effective use of the franchise now, but it is relatively minor compared to much more profound problems with American democracy. It is not as if our political life would be truly and deeply democratic if elections ran more smoothly. The obsession with technical problems not only reinforces cynicism and apathy, it reflects a narrow diagnosis of the problem, and deeply limited political imagination amongst the partisans of democracy.

Liberal Realpolitik

Having washed his hands of the mucked up Iraqi constitution, Noah Feldman has now blithely moved on to the question of Iranian nukes. His article, “Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age”, which appeared in last week’s New York Times Magazine, is a sprawling piece with at least three distinct sections. He spends the first several pages pondering why we should worry about the “Islamic bomb.” His ‘answer’ is that there is good cause to wonder whether Islamic governments would be deterred by the possibility that the state and citizens would be wiped out in any retaliatory strike. Somewhat more careful is his next section, which rambles through an interesting but fairly irrelevant assessment of Muslim scholarly debate on the subject of nuclear arms: concluding, it seems, that Muslims probably can be deterred. Finally, Feldman provides something of a national interest assessment of why we should oppose Iran ’s nuclear ambitions anyway.

It is, at first glance, not clear what ties these three discussions together. It is easy to be distracted by the patently racist elements of Feldman’s argument, which suffuse all three sections of the article. But to do so would be to miss what it is that logically binds them together, and provides impetus for Feldman’s writing. For what is more interesting about Feldman is not a consistently racist train of thought, but that he variously contradicts himself, backtracks on forceful and odious positions, hedges his bets, and seems somewhat apologetic about his patronizing attitude toward Muslims. But the one animating principle from which he never strays is the notion that both he, as a member of the US intelligentsia, and the US government should decide whether Iran gets to join the “nuclear club.”

This is the driving force of the essay, and determines why Iran should never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. Feldman supports the position alternately by drawing upon widespread prejudices of Muslim irrationality (“The prospect of not just one Islamic bomb, but many, inevitably concentrates the mind on how Muslims…might use their nuclear weapons.” Notice the “inevitability” of this absurd mental effort. “In the mid-1980’s…it was still possible to avoid asking the awkward question of whether there was something distinctive about Islamic belief or practice that made possession of nuclear technology especially worrisome.” But awkward or not, it now presumably no longer possible to avoid asking whether those Islamic beliefs are simply crazy and irrational); and upon the general consensus that Iran is our “enemy.” If you don’t come away confirmed in your prejudice that Muslims could never be effectively deterred from using nuclear weapons since they are hell-bent on destruction anyway (ie, they’ve been known to be suicide bombers in recent years), Feldman hopes to convince you to oppose Iranian nuclear power by asserting that Iran is “an enemy of the United States, which has worked consistently against American interests” and that, in doing so, “Iran’s motives have been primarily Islamic-ideological, not pragmatic.” Why didn’t they just become our allies in the aftermath of the revolution, like Saudi Arabia or the Iraqi Shiites today? Had they tried to, “it is possible that the United States would have eventually reopened relations with an avowedly Islamic Iran.”

Having argued several alternative intellectual justifications for the US policy position of total opposition to Iranian nuclear power, Feldman makes clear that he is not sure what is the best method to achieve this goal “whether force, negotiation or some combination…is of course a hugely important question.” But it is a technical one that “turns on many uncertain facts.” We get the sense that nothing would phase Feldman, from air attacks, to ground forces, as long as the “facts” supported the likelihood of success. And in the long-term he holds out hope that “promotion of democracy in the region”, as we are already doing (!), “might someday allow the rise of leaders whose Islamism is tempered by the need to satisfy their constituents’ domestic needs--and who eschew anti-Americanism as wasteful and misguided. Iraq was the test case of whether this change could occur in the short term.”

And there’s the rub. Despite all the illogical and self-contradictory statements put forward by Feldman, not to mention the patently racist ones, the critical point is his shocking disregard for the equality and freedom of citizens of the developing world. After pages and pages of studious consideration of whether Muslims can be “trusted” with a bomb, he suddenly throws in the line: “These worries about an Islamic bomb raise the question of why we trust any nation with the power that a nuclear capacity confers.” He knows that his whole argument is vulnerable to this question. And he continues with the next likely refrain from non-proliferation folks: “Why, for instance, do we trust ourselves, given that we remain the only nation actually to have used nuclear weapons?” But despite all the care, the modifiers, the analytical dance to avoid being pinned down to any one position, he is unabashed in his recognition that we oppose other states’ acquisition of nuclear capability because “we do not want to cede some substantial chunk of our own global power to them.” He recognizes that this is the logic underlying the strategy of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. “So the nonproliferation regime is not and could never be based on some principle of international fairness.” But Feldman has no problem with this. The underlying racism of much of the article is thus not a peculiar attack on Muslims, but rather, reflects a nearly ubiquitous contempt, of which Feldman’s piece is but one example, for the equality of the majority of the world’s population.

The unwitting utility of Feldman’s argument is to pose a crucial, broader question: whether we should support an international treaty regime that maintains the dominance of the most powerful states and the perpetual dependence and subservience of the weakest. The problem is that this essential element of the nuclear issue is frequently and conveniently masked by resort to base prejudices: about third world irrationality (or instability, or blind “hatred” of the West), or about vague anti-nuclear sentiments that we tend to harbor; (the reasoning operates something like this: it’s terrible that anyone has nuclear technology (this is instinctive rather than rigorously fleshed out), so why let it spread…) Thus a regime whose purpose and effect is nothing more than a power grab is justified through a shifting complex of “moral” rationales claiming to be concerned with peace and global safety.

Thus Feldman’s article is a simple attempt to provide greater moral fiber to the present non-proliferation regime. Aside from vague notions of Islamism’s proclivity to suicide (and, by inference, collective suicide), Feldman also falls back upon the Middle East’s “instability”, its “anti-Americanism”, and its lack of democracy. All these vague catch-phrases of Western prurient interest are marshaled to support the idea that, while there may come a time when we would be willing to support nuclear states in the Middle East, at the present moment they cannot be trusted with the weapons. And so, whether we bomb or twist arms or bring the state to its economic knees, we must force our will on the peoples of the region. Essentially, Feldman’s article amounts to a liberal-centrist justification for the continuation of American power in the Middle East , wielded (as it must be) in pursuit of our own interests.

Feldman’s total lack of interest in an international system based on equality, in fact, his willingness to support policies that consciously ensure continued inequality, allows him to ignore the reality that it is exactly this hierarchical international system that reproduces “instability”, “anti-Americanism”, and the continual thwarting of democracy (if, by democracy, we mean government by the people in furtherance of the interests of that people). Feldman concludes by explaining that the US “has strong reason to block its enemy Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons…if and when Iran does have the bomb, its enhanced power and prestige will certainly be lent to policies that it conceives as promoting the Islamic interest.” Thus, until Muslim countries renounce any effort to promote their own interest (and instead assist in the pursuit of what the US perceives as its or their interest), we must oppose any move that would make them stronger. That Feldman’s article boils down to something not particularly different from conservative realpolitik is therefore instructive of the narrowness of public opinion generally. The supposed greater thoughtfulness, subtlety and diplomacy of liberal foreign policy is nothing of the sort. It is rather a more conflicted, confusing and messy justification than its conservative counterpart for the regime of international inequality and American supremacy. The attempt to give this position a patina of intellectual credibility leads only to convoluted articles like Feldman’s.

On Liberal Renewal

Inevitably, the mid-term elections have produced amongst Democratic influentials a debate about pragmatism versus principle. With his March essay "Party In Search of a Notion," the executive editor of the American Prospect, Michael Tomasky, kicked off a (temporary) national debate about the Democrats' 'vision', or lack thereof. Now that Democrats have a decent chance of retaking both houses of Congress, this question has new urgency. It is especially pressing since one important reason for the Democrats' success appears to be the emergence of a crop of even more centrist candidates than those from elections past. Moreover, if Democrats are going to turn a temporary electoral victory, whose proximate cause is public disenchantment with this particular administration, into a more lasting re-alignment, then they need to be more than pragmatic, they need to enchant. Here is where the problem of 'vision' reconnects with questions of 'practicality' and pragmatism. Pragmatism is self-defeating if it means abandoning precisely those aspects of principled, ideological consistency that gives a party substance.

Enter the project of liberal renewal.

The past three years has been rather productive for those seeking to create new intellectual spaces and ideological projects along the liberal-left trajectory. The Euston Manifesto was the first moment in what has been really a trans-Atlantic process of liberal renewal. It has also included a series of books, such as Peter Beinart's earnest, ignorant and conservative tract The Good Fight. Along this spectrum of political opinion has come a number of self-critical pieces accusing liberals of political capitulation and intellectual dissolution, not least of which is Tony Judt's recent piece, Bush's Useful Idiots. In direct response to Judt's article, the liberal public intellectual, Bruce Ackerman, along with ex-radical Todd Gitlin, have taken up the cause of renewing liberal ideas. In mid-October, they published a new manifesto for liberals called "We Answer to the Name of Liberals" in which they claimed "this is a moment for liberals to define ourselves." But the nature of these efforts does not bode well for their success.

Ackerman and Gitlin lay out the familiar litany of Bush regime abuses, and make important sounding pronouncements about the "process of public reason" and "true patriotism." But what, exactly, is being renewed here? This is undoubtedly not the renewal of a full-fledged liberal doctrine, as it has conventionally been known in the United States. The social democratic element, traditionally associated with 20th century American liberals, is barely found - a distant target towards which they want debate to be "refocused." Much more prominently featured is a series of foreign policy critiques and proposals. We have identified some of the pathological tendencies of this international orientation of contemporary liberalism before. Its most fundamental problem is its inability to come to term with domestic politics and the public. It reflects a tendency to seek renewal abroad, rather than at home, or, insofar as it seeks to focus debate on domestic issues, it does so only in an uninspiring, technocratic way, rather than through a vision that articulates shared interests in a compelling fashion.

But the content of these manifestos and tracts is not their only problem. The problem lies not just with the specific ideas they seek to renew, but also in the manner by which they hope to represent a liberal movement. The form these manifestos take - as internet petitions bearing the names of important public figures, sent to the right magazines, websites, and listservs - reflects a vision of renewal as an oddly passive experience. These manifestos ask nothing more than acceptance, or at most for signatories to their petitions. There is little active engagement with the ideas – such as they are. Their passive character provides little hope for a real liberal renewal. Instead, it indicates that liberals face more of the same problem that has plagued them for a great while: a reluctance to engage in sensuous political activity. Much has been made lately about the sophistication of Republican canvassing, and the Democrats’ inferiority in grassroots organization. Democrats have tried to combat this Republican edge through “technological” innovations and “outsourcing,” none of which addresses the reality that politics demands human contact. That is, it requires convincing those with whom you currently disagree of your arguments, a process that both builds movements, and refines the ideas on which they are based. No short-cut that aims to circumvent this basic, difficult, and intimate aspect of politics will work. Certainly, liberalism is in need of an intellectual renewal. But for those ideas to develop, both in substance and currency, they must arise out of an active process of political engagement.

Freedom of Speech Under Fire?

A spirited defense of academic freedom from Saturday’s Washington Post takes up the dire Academic Bill of Rights. Peddled by controversialist David Horowitz and his cohorts, the ABOR is couched in the language of academic freedom while promoting its opposite. Claiming as its goal the "protection’" of students from "the imposition of any orthodoxy of a political, religious or ideological nature," ABOR attempts to establish the right of external authorities to police what is taught by lecturers. As the author of Saturday’s op-ed put it: "ABOR's backers argue that professors presenting new ideas might "indoctrinate" or offend students. Their bill denies us the right to evaluate the merits of ideas and arguments for ourselves by banning "political" or "anti-religious" speech from classrooms."

Of course the bluster of Horowitz et. al. should not be taken too seriously. Their position is defensive—a recognition of the liberal hegemony that reigns within the university system. In fact, the threat to academic freedom today seems as likely to emerge from students themselves, as argued by Wendy Kaminer in this attack of those she calls "little authoritarians." Discussion is being curtailed, Kaminer argues, on the basis "that there is some right, some civil right, not to be offended, which trumps somebody else’s right to speak in a way that you find offensive." Anybody who has spent time on a campus recently will recognize this trend. Both left and right use the notion of offense to suppress arguments with which they disagree; liberals to suppress homophobic speech, Zionists to suppress criticism of Israel, pro-Palestinian groups to suppress Zionists etc. etc.

It is not hard to see how we lose out through this process. Arguments go unheard or unchallenged, and we undermine the notion of our own rationality by underestimating our ability to distinguish between good and bad ideas. Importantly though, this censorious climate does not amount to an attack on freedom of speech in a conventional sense (or the way that Horowitz’s Bill, should it gain more influence, might do). It is authoritarianism from below, not above. According to this fresh and insightful essay by Dolan Cummings, research director for the British-based thinktank, The Institute of Ideas, this last fact partially explains the lackluster defense of freedom of speech that characterizes recent times. Indeed, he argues, at a time when, in the West, most of us enjoy freedom of speech, we have ceased to value it as an absolute. He states that, “[b]izarrely, most of us, most of the time, have free speech in reality, but not in principle, in practice but not in theory.”

As we have argued before, people do not experience liberty as necessity today. This extends to the question of freedom of speech. But it would be odd to set out to defend freedom of speech in and of itself. It is an issue that has historically been contested as part of a broader political program. Such contestation took the form of the Protestant struggle against the hegemony of the Catholic Church in reformation Europe, an example Cummings brings up. More closely related to the topic of this blog, would be the original freedom of speech movement that developed at Berkeley during the 1960s. There, students organizing the anti-war movement found their political activities were curtailed by the university authorities. They were forced to create a broad coalition that addressed the new question head on. All of which is to say, a defense of freedom of speech requires that people have something of import to say. In the absence of broader political activity, the concept of free speech, indeed its very value, becomes difficult to discern.

Not that the ‘soft’ limitations on free speech are unproblematic. As John Kerry discovered this week, ‘supporting the troops’ is a prerequisite to being a part of any political discussion today. And we have written before about the way that the concept of security acts as a limitation on the contemporary political imagination. The problems for free speech of "little authoritarianism" will only best be understood and combatted, however, when we begin to push the current limits of political possibility. The boundaries of freedom of speech will become apparent when ideas once again take on a concrete aspect.