Other people far away
Norm makes a very sharp and telling point.
Periodically, the Guardian newspaper carries an op-ed piece on how somebody or other, typically a Western government, is sowing fear for some nefarious purpose. If the piece isn’t by Madeleine Bunting, then it’s likely to be by Simon Jenkins. And so it is today. He’s talking ‘scaremongering’, ‘politics of fear’, ‘fear politics’, ‘the pervasiveness of fear’…
Yes isn’t he just:
The media’s fondness for describing any explosion as “al-Qaeda-linked” has turned what was a tiny, if efficient, cabal of fanatics into a global menace, ridiculously on a par with Hitler and postwar communism…At least organised crime and communism posed genuine threats to American liberties. Al-Qaida does not, yet it has become the ruling obsession of Bush’s courtiers.
Norm retorts –
As long as the squads are only kidnapping, torturing and murdering people, you see, law and liberties remain intact – even if not the liberties of those particular people happening to be now dead or horribly injured.
There is something deeply contemptible about this section of Western liberal opinion and its most consistent organ, The Guardian. Its spokespeople can assimilate everything done by Islamist enemies of the rule of law and of the liberties of the not-yet-murdered…[O]nly let there be blood on the streets caused by groups openly proclaiming their hatred of secular law and liberty, and the Simon Jenkinses and the rest of his Guardianista ilk can’t wait to impress upon you how very relaxed you ought to be about it.
Let me zero in on the stupidity of ‘At least organised crime and communism posed genuine threats to American liberties. Al-Qaida does not, yet it has become the ruling obsession of Bush’s courtiers.’ Let me zero in on the stupidity and callous brutality of those two sentences. Here’s the thing: ‘American liberties’ are not the only issue here. It is entirely possible to think that al-Qaeda is no threat at all to American liberties or American anything else and still think that al-Qaida is a very horrible phenomenon, on a par with Nazism morally if not in its power (so far) to murder millions. It is entirely possible to think that we in the US can get along just fine even if al-Qaeda flourishes like the green bay tree in South Asia – and to think that our ability to get along just fine is not the only issue, is not the point here, is not the deciding factor. It is entirely possible to think that what happened in Mumbai was appalling and worth being very shocked and worried about because of the people of Mumbai. It is entirely possible to think that the spread of Islamism in much of the developing world could well leave the US almost untouched and still think it’s an absolute nightmare because of what it will do to the people who live under its crushing punitive rule.
This isn’t a very subtle or sophisticated thought, surely. It’s obvious enough, surely. It’s simple enough. Bad things are bad even if they happen to other people far away. That applies to DR Congo, Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, Saudi Arabia – it applies to more places than one likes to contemplate – and it applies to Mumbai and Kabul, too, even if New York and Washington remain unmussed forever.
But what exactly is Norm’s point? That we should – contra Ben Franklin – be willing to give up liberty for the sake of security? That the American government has not cultivated fear in the population in order to justify kidnapping, torture, imprisonment without trial, and a war of aggression?
Neil,
Very clever whattaboutery, there. Contra Simon Jenkins (and, it would seem, yourself), the issue isn’t Bush. As Ophelia clearly puts it, “al-Qaida is a very horrible phenomenon, on a par with Nazism morally if not in its power (so far) to murder millions.” And: “It is entirely possible to think that the spread of Islamism in much of the developing world could well leave the US almost untouched and still think it’s an absolute nightmare because of what it will do to the people who live under its crushing punitive rule.” That’s the issue, and to abhor Al-Qaeda and Islamism is NOT to support Bush. Since when does my intolerance of theocratic thugs automatically entail curtailing my liberties?
Alain,
I actually agree with you and OB. What I’m questioning is the meaning and fairness of Norm’s criticism of Jenkins. I read Jenkins’ piece, and it doesn’t seem to be arguing, “Al-Qaeda is not such a big threat to us; and who cares about others.” And that doesn’t seem to be the focus of Norm’s condemnation. I’m not just being a smart-ass; I really want to understand Norm’s intention: is he advocating giving up civil liberties? And is he saying we our government has not been promoting excessive fear? That’s what it sounds like, but I’m open to a rational argument that that is not his intention.
It is entirely possible to think that what happened in Mumbai was appalling and worth being very shocked and worried about because of the people of Mumbai.
Sure it is, but this (and Normblog) misses the point of critics of scaremongering: that quite a few American conservatives use events like the Mumbai attacks to suggest that there’s some sort of existential threat to America, and to argue that America should react accordingly, and that this reaction should include war and curtailment of liberties.
