After watching the first part of the doco The Power of Nightmares on SBS tonight, I was struck by the parallelism between Islamist ideology and Neo-con thought. Both are deeply hostile to the individual freedoms engendered by modern liberalism, both rail against relativism while trying to actively shape truth, and both view the means as justifiable by the ends. The neo-con and the Islamist projects stand as mirrored opposites, clashing over what is finally irreconcilable. Max Weber wrote of the fate of modern societies – when politics ceases to be grounded in a traditional value consensus what we must choose between is “warring gods”, or as Weber is quick to add elsewhere, the demons that animate causes.
Weber’s great insight was that “the decisive means for politics is violence.” But Weber was also courageous enough to go where many do not wish to go – a realistic reflection on the relation between ethics and politics. Weber called for an ethics of responsibility – a passionate politics, but a politics tempered by realism about the nature of political and social action. Those who have an ethics of ultimate ends, Weber suggested, turn politics into an apocalyptic conflict. Not for them the management and adjustment of clashing values, and the approach to one’s end through “a strong and slow boring on hard boards”.
Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics as a vocation, has to realize these ethical paradoxes. He must know that he is responsible for what may become of himself under the impact of these paradoxes. I repeat, he lets himself in for the diabolic forces lurking in all violence. The great virtuosi of acosmic love of humanity and goodness, whether stemming from Nazareth or Assisi or from Indian royal castles, have not operated with the political means of violence. Their kingdom was ‘not of this world’ and yet they worked and still work in this world. The figures of Platon Karatajev and the saints of Dostoievski still remain their most adequate reconstructions. He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence. The genius or demon of politics lives in an inner tension with the god of love, as well as with the Christian God as expressed by the church. This tension can at any time lead to an irreconcilable conflict.
We stand at the conjunction of powerful changes. One vision of globalisation is closely linked to the modern idea of progress and increasing enlightenment. Another seeks to obtain final victory for one utopia – neo-con or Islamist, it doesn’t matter so much, because the choice of ends and the apocalyptic stakes are the same in the final analysis. As Weber wrote in 1918, “Not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now.”
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has some interesting and rather Weberian insights to bring to bear on the conception of politics as a clash of ultimate values, where only one truth can prevail:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? We are facing much more than a politicising of religion, whether Muslim or any other. The issue is the “religionising” of politics, where the normal conflict of group interests is regarded as an eschatological matter, and the confrontation of these interests as having an apocalyptic character.
This is a longing for certainty in an unstable world. It is an escape from extremely complicated problems we cannot even name. It is a longing for the “great simplification”. It is nostalgia for a lost, simple world and the elementary array of tasks within this world.
In this general cacophony — where serious debate about the state of affairs almost never takes place, in which television shows have actors in front of the footlights shouting slogans at one another and using “word-bites” as weapons — one needs some kind of certainty. It can take the form of a simple division between good and evil, in which our hearts are immaculate, and the evildoers are condemned for they have no hope of redemption.
Islam has no monopoly on this vision. Both Palestinian and Israeli radicals, amazingly, use the same sort of vocabulary. Each side presents their conflict as an ultimate clash, not between Palestinians and Israeli settlers, but between Jehovah and Mohammed. A similar kind of vocabulary is present in news coverage of the 2004 American election, although the gods being worshipped had different names. But one must admit that in this vast current of today’s Manicheism, Islam — for geopolitical reasons — has occupied a very important position.
Such is our present fate, it seems, to live in a world made (up) by madmen in the halls of power in Washington and the caves of Pakistan.
Let Weber have the last word. Will we succumb to the madness of utopian apocalypticism, or will we seek to measure our deeds and ends and construct our desired world through reason and persuasion?
Then, I wish I could see what has become of those of you who now feel yourselves to be genuinely ‘principled’ politicians and who share in the intoxication signified by this revolution. It would be nice if matters turned out in such a way that Shakespeare’s Sonnet 102 should hold true:
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer’s front doth sing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.But such is not the case. Not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now. Where there is nothing, not only the Kaiser but also the proletarian has lost his rights. When this night shall have slowly receded, who of those for whom spring apparently has bloomed so luxuriously will be alive? And what will have become of all of you by then ? Will you be bitter or banausic ? Will you simply and dully accept world and occupation? Or will the third and by no means the least frequent possibility be your lot: mystic flight from reality for those who are gifted for it, or–as is both frequent and unpleasant–for those who belabor themselves to follow this fashion? In every one of such cases, I shall draw the conclusion that they have not measured up to their own doings. They have not measured up to the world as it really is in its everyday routine.
Yes, its a clash of two radical conservative creeds, with a confluence of interest in promoting a clash of civilisations. I see them, together, as my common enemy. Wouldnt give you tuppence for either of them.
as John Stuart Mill so aptly put it:
“While it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people..it is true that most stupid people are conservatives.”
Now, they are intending to beat each other to death. Alas, we moderates on both sides find ourselves caught between two slavering morons, longing for the certainty of a single idiocy, bent on mutual destruction.
I like this bit:
Please Mark, you equate Don Rumsfeld with Zaqawi? Really?
I would have thought that Rumsfeld would not have been so busy, or wanted to be if a few planes didn’t slam into buildings in New York and Washington.
There seems to me to be huge disconnect in the outside world as what Americans believe their place is in the world. They would much rather be disengaged having no interest in what happens elsewhere. Bush had no interest in the outside world in the 2000 election. In fact he had great difficulty remembering the names of world leaders. So what you will but the American public didnÄôt give shit then….. until …911.
The very idea hawkish conservatives could even be compared to Islamic fascists is absurd in the extreme.
Please, explain the amazing assertion?
Sure there is now an ideal that things ought to be finally put right in the Mid East. However this is more of a Wilsonian ideal than a conservative one. Many conservatives have a problem with this.
Moreover, it seems always convenient for those who opposed the war to do by ignoring the Bosnian intervention, as though it was somehow different. Please! I guess Bosnia was ok because Chirac was not opposed to it.
It’s a good point Joe, but you’ll find a lot of Leftists opposed the Bosnian expedition too. Frankly, I can’t see the justification for unleashing the global gendarmes on Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia, pick-your-”humanitarian”-target, myself either. None of these places is ever going to be remotely governable, regardless of whether they are placed under permanent occupation. However, destroying what was in place in each instance did unleash a wave of crime/drugs/terrorism/pick-your-nasty.
Speaking of permanent occupation, is there any likelihood that Australians are going to be allowed to come home from the Solomon Islands any time soon? It’s gone on a couple of years now, and I can’t for the life of me understand exactly what’s being achieved there. If there aren’t any genetic reasons for the Islanders’ alleged inability to provide their own security, it seems strange that it is taking two and a half years for us to “finish the job” when the “insurgency” was an utter joke anyways. Are we deliberately emasculating their sovereignty or what?
Aha! So that’s what we are “accomplishing” in the Solomons: prisoner abuse!
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/solomons-jail-abuse-alleged/2005/10/20/1129775902818.html
It’s good to see we aren’t about to deny our grateful satrapy the benefits of joining up to the emerging global torture regime. Is there no place on earth that is immune from this insanity?
By our standards, Joe, Rummy is not as barbaric as Zaqawi, albeit Shock and Awe and the various attempts to murder Saddam and sons didn’t take much account of innocent bystanders.
But you do have to wonder about somebody whose immediate reaction to 9/11 was to urge an attack on Iraq, which was never connected with the whole thing.
well without Rummy you wouldn’t have Zaqawi!
Homer’s on the money there. Iraq was many things before the invasion; a viper’s nest of radical Islamists wasnt one of them.
Nice work, COW!
We’s all rooned! (Set your sights on some far off distant star!) Very interesting post. Thanks.
Look, I am not for the war the way it is presently conducted for many reasons. The main one is because it morphed into this Wilsonian ideal about getting democracy into the region. However, the question I ask the Left is if we hadnÄôt gone into Iraq now, then what we were to do with that problem which had festered for years after the first Gulf war? We have now learnt we couldnÄôt trust the French and Russians sitting on the Security Council because of the huge bribe scandal called the oil for food program as they were voting with their wallets rather than principle. Containment wasnÄôt working.
What I see now is total dishonesty, particularly from the American Left questioning the reasons why Bush went in there in the first place and accusing him of lying. This is a dishonest characterization in the extreme. Why? Because the Bush Administration just didnÄôt one give one reason for the war, there were in fact 22 reasons why we went in, in the first place. The CIA directorÄôs comment that WMD were a slam-dunk is not made up and the Administration shared all the intelligence information with the various Congressional committees that was later fully vetted by a bi-partisan commission: the final conclusion being that intelligence officers were not made to doctor information traveling through the pipeline to help the case for war. These are truths.
We now have this mischaracterization of Bush and Rumsfeld as being on the same plane as Hitler. This is not serious, intelligent well thought out criticism. This is nothing more than cheap political grandstanding at the worse time, particularly during a time of war.
If anyone thought that Iraq was not a problem, maybe they ought to get their heads around the biggest cahuna of them all- Iran with nuclear weapons. Anyone thought what we ought to do about that before it becomes a tsunami: because think what you want about Iraq, Iran with nuclear weapons is not going to turn out pretty.
We could have stopped Iran form getting this far but now because of the scared deer in headlights routine we are fronting up to the probability that we will have a significant nuclear exchange in the next few years.
Characterizing the Bush Administration s a fascist regime is actually succeeding overall. However the failure of this strategy will be met head on when we see the plume of mushroom smoke in the Mid East and then we begin the ask ourselves how could this have happened. ThatÄôs why mirrors are always handy.
Joe, who’s characterising the Bushies as a fascist regime? I’m not!
What I’m arguing is that they’re not behaving rationally in terms of self interest but as an imperial power driven by ideology.
I’ve said over and over – the useful contrast is Iraq and Indonesia – democracy (however imperfect) came to the latter country through the actions of its own people. Iraq was a basket case before the war, and Saddam’s regime would not have lasted. Whatever emerged from its ruins would not perhaps have been to our taste, but odds are that it would have had legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people. You can’t force democracy on someone else at missile point.
Similarly, in Kosovo, the US backed the most extreme of the groups opposing Milosevic and undermined support for democratic forces. Nor did the war achieve its humanitarian ends. What we have there and in Bosnia are European satrapies in a state of frozen peace. Nothing much has been solved in terms of the underlying factors which led to genocide and war.
“We have now learnt we couldnÄôt trust the French and Russians sitting on the Security Council because of the huge bribe scandal called the oil for food program as they were voting with their wallets rather than principle.”
Dont tell Joe about the Australian wheat board.
Actually I put more blame on Rummy.
The Big Z is simply a bloodthirsty murderer who has no clear exposition of Islam.
Rummy on the other hand has been one of the mad group who has always wanted to invade Iraq.
Despite being told politely by Jooskar fischer that he provided no evidence for his case and he was therefore an idiot he went ahead and invaded Iraq despite knowing the US army had little protection for some of their vehicles.
LE.
The only thing is that Australian Government of whatever persuasion would never have been so actively involved as the French and Russian govts were in taking bribes or at least allowing it to happen. Certainly our decision to go to war was not swayed by our wallet.
Mark
I am not sure if I agree the Saddamites would have fallen off the wagon. Dad and the kids were pretty well ensconced and at any rate Iraq as a stalemate legacy of Gulf War 1 couldnÄôt continue in its present form. But even, even if we had gone along with containment where was the food for oil scandal eventually going to lead us? Which ever road we took would have meant that Saddam would have gone on supported by illicit money that could be spent on… guess what WMD again, or supporting terrorist causes around the world. So SaddamÄôs fate was sealed after 911.
I do agree with your democracy comparison though and it was wrong to move towards this ideal. However I can understand where Bush was coming from over this. There were two choices over the war. One choice was the short brutal go in get out type of campaign. More like the Brits used to do. Bush wanted to leave Iraq with some lasting democratic structure on which at this stage the jury is still out.
However, we have turned ourselves inside out over this war. The damage is how we now deal with Iran with nuclear weapons. Even if Bush made a mistake over Iraq, even if we accept this we still have the issue of a nuked up Iran and an Iranian president who demonstrates all the characteristics of lunacy. What happens there?
LetÄôs remember that if there was anything the Jews have learned since the Nazi genocide, it is, if someone says they want to destroy you, believe him.
Re Iran,
he isn’t acting like a lunatic but a politician in the area.
Iran either has or will get Nukes.
Theeir radar and defence forces are too good for any country to invade them.
nukes are only dangerous when the leaders have suicidal tendencies.
Neither he not the mad mullahs have this.
I think Pakistan is a bigger worry than Iran.
Joe – but the assumption you’re making is that it was necessary to invade Iraq. Obviously there was no justification in terms of WMD, but it’s hard to see that he posed a threat to anyone either in the region or elsewhere. Saddam’s regime was in a similar situation economically and militarily to the Soviet Union before it collapsed – and if there’s an object lesson that tyrannies aren’t forever self sustaining from the 20th century, that’s the one!
The other striking thing on the doco was the activities of Rummy and the neo-cons in the late 70s in alleging that the Soviet Union had secret weapons and was in far better shape than it was. When they were given the chance (through “Team B” headed by Prof. Pipes) to re-examine the CIA data, it still showed nothing so they concluded that the Soviets must have “secret” weapons. Blinded by ideology, a noble lie, or both? Your pick!
Just on one point I think Joe made about Iraq festering since the gulf war – whilst that may have been a contributing factor, very little is different in Iraq since its creation after the first WWI so I think its erroneous to place your finger on the pulse of what’s happened only since the first gulf war
Joe’s argument is circular.
Plus, of all the festering states in the world, why did the US have to walk into this one?
Mark:
“the CIA data, it still showed nothing so they concluded that the Soviets must have “secret” weapons. Blinded by ideology, a noble lie, or both? Your pick”!
I think it was neither as they were perusing a policy set by cold hard logic, which is, that is always itÄôs better to overestimate your opponent than not doing so. ItÄôs like trading options. Selling options means you have unlimited downside risk for limited gains. Buying an option is limited risk for unlimited gain in terms of odds. In other words your opponents places you in the only direction you can go, which is to overestimate his possibilities. Think of it think this way: If you are at the CIA working as an estimator/ analyst after 911. What do you do? Are you in the frame of mind to underestimate Saddam or would you overcompensate in your estimates? My guess is the intelligence flows after 911 immediately went into overestimate-overdrive simply because it was the only safe route to take. In other words for a career minded intelligence officer there was no gain in underestimating SaddamÄôs possibilities. This thought process would have happened in any administration because it is how people function.
Of course, having the Soviets as the opponents along with all the secrecy and machinations they perused would in my book allow for only allow one option. It better to be a little paranoid about your opponent than being lax; after all we did have the 1930′s to fall back on as history.
I agree tyrannies do eventually fall. However the big hole in that theory is timing. In other words when are they going to fall and is it better waiting it out. Well, we waited 75 years for the Soviets to fall and even then it was a surprise. We had also waited 13 years for Saddam to go. In other words containment policy was not an option after 911 mainly because the container was leaking as the result of the French and Russians. Saddam had oil money, which to anyoneÄôs thinking was a terrible combination.
And this, Mark, is exactly the same mistake we are making with Iran. In other words the scared deer in headlights effect is the result of Iraq and later criticism, which has made us all wary of bellicose actions especially when needed the most. In other words we have now overcompensated the other way when we really need to read the estimates coming in. As I said earlier, what we are doing now will only lead to the big mushroom over the Mid East in a few years time if nothing is done about it.
I’m not too concerned about the neo-con project (if there is such a thing) – I don’t see it as an equal (but “opposing”) to Islamist ideology. The neo-con thang seems to me to be much more in the usual realms of politics than Islamist ideas – which seem to be much more about one monolithic world view and, most scarily of all, against rational inquiry.
This is not to disregard parallels between them, but to say that the world ordered to Islamist ideology would be a mightily scary and dark place.
Bill P
I am not being circular. I am only trying show that these guys are not as evil as made out. Like us all they are creatures of their environment and circumstance.
To demonstrate my fairness on this I am also critical of the some people on the right attacking on the Clinton administratin for maintaining a barren foreign policy through his 8 years.
These people seem to forget. There was absolutely no constituency in Amercia during the 90′s for overseas adventures. Clinton won in 92 with a platform to move away from foreign policy issues with the public agreeing to this. Bush won in 2000 with a policy of becoming even more insular.
As far as Americans were concerned the cold war was over and they were not gunna play anymore.
The Islamofascists were blowing up innocents and planned 11 Sep 01 long before the Bush Administration came into power.
All of the criticisms of the actions of the Bush Administration are negative. There is no positive alternatives put forward. All the left wishes for is the return of the Saddam Regime, the unending weapons inspections, the oil for food rorts that filled the pockets of Saddam and starved the population, the return of the Taliban and their enlightened governance of Afghanistan, Libya remaining a rogue nation. What a wonderful thing to hope for.
I know what camp I would rather be in, and it ain’t the morally bankrupt anti-Bush, Anti-US, Anti-West, Pro-Islamofascist Lefties.
I agree that “The Power of Nightmares” drew some excellent parallels between, in 2005, the madmen in the halls of power in Washington and those in the caves of Pakistan. In particular, the interviewed neo-consÄô unawareness of their own patent insanity was priceless.
Two criticisms, though. I thought that the program made too much of US foreign policy, for the purpose of drawing its key premise/parallel. Economic fundamentalism — privatisation, job insecurity, high corporate profits as wages stagnate — always was/is an essential part of the neo-con package. That it is harder to brand what is now (regrettably) near-worldwide economic orthodoxy as a top-down imposition from a few influential nutters (compared to the US as the WorldÄôs Deputy Sheriff) is no excuse for leaving it out of the equation.
Secondly, the closing lines of last nightÄôs first ep — that by the mid-80s, the neo-cons started to believe in their own myths, contrary to their Straussian destiny as a knowing elite — is poetic license taken too far. There was certainly no trigger at that time for such a radical upheaval/re-visioning to have taken place. Rather, the mid-80s shift was simply about demographics.
In the 70s, the neo-cons were mainly young boomers — 20-somethings fresh out of uni of course being textbook members of the Straussian vanguard. Ten years on, the choice facing the 20-something founders was plain: recruit a new generation (and move on), or entrench themselves for life — which of course is was they chose. That latter wasnÄôt/isnÄôt very Straussian — a 50-something “vanguard”?! — seems to not have occurred.
For the neo-cons, institutionalising themselves as monopoly brokers of the vanguard — the next generation (X) was let “in”, but only as sub-alterns, was made easier by gen X passivity, with our brightest years squandered in the death of a thousand internships. Ironically — NOT — gen XÄôs passivity here was a logical outcome of neo-con economic fundamentalism. Mine is/was the first generation in history with a purported gross over-supply of the highly intelligent and idealistic.
Razor, very easy.
Instead of invading Iraq for mythical reasons they should have used all those resources to exterminate Aq when in Afghanistan.
you could swear bush is bin Laden’s candidate!
Homer:
should have used all those resources to exterminate Aq
They can’t use DDT. Ask ahhhh…. no don’t on second thought’s, it would be insufferable to have to listen to.
How does that make them wrong?
Completely wrong. There are no positive alternatives put forward.
Tell me, Joe. If it’s possible to negotiate and even assimilate the likes of President al-Bashir of Sudan, who came to power with the support of Islamists, has presided over far more death and destruction than Saddam and even allowed Hezbollah training camps to operate on his territory, and if it’s possible to deal with Gaddafi, who has supported terrorists and insurgencies across the entire planet, why oh why is Saddam so difficult to deal with?
What is it about Saddam that makes him so more (allegedly) irrational than an unreconstructed Islamist and a raving loony Islamo-socialist? Indeed, given that Saddam didn’t even control much of his own territory, it makes one wonder what exactly is wrong with keeping a constricted anti-Iranian buffer regime in power.
As Mark has pointed out – tyrannies can collapse eventually…as their clapped out economies are basically going to fall to bits without outside support. The Soviet Union was ultimately prolonged by direct aid and concessional loans from the US government and technological transfers from US corporations (which kind of forces one to see the “Cold War” in a completely different light).
Bill Posters
So, the US and the Bush adminstration have done nothing good? At all?
Thanks for the grammar corrections.
Have you seen any positive alternatives proposed?
“As I said earlier, what we are doing now will only lead to the big mushroom over the Mid East in a few years time if nothing is done about it.”
No, what you’re really saying is that we need to set up a world government (presumably run by the UN, using US money and cannon fodder) to invade and assimilate anyone who violates “international law”. And you seem to be nominating the United States taxpayer, already racking up a cool US$500 billion a year in debt, to pay for this ruinous scheme of invading a country three times larger (and an order of magnitude tougher) than Iraq in order to enforce UN disarmament decrees. In other words, we need to spread “freedom” by erecting a global police state.
THAT is what will lead to mushroom clouds over the globe. Not staying out of pointless unwinnable conflicts. Not declinging to needlessly make enemies among people who, after all, do not necessarily sympathise with their government.
In sum, it is a blueprint for the destruction of the United States economy and potentially the world economy, the massive centralisation of power in the hands of first national governments and then a global government, and the virtual enslavement of millions of people.
“Have you seen any positive alternatives proposed?”
Withdraw from the UN, tear up all useless treaties (such as the ICC) to which we are a party, and disperse any powers that organisation has appropriated back to sovereign states. Cease building a global police state with my tax dollars. Apply the logic of limited constitutional government consistently and abolish foreign “humanitarian” aid. Refuse to forcibly impose ridiculous armed social programmes on foreign peoples who pose no credible threat to you. Abolish “humanitarian law” and refuse to partake in pointless “benevolent” interventions against all designated “Hitlers”. Abolish tariffs, and trade freely with anyone who is interested.
I’ll keep going when I get time.
The Islamofascists were blowing up innocents and planned 11 Sep 01 long before the Bush Administration came into power.
Your point being…?
All of the criticisms of the actions of the Bush Administration are negative. There is no positive alternatives put forward. All the left wishes for is the return of the Saddam Regime, the unending weapons inspections, the oil for food rorts that filled the pockets of Saddam and starved the population, the return of the Taliban and their enlightened governance of Afghanistan, Libya remaining a rogue nation. What a wonderful thing to hope for.
My word, you’ve got us to a tee, spot one, so perceptive.
I know what camp I would rather be in, and it ainÄôt the morally bankrupt anti-Bush, Anti-US, Anti-West, Pro-Islamofascist Lefties.
Thank you for sharing with us.
Now, have you got anything to contribute to the discussion?
I’m coming from a different perspective to Steve but I’m also suspicious of the concept of “humanitarian intervention” and I think he’s right in suggesting that the real motive of the neo-cons is to impose a unilateral world order.
Congratulations on mark bahnisch for putting Max Weber front and centre in the analysis of the role of force in modernizing social systems, particularly in the context of the War on Terrorism. Weber stands head and shoulders above the rest for both his keen scientfic insight, conscientious scholarship and committement to humane civilization.
Weber’s analysis of the charismatic personality fits Bin Laden to a “T”. Likewise, Weber’s analysis of the amoral efficiency of the bureaucracy is applicable to slick operations like the Office for Special Plans.
However I feel that mark’s Islamist=neo-con comparison is a little stretched:
This is a little unfair to some of the neo-cons, at least in respect to their proneness for democracy promotion. For one thing, there is a clear intellectual and ideological break between the first generation (v.1) of neo-cons (Kristol I, Podhoretz I, Bell, Lipset, Moynihan, Banfield, Glazer and Murray) and the second generation (v.2) of neo-cons (Kristol II, Podhoretz II, Wolfowitz, Cohen, Perle, Hitchens et al).
The neo-cons (v.1) were mainly empirical social scientists very much in the Weberian tradition. They were mostly Jewish ex-Leftists who criticised the degeneration of the US’s welfare and warfare state during the sixties and seventies.
These criticisms were largely vindicated by Reagan’s warfare state reforms in the eighties and Clinton’s welfare state reforms in the nineties. The neo-cons (v.2) could take some credit for the promotion of democracy in Eastern Europe, to the extent that the Reagan’s arms build up hastened the end of the Cold War.
The neo-cons (v.2) are ideological social revolutionaries, very much in the Trotskyite tradition that Weber was so concerned to criticise in his magnificent essay. They certainly carry on as if truth (the reality based community) is malleable to power.
I would suggest that Koestler’s revision of Weber’s analysis of the totalitarian mentality fits the “ethical lapses” of the War on Terror best. The contest between Likudnik apparatchik and Wahabbist jihadist conforms to Koestler’s typology of the Yogi and the Commissar. Both apparatchik and jihadists are a grotesque hybrid of Weber’s ethic of responsibility and ethic of absolute ends. That is, they apply machiavellian means in search of utopian ends.
But the Jihadist assumes the holy demeanour of the Yogi whilst the Commissar wears the stony face of the Commissar. Nonetheless, the polar extremes turn out to have the same ideological temperature.
Most of them are Likudniks and partisans of Judaic Israel. To that extent resemble (in the negative) the Wahhabist Islamists. In that sense, the Likudnik-Wahhabist fight is the contemporary Islamic-Judaic aspect of Huntingtons’s Clash of Civilizations.
But no one can deny that the neo-cons (v.2) have tried to promote democracy through parts of the Southern hemisphere. Wolfowitz was behind the Reagan admins support of Acquino against Marcos. And both Iraq and Afghanistan, the two states in which the neo-cons ran the war, are more democratic now than they would have been without neo-con militarism.
Of course it is an open question as to whether promotion of democracy throughout the Southern hemisphere will engender an increase or dimunition of liberty. There is such a thing as illiberal democracy. Majority rule, as we are seeing practised in both South West Asian and the Southern Americas, does not imply minority rights.
If that is the case mark bahnisch may be right to say that the neo-cons (v.2) have helped to sink “individual freedoms engendered by modern liberalism”. It may well be that the conflict between jihadists and apparatchiks will cause the doors of the Iron Cage to swing open for us all:
Jack, yes, the programme was a bit schematic about the neo-cons, though it’s worth noting that Kristol I straddles both neocon (v1) and neocon (v2). The second generation neo-cons are much more avowedly Straussian. One reason why I suspect that “spreading freedom and democracy” is a bit of a figleaf – it’s the noble lie that enables the philosopher kings to disguise their real interests in reshaping mores and politics.
Steve:
I don’t necessarily disagree with some of the points you are making. Recall, I did say I don’t agree with the way the war is conducted at the present time. This being the very best I have read so far:
“Withdraw from the UN, tear up all useless treaties (such as the ICC) to which we are a party, and disperse any powers that organization has appropriated back to sovereign states. Cease building a global police state with my tax dollars. Apply the logic of limited constitutional government consistently and abolish foreign “humanitarian” aid. Refuse to forcibly impose ridiculous armed social programmes on foreign peoples who pose no credible threat to you. Abolish “humanitarian law” and refuse to partake in pointless “benevolent” interventions against all designated “Hitlers”. Abolish tariffs, and trade freely with anyone who is interested”.
However, we are not anywhere close to reaching these goals simply because the US will not have a government that will go back to the original foundations of its republican ideals. In other words you are expressing a utopia we will never see.
Bear in mind that the US tried isolationism in the 20′s and 30′s and we ended up in a situation that was worse than before. In other words neither of the political parties will run a candidate that has such a platform. Even if a third party candidate ran with such a policy I think it would take more votes from the Dems than the Republicans this time round: opposite to what happened with Perot.
On second thoughts we did see a US with disengagement policy to a relative extent only recently as I mentioned before. The Clinton administration came close to that ideal for a time anyway. Clinton ran and won on a platform of placing foreign policy in the less important basket. Hell, Bush 1 lost votes because he was seen as the “foreign policy” president”, recall? And what exactly did that get us. Well, Al Qaeda wasn’t exactly quiet during this period was it? Somalia, the attack of the US Frigate and 911 was planned as early as 1996. So even if there was a policy of relative isolation those bastards were still coming after us.
So in effect we are have to live in the present and work with what we have. That means even if a mistake was made over Iraq, it doesnÄôt give us license to ignore Iran. I really think that bloody guy in Iran intends to use nukes given the chance. At the very least he has told Israel he would like to do away with that country. I donÄôt think Israel will sit there and allow him to get nukes, especially when they only 600 miles apart. We may like the US to sit this one out but it isnÄôt going to happen simply because our troops are next door. More importantly how could any threatened nation sit back and allow this Iranian idiot to get nukes when there is a possibility he could disperse them to terrorists. In other words game theory comes into play. If the there are reasonable odds this guy cannot be trusted with nukes, then for the sake of your own people you may have to act or at the very least recognize risk has increased by orders of magnitude that a major American city is gunna get taken out.
And steve, would you think it would be a safe world even if our utopia came true. Coauld you trust Iran not to do something stupid. At least the Soviets weren’t stupid as they understood risks. This dickhead in Iran is signing contracts and having them sent to the bottom of a well. I am not talking about a smart move here. These idiots in Iran could really do something stupid and dangerous.
Steve
Think of it like this:
I have a gun pointed at you and you tell me that you are going insdie to get your gun. What should I do?
This is where are with Iran. The idiot has told us he is going inside to get his gun. What next?
But you haven’t established that Iran has got a gun pointed at me. First order of fallacy. There is no evidence that Iran has got a gun pointed at anyone.
Clinton was not an isolationist, but a globalist who attacked or occupied at least seven countries during his tenure. He made Ronald Reagan look like Jane Fonda.
And you have provided no evidence that Iran is going to pose a threat to, say, me, nor that they are actually likely to get nuclear weapons. Granted, it might be the case that Iran WILL get the bomb, and there is little to nothing that can be done about it except to politely remind them that their population would fall quickly by about 50 million if they were to fire a nuke anywhere.
“I really think that bloody guy in Iran intends to use nukes given the chance.”
But this is mere say-so. It’s not evidence, and it is worse than useless in deciding what to do about Iran (approximately nothing is about the most that can be justified at this stage). Until I am shown solid data on Iran, I see no reason for proposing an almighty (and frankly ruinous) government programme in advance of any knowledge of its costs and benefits.
“So even if there was a policy of relative isolation those bastards were still coming after us.”
That may be so, and if true, it follows that there is no cause in spending a couple of hundred billion dollars and countless lives in a country where “those bastards” did not have any real foothold.
Indeed, if the probability of being killed in a terrorist attack has a very weak correlation with how many Arab regimes (and apparently Persian, too) we do or do not topple, it follows that the war cannot have any rational connection to “terrorism”, suggesting the war cannot possibly be worth waging unless there is another proven benefit I’ve missed.
http://libertarian.org.au/blog/readArticle.jsp?articleID=6091206
http://www.libertarian.org.au/blog/readArticle.jsp?articleID=489789
Steve
Iran is not enriching urnanium because Bob Brown of the Australian green party has convinced them nuke energy is cleaner energy.
Domestic oil prices in Iran are cents per litre. So it’s not because they have decided to use the world price of oil for domestic use.
The after burn from their gas production alone gets them more than enough electricity.
So why then are they going hell for leather with the enrichment process?
And why would you not take the mad president at his word about Israel?