“Is he advocating giving up civil liberties?”
Neil,
I will accept that you don’t know Norman Geras. But you seem not to have read his post carefully. In particular:
“But when did you ever hear one of them saying the same sort of thing about the inmates of Guantánamo or the victims of extraordinary rendition? When did you ever hear this computed in terms of traffic accidents? Here we have violations of liberty [my emphasis] – as indeed we do.”
And Jenavir,
Just because some American conservatives are upset by the events in Mumbai doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be. Islamic terrorists may not be an existential threat to America, but I have no intention of adopting Jenkins’ prescription: they are a scourge of civilization and I will NOT be relaxed about them.
Alain,
Norm calls these things “violations of liberty”, but does he regard them as objectionable, or as regretable but justified?
And about Jenavir: she (or he?) did not reproach conservatives for being upset about Mumbai, but for using it as evidence that America is under existential threat. That’s not at all the same thing.
I find the words quite clear. Regardless — and since you seem to be questioning his position — there is no excuse today with not knowing where Prof. Geras stands on an issue that figures as prominently in his moral philosophy. All that is needed is Google and a few words, say “Normblog” and “torture” and/or Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib. The list is long.
As for Jenavir, my point is simple: my abhorrence of what was done in Mumbai is not affected by who else is (or professes to be) similarly abhorred. That is a tactic of the apologist.
OB, Alain, both of you seem to miss the point. Al Quaeda is a very bad thing. It is probably a small exstensial threat to certain islamic regimes. There is a moral case for defeating Al Quaeda (politicaly, culturaly, operationaly etc) and preventing further violence and oppression against the weakest in (typically islamic) foreign countries. All these things may well be more important than civil liberties in America (or the UK), but will the use of scare tactics designed to coerce western populations into surrendring civil liberties have any effect other than to strengthen the hand of Al Quaeda?
It is quite possible to abhor the nature of Al Quaeda, support their erradication and still consider the illiberal measures taken, purportedly to prevent ‘terrorist attrocities’, as being both counterproductive and fundamentally wrong.
‘al-Qaida is a very horrible phenomenon, on a par with Nazism morally if not in its power’
True, and the links between the two are direct. Its supporters in the West are now lifting material directly from neo-Nazi websites to use in their propaganda.
http://tinyurl.com/6a9q7t
“quite a few American conservatives use events like the Mumbai attacks to suggest that there’s some sort of existential threat to America”
Of course they do, but so what; that’s not a good reason to counter by saying al-Qaeda is no big deal.
JoB, did you read the Jenkins piece and Norm’s piece? I really don’t care what you can believe about either if you haven’t read them.
Sorry, but Norm is over-reacting here. Jenkins is basically a conservative, but a liberal conservative in the best sense of both words. Yet here he is being casually conflated with the kind of left-radical thinking of the MBuntings of this world. This will not do. Jenkins is making an argument here as part of a larger and longer-term outlook, but an argument which many other commentators of a wide variety of political stripes have made, that the threat posed by AQ simply does not justify, for example, several tens of billions of pounds planned to be spent on UK ID cards; or the really quite severe curtailments of civil liberties that have been passed into law in the last decade. This is a perfectly reasonable argument, in the face of which Norm just goes off on one, as we say.
I’m quite sure Jenkins would not object to cost-effective pursuit, capture, or indeed quiet elimination of terrorists, regardless of their ideological bent. His complaint is, largely, that what we have is not that, it is a theatre of fear whose main purpose is to empower the state.
If you want to read a really compelling critique of security practices, from a genuine expert, who will tell you quite unequivocally that what happens at airports, etc, these days is basically just a very expensive pantomime, go read Bruce Schneier. http://www.schneier.com/
Hmm. I don’t buy it, Dave – Jenkins’s article is full of hyperbole. ‘Virtually all [US] comment on the Mumbai massacre has mentioned 9/11 and al-Qaida’ – how would he even know that? Then he bases much of his argument on a debate he had with Karl Rove – as if Rove represented what Jenkins calls ‘America.’
In the last para he finally (perhaps inadvertently) makes it clear that he’s talking about the Bush regime, but in the first para he talks about ‘America’ – in other words he treats the US as identical with the Bush administration. In the process he does say some stupidly dismissive things about al-Qaeda. Maybe he didn’t mean to dismiss the damage al-Qaeda does to people outside ‘America,’ but that’s how the piece came out.
my abhorrence of what was done in Mumbai is not affected by who else is (or professes to be) similarly abhorred. That is a tactic of the apologist.
Good thing I didn’t use it, then. As NB pointed out: I didn’t say you shouldn’t abhor it. I said you shouldn’t think it’s an existential threat, or even a serious threat, to the US.
OB, I think it’s quite easy to know what “virtually all US comment” on the attacks, or on any other subject, says. “U.S. comment” in journalism, on the subject of world events, generally means “official U.S. comment” and it’s not hard to find out what the U.S. has officially said about something or the other. As for Rove, he’s been the right-hand-man of the elected leader of America. So yes, he unfortunately does have some claim to “representing” America. Bush was elected by Rove’s playbook, and continued to govern by that same playbook. He does say a lot about “America” as a whole.
I simply didn’t see the implications you and Normblog are seeing. I think they’re there if you parse them, but it’s far from uncommon to refer to “America” meaning “the Bush regime” (or Germany meaning Angela Merkel or Britain meaning Gordon Brown…etc.) It seems to be that the worst he’s guilty of is imprecision of language, not dismissing what happened in Mumbai.
And, to clarify, by “serious threat” I was referring to something that would merit sacrificing civil liberties. Not “serious” in the sense that all loss of innocent human life is serious.
UK govt security policy makes Simon Jenkins very, very angry; and since it is basically a copy of US govt security policy [with a few extra authoritarian twists that would never make it into federal legislation past the Constitution], I expect US govt security policy makes him very, very angry too. Thus, and from his standpoint as a newspaper columnist, employed explicitly to state trenchant opinions in a way likely to stimulate reader interest [including disagreement] he writes hyperbolically. They tend to, you know. Doubtless Norm is always as temperate, rational and urbane as you, OB, and thus his words are never prey to misinterpretation with malice aforethought.
I have been following the discussion here for the last few days. Jenkins says of the American coverage of the Bombay terrorist attack and killings (I won’t use the jumped up name that Hindus have chosen to call Bombay, just because, as Hitchens points out, they could do it), that virtually all of it mentions 9/11 and Al-Quaida. Not altogether true. I was following it on CNN, which had continuous coverage for the duration of the attacks, and, though 9/11 and Al-Quaida were occasionally mentioned, indigenous Islamic radicals and Kashmiri Islamic radicals were thought to be at the heart of the attacks, with possible though undetermined links to Al-Quaida. That it was an attack on India’s financial centre justifies such a link. And that the terrorists deliberately targeted Americans, British and (American) Jews, seems to be a further basis of connnexion.
Did the Bombay attacks pose an existential threat to Americans, and are Americans cowering in fear? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. But I think a more germane question might still be about the growing Islamist presence in the west. We don’t know much about it, but we know it’s there, and we hear about it from time to time. Conspiracy to bomb several trans-atlantic flights, conspiracy to blow up the Canadian Parliament buildings, the increasing use of Sharia law in Britain and throughout Europe, the threat to our freedom of speech because Islam dislikes being criticised or characterised in unlovely ways: all of these things pose an existential threat, and along with the real threat and the real killings and maiming that took place in Bombay, and that occur regularly throughout the Muslim world (especially to women), they pose a real threat to everyone all around the world.
I am not cowering in a bunker, whether real or imagined, and I go about my life largely unhindered. But I do fear for the future, and I do fear that if these things persist, and Muslims in the west are increasingly radicalised – and there is no clear sign that they are not – the kinds of terrorist acts that paralysed Bombay for four days, with such great loss of life, harm to individuals and damage to property, may be a part of that future for all of us. And to suppose that, because the Bombay terrorists are far away, and protesting perceived local problems in that far away place, does not immediately raise concern elsewhere in this shrinking world is, it seems to me, to attempt to trivialise something that is not trivial there, and is not trivial here, either, for almost any here just now. I don’t know how big the danger is right here where I am, but then, given the way these things work, we won’t know, will we?, until it happens.
Eric,
You start with Jenkins (yeah-yeah I’ve read both) and you end with your usual statements. As if Jenkins disagreed on them or Norm agrees with them. It’s so easy, too damned easy. As Dave says it is the security laws of US/UK at issue and a great deal can be said that even taking all this perfectly serious, and opposing it vehemently, these laws are over the top and counterproductive and passed surfing on a wave of fear using that fear to pass laws that do nothing to take away the origin of that fear.
I didn’t read him saying we should not spend US/UK/European money to help the respective governments to deal with it locally. But that’s the issue: getting involved is a bridge too far. The only good thing about neocon ideology isn’t fashionable anymore and the bad things are taking center stage – specifically in the UK as again Dave says.
Mind you: there is a local threat, the amount of Islamists using ‘regular day jobs’ to impose their standard is real but can be countered with less drastic actions. And some impact there will be as we’re democracies and an increasing proportion of citizens come at it from this angle – like it or not. Should we give up democracy in order to get to a zero risk on Islamism?
If so we might as well treat the ‘born again christians’ in the same way. I’d certainly agree with the shift that we would get in democratic opinion having disqualified the fundi’s but – somehow it seems there is a better way and one with less damage to one’s principles.
Well, we can have separate coversations about American or British liberties and the laws that threaten, because of hyped up fear, to abridge them. But that isn’t what Jenkins’ piece was really about. He was saying that the terrorist attacks in Bombay are merely local, and will remain that way, and that there is nothing really to worry about as long as people far far away are getting killed and maimed. It’s not likely to happen here, and law and human rights are not in any jeopardy.
Well, I don’t know what the real probability of its happening here is, for any here. No one expected that there was a high probability that the New York skyline was going to be permanently and disastrously redefined, with such great loss of life and damage to property, an act which is as iconic for Americans, and rightly so, as Pearl Harbour. Was it just a one off event? And will Islamists of any streak (whether Al-Quaida or some other group), be able to carry out something even more dramatic and catastrophic in the future? I don’t know? Do you? I just know that, reading about local rather ham-fisted radicals here in Canada, or being treated for several months to an Islamic challenge to free speech in Canada, has increased my level of concern for what Islamists may opt to do here in the Great White North. Maybe they’re no danger at all, but they seem to be, and that danger is not diminished when terrorists in Bombay choose to attack Americans and Brits and Jews as targets of preference. And it seems to me that abridging laws and liberties in Bombay is just as serious, and the people are just as dead, as if they were done in New York or Toronto or London or Bali, and that, in this world, where political and ideological conflicts have a way of spilling across boundaries (especially when people like Jenkins makes light of what the attacks in Bombay mean to the rest of us), there is something like a pervasive existential threat (since that word has already been used) just now for a lot of people, whether this is what I usually say or not. And it seems to me, anyway, that Norm was right to call Jenkins on it.
Eric, you say:
“has increased my level of concern”
Indeed, your reading of the piece is a lot more about your concerns than it’s about what Jenkins wrote.
I re-read it. He doesn’t make light of anything. He doesn’t say it’s trivial. It is not because he says it’s first & foremost an Indian problem that he has said that it isn’t an important one, & I think it is clear from what he wrote that he wants action – in the end that is what he says: don’t be afraid, deal with the bastards.
I’d probably disagree a lot with him – & there’s a lot I disagree with in the column at hand – but stretching it the way you stretch it won’t help.
And no, Mumbai isn’t like Toronto. The democracy there is not yet like yours, so what happens there isn’t by a long shot similar to what happens with you.
And no, he didn’t say the bastards are unable to (in his words) ‘strike lucky again’ — he just said we should be on the offensive, taking pride in what we have instead of breaking it up under a pressure from ‘them’.
And yes, I have been flying an Indian airline into the US recently and what happens to people not looking like me IS a shame (and not even an apology to the majority being treated like that – what’s the cost of saying “we know it is a shame, but understand we have no choice at the moment.”).
Well, JoB, I guess we’re not going to agree. Jenkins titles his article: “America, cowering to an imaginary enemy, is not the country I once knew.” And then he goes on about how the terrorist attack on Bombay was being virtually identified in American commentary (not in official statements) with al-Quaida and 9/11, which, I think, is just false. I listened to some of it, and it didn’t seem to me that the reports I heard were either sythesising fears or cowering in bunkers, but taking a pretty realistic look at what was horrible about the indiscriminate killing that was taking place in the name of some unidentified political grievance.
Yes, sure, Jenkins is probably right in holding that there is a certain amount of governmental paranoia going on. It’s hard not to be when the enemy blends in so easily with the surroundings, and probably it is hyped up by the military, and by an adminstration (in the US, and Britain as well, I suppose) that is lacking in credibility already.
But simply to dismiss all this as scare-mongering after very real terrorist acts, whether they took place half way round the world where Jenkins is or not, does not make sense. These were real acts of terror, committed on real human beings, governed by laws in one of the most populous democracies in the world (whatever differences there may be between New Delhi and Ottawa), and this kind of thing is demonstrably not merely local.
Struggles in the Punjab resulted in an Air India flight being bombed just off the Irish coast, just as struggles – where were they at the time? – between Kuwait and Iraq in which the US led coalition had intervened – were played out in New York. So Bombay is just as real a terror event, and no more local than the events in the air, in London, in New York, in Washington, etc. It’s just absurd to think that this is all just scare-mongering. These things don’t stay local.
This is not about my concerns. I’m not particularly concerned for myself. I don’t expect to be involved in a terror incident in the foreseeable future. And I would like to ‘get the bastards’ too, if that’s what Jenkins is saying, but I don’t hear him say that, and neither did Norm, and I happen to agree with Norm here. Every person’s death diminishes me, and it concerns me, but not because I think I’m going to be bombed suddenly, but because I think that a lot more people will be bombed or killed, and their laws and liberties abridged, however different they may be from the ones that I enjoy.
What is more, I think Jenkins is wrong when he says: “By treating the unknown as an enemy, we ensure that the unknown becomes one.” I don’t think that’s what’s being done, though I do think that trying to deal with terrorism by means of industrial forms of warfare will not work, and we need to find a better way. But I also think that what happens in India, which is so often related to what happens in Pakistan and so in Afghanistan as well, is a danger to all of us, and it is not something that should be dismissively waved aside as scare-mongering. It’s hard to find a sufficient level of appropriate fear for the situation developing in the area between Afghanistan and the Indian border, where fundamentalist Islamism seems to be gaining more and more adherents, women’s position in society is worsening (as if it could have been much worse), and nuclear weapons are sitting there in the wings ready to go off. How does dismissing the terrorism in Bombay as of very little concern to us a realistic way of appraising that situation?
>>”U.S. comment” in journalism, on the subject of world events, generally means “official U.S. comment”
I don’t think so – I think at the very least it’s ambiguous, and furthermore that that ambiguity is useful for people who want to paint with a broad brush while retaining deniability. I see zero reason why we should give Jenkins a large benefit of the doubt for writing something so, at least, sloppily ambiguous, and at most absurdly hyperbolic and wrong. If he meant ‘official U.S. comment’ then he should have said so.
>>from his standpoint as a newspaper columnist, employed explicitly to state trenchant opinions in a way likely to stimulate reader interest [including disagreement] he writes hyperbolically. They tend to, you know. Doubtless Norm is always as temperate, rational and urbane as you, OB, and thus his words are never prey to misinterpretation with malice aforethought.
Ouch. Nice.
Actually when I write for publication I do try to avoid hyperbole at least about factual matters. But perhaps that claim defies credulity.
>>As Dave says it is the security laws of US/UK at issue
Is it? Then why didn’t Jenkins put it that way?
>>And some impact there will be as we’re democracies and an increasing proportion of citizens come at it from this angle – like it or not.
Bullshit. Would you say that if the ‘increasing proportion of citizens’ were ‘coming at it from the angle’ of Nazism? Would you say that if ‘like it or not’ meant extermination? For me and people like me, at the extreme ‘like it or not’ means ‘you will be banned from jobs, hospitals and schools and forced to wear a head-to-toe sack and beaten if you refuse’ – so don’t tell me ‘like it or not’. We’re not democracies, we’re constitutional democracies, and we badly need to stay that way. Don’t be so cavalier with other people’s rights.
I’ve kind of lost track of who’s disagreeing with whom. I know that one thing Jenkins is very afraid of is people being cavalier with other people’s rights. I’ve just read the ‘offending’ piece again and I really, honestly, cannot find matter there to object to, on Norm’s terms. I *can* see how one could choose to interpret what Jenkins says as “who cares if brown people die”, if one had malice aforethought, but he *doesn’t* say that. Read what he does say about Rove and the neocons he had a face-to-face encounter with, and think again about which side he’s on.
Eric, I’ll desist as my reading skills are not quite up to interpretations in more words as what is interpreted :-)
OB, “Bullshit”, you say and then go on to say things I’d hope you wouldn’t be even considering as what I implied. My example (sorry I thought it wasn’t too necessary to give one): the discussion in Belgium is, whether or not to allow muslims to be able to ‘trade’ some of the traditional Christian holidays for Islamic ones. Personally – I don’t see the point of either but it’s hardly an inconstitutional demand.
Well, JoB, you didn’t say that, and I don’t know what the discussion in Belgium is, and I can’t read your mind, and I really couldn’t tell what you meant. But the way you put it was just too broad and sweeping. That’s not my fault.
“some impact there will” is broad and sweeping? Oh, come on!
I get it: it is the Principle of Malice applied to reading anything not giving a broad round of applause.
I guess I should have known that I was implied in that ghastly oversimplifying turn of phrase “and the rest of his Guardianista ilk” by the mere fact of not going starry-eyed when reading the opinion of Norm. After all, it’s like when somebody says “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” so let’s bring Nazism up any time they say something, that’ll keep these annoying different opinions away!
So, to recap:
* It is not necessary to see AQ as an existential threat to the US in order to see it as a negative force in the world that needs opposing.
* Even if one does see AQ as an existential threat to the US, it does not logically follow that one should support Bush in his removal of civil liberties in the US.
* Those who don’t care about AQ *only* because it is not an existential threat to the US are at best parochial and at worse hopelessly naive ethically and politically.
I don’t see why it is so difficult to get this from the original post.
Additionally:
* Asking whether Norm supports removal of civil liberties really is barking up the wrong tree, whether one likes him or not (I haven’t read him for ages now, he goes a bit funny over atheism).
dirigible, accepting your recap without reservation – where did Jenkins go awol in *this* article – or wasn’t that what the original post was about?
Additionally: who here implied Norm has supported removal of civil liberties?
Due process is important, also in these smallest of internet murmurings.
Additionally: who here implied Norm has supported removal of civil liberties?
Who? Ok, JoB, how about the comment that started this thread?
“But what exactly is Norm’s point? That we should – contra Ben Franklin – be willing to give up liberty for the sake of security? That the American government has not cultivated fear in the population in order to justify kidnapping, torture, imprisonment without trial, and a war of aggression?”
Alain,
Fair enough but a. that was not me nor anybody else taking crap here lately & b. your answer
“Since when does my intolerance of theocratic thugs automatically entail curtailing my liberties?”
is just a piece of clever whatabouttery as the piece of Jenkins – the one being taken issue with – is not about THAT.
So, guilty by your own charges.
What is exactly Norm’s point? That this Jenkins guy is guilty of something that this Norm guy thinks he said? That he’s working for the wrong newspaper? That a guy like this is just part of the rest of some ilk he dislikes?
Norm Geras supported the invasion of Iraq which unleashed the kidnappers, torturers and murderers of the US army on the defenceless Iraqi population.
There is something deeply contemptible about Norman Geras and the people who quote him with approval.
‘al-Qaida is a very horrible phenomenon, on a par with Nazism morally if not in its power (so far) to murder millions.’
It is the USA that has murdered millions, in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq and Afghanistan.
JoB – no, you don’t ‘get it’. Your posts are consistently cryptic and teasing; your meaning is seldom transparent; so you just don’t get to assume that I will know what you meant. In other words you’re blaming me for your lack of clarity – and making some rather obnoxious accusations into the bargain.
Well, I didn’t assume that much – just that you wouldn’t associate my name in a jiffy with Nazism & extermination. I guess it was ‘my bad’ in responding to someone quoting approvingly the phrase “and the rest of his Guardianista ilk”.
Sigh.
I didn’t ‘associate your name’ (what name? I know your name because you’ve emailed me, but here ‘your name’ is just a 3-letter handle) with Nazism, I asked if you would say what you’d said if etc etc Nazism – implying that of course you wouldn’t. I was pointing out the implications of what you’d said. I was pointing out that you’d said too much. It’s bizarre to get pissy about that because the fact is that lots of people are blissfully unaware of the implications of endorsing ‘majority rule no matter what’. Lots of people do endorse ”majority rule no matter what’; some think again when one points out the implications, others simply bluster. (Perhaps you’re blustering.)
I’m sorry but it just doesn’t make sense to get in a righteous personal huff when you’re not really a person here (meaning, recognizable as such). It’s silly to take offense at comments addressed to what you’ve said as if we all know you personally. What you’ve said is all we have to go on, and as I mentioned, your comments are usually quite cryptic and teasing.
Admittedly, I sometimes get irritated when people accuse me of things that I would think would be obviously out of character – but the ‘obviously’ is because there is such a large body of writing to go on. The same applies to commenters who also write articles or who write thoughtful extended comments. Your comments are more reactive, which is fine, but that does mean that we don’t have a profound knowledge of what you’re like or what you think.
Eric: please, the “Hindus” didn’t call Bombay Mumbai. The Indians did, and since it’s their city they have a right to, and it’s pathetic for pompous Westerners like Hitchens to bitch about it.
The Mumbai attacks, correct me if I’m wrong, were not planned by Al Qaeda, were they? Any links between the Mumbai attackers and Al Qaeda are murky at best. So why are we talking about al Qaeda in conjunction with Mumbai? Not all radical Islamic terrorists have the same goals, the same agenda or the same tactics. I think this illustrates Jenkins’s point: we Americans see an attack elsewhere in the world, and we immediately connect it to us (by connecting it to those who attacked us)…and then politicians make it all about our safety and use it to scare us and take away our freedoms.
Also, who said nobody should be morally concerned with Al Qaeda? I don’t see Jenkins saying that at all. He was talking about fear, not moral concern.
Could you clarify that “morally on a par” bit? I don’t follow how someone who wants to murder millions is “morally on a par” with someone who actually does. Surely if that were true the readership of the Daily Mail would be morally equivalent to the SS? …and how come everyone is taking Norman so seriously anyway?
“morally on a par” in the sense of being horrendously repressive in everyday life – in the same way the Saudis are for instance.
Don’t do that ‘Norman’ thing around here – this isn’t Crooked Timber. Call him Geras by all means, if you want to, but ‘Norman’ is what Chris Bertram and Daniel Davies make a display of calling him. It’s childishly spiteful.
I am sincerely sorry for any offense I may have caused.
snort
Sorry! Didn’t mean to be snappish. That mob thing that CB and DD do gets on my nerves, that’s all.
JoB,
“Since when does my intolerance of theocratic thugs automatically entail curtailing my liberties?” was in reply to NB, not Jenkins. NB was accusing Prof. Geras of advocating a curtailment of liberties. Which is the very last thing anyone could accuse Prof. Geras of proposing. But some people wouldn’t know that, eh?
As for murdering and terrorizing civilians, it seems that for some people that might not count as curtailing their liberties. So please forgive me if I sometimes lose my equanimity about this issue.
Ouf!, Ophelia, “it just doesn’t make sense to get in a righteous personal huff” – it doesn’t/I didn’t. But the thing was, it was a bit shortcutting and that shouldn’t be the standard.
You’re right about my comments by the wat and I profit hugely from what you say about them. Other than that, I do not care too much but I’m quite happy with teasing – there are too many out there with big bodies of text.
Alain,
Still on due process here – so you say you did the same to NB as NB according to you did to Geras! This is certainly true to the extent *you think* you did the same thing. & hence it is true you did that – but not necessarily that NB did that.
I’m not him so I can only examine what he wrote. The content of his question, I think, is clearly designed so as to mirror Jenkins’ points in the article at hand. Putting the question mark is therefore not necessarily a reasoning that Geras holds these points but can be (and is more likely to be when you are charitable) an ad absurdum that a vehement denouncement of Jenkins is a vehement denouncement of these points i.e. that Geras overstretches what he reads.
If so, that’s fair enough and not even clever whatabouttery but a short and a to the point statement of all what has come after it.
The rest is psychology which seems the territory you’re clearly superior in – seeing you loose your equanimity quite rapidly on what you *know* what counts for others, for a fact I presume.
>the “Hindus” didn’t call Bombay Mumbai. The Indians did, and since it’s their city they have a right to, and it’s pathetic for pompous Westerners like Hitchens to bitch about it.< “For me the city will always be Bombay.” – Mumbai resident and writer Suketu Mehta on NPR, talking about the change of name in 1995 by the Hindu Nationalist Party:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5554176
Why did ‘Bombay’ become ‘Mumbai’?
“In 1995, the [Hindu] nationalist party Shiv Sena won elections in Maharashtra. Shiv Sena, which has since attracted global attention for attacking the concept of Valentine’s Day, had long sought to officially change Bombay to its Marathi name, Mumbai. That word is a reference to Hindi goddess Mumbadevi and the word ‘Aai,’ which means mother, according to the Times.”
http://tinyurl.com/6orok2
When did Bombay become Mumbai?
“Officially, in 1995. That year, the right-wing Hindu nationalist party Shiv Sena won elections in the state of Maharashtra and presided over a coalition that took control of the state assembly. After the election, the party announced that the port city had been renamed after the Hindu goddess Mumbadevi, the city’s patron deity. Federal agencies, local businesses, and newspapers were ordered to adopt the change…
“The push to rename Bombay was part of a larger movement to strengthen Marathi identity in the Maharashtra region. The Shiv Sena party also declared their intentions to do away with the term “Bollywood,” a conflation of ‘Bombay’ and ‘Hollywood’ that refers to Mumbai’s film industry. That name, though, has stuck around.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2205701/
Just like the The Bombay High Court and the Bombay Stock Exchange.
http://tinyurl.com/66ho4u
http://tinyurl.com/592qmr
Well, Jenavir, I hadn’t noticed your criticism of my reasons for continuing to use Bombay instead of the Hindu Mumbai, but I think Allen’s response is enough for you to go on. (Thanks to Allen for his comments.) As to why we are talking about al-Quaeda here – this is simply because Jenkins says that all American commentary on the Bombay attacks connected them with al-Quaeda and 9/11.
As for Jenkins not implying moral indifference to the Bombay attacks, I think he does. We don’t need to worry about them (be fearful of them) because they happen so far away. I agree, we shouldn’t be reduced to a catatonic state of fear by the Bombay attacks, and really I don’t think Americans are, even though, to justify some of its idiocies, the American government has spent a lot of time upping the fear quotient, and some of the networks (particularly Fox) have picked up on that, but the sense of indifference that we should have to these terrible events so far away seems to me, in Jenkins piece, to imply a moral indifference as well, not recognising how Islamist violence in South Asia is a very real threat to all of us.
Pakistan is a nuclear power, and very unstable, and has a problem with fundamentalist, not to say fascist, Islam. This makes it an existential threat to all of us, as well as being a moral issue of great importance. At least I think it is a moral problem when ideologists walk onto crowded railway platforms and fire indiscriminately into the crowd, and I think that this kind of violence, no matter how far away, is a threat to all of us, because it is an easy way to make your point, and it’s an easy lesson to learn as well.
JoB: “where did Jenkins go awol in *this* article”
He argues that only an existential threat to America could justify tackling Al Queda and that since bombings in India don’t constitute this…
Norm, rightly, points out that there are other ethical and political reasons for tackling Al Queda.
resistor: “Norm Geras supported the invasion of Iraq which unleashed the kidnappers, torturers and murderers of the US army on the defenceless Iraqi population.”
He has since become more circumspect about the issue.
You on the other hand have never wavered in your support for any kidnappers, torturers and murderers of the Iraqi population who you can fit into your fantasies of resistance to Empire.
dirigible, sorry, I re-re-read it and, it just ain’t there. Quote him, if you care to convince me – and, I know, you are under no such obligation.
(Sigh…!)
Here’s Jenkins:
“America seems much in need of Roosevelt’s maxim to stop fearing fear itself. Virtually all comment on the Mumbai massacre has mentioned 9/11 and al-Qaida, and thus invited citizens to continue feeling afraid. No matter that Mumbai appears to have been primarily about Kashmir and the status of India’s Muslims. No matter that Osama bin Laden has no dog in that fight. Any stick will do to elevate al-Qaida as America’s enemy number one.
And…
“At least organised crime and communism posed genuine threats to American liberties. Al-Qaida does not, yet it has become the ruling obsession of Bush’s courtiers. They see al-Qaida fiends on every side, bearded mullahs, caches of bombs, ricin and anthrax. The precautionary principle has become fanaticised. By treating the unknown as an enemy, we ensure that the unknown becomes one. Most of the outrages committed by graduates of the Pakistan terrorism camps are locally motivated, and will continue as long as such motivation survives. A network of criminal suicide squads with no coherent programme has no conceivable hope of undermining western democracy.
In short, (Dirigible’s words):
“He argues that only an existential threat to America could justify tackling Al Queda and that since bombings in India don’t constitute this…”
Oh, come on, Alain – that would be the lousiest paraphrase ever – there is no mention whatsoever of not tackling AQ, not a mention. Not a whisper either on something being a major threat direct-to-US as necessary condition for doing something about it.
As argued by many here – you don’t need to agree with something if you disagree it is the enemy number one or that it’s primarily locally motivated (which is – by the way – the way facts would have it, it seems). Only if you presume that the author is racist & doesn’t care at all that brownies get killed (& you have to presume it because it isn’t in there) you get dirigible’s paraphrase. QUOD bloody NON, whether you insist or not.
JoB –
The Patriot Act and the domestic excesses of the Bush administration are wrong. They are just wrong. Jenkins doesn’t need to try to trivialise the events in Bombay to make this point. But he does.
He trivialises them by claiming that they are not an existential threat to the US and that any attempt to show solidarity with India is therefore American narcissism or fearmongering. But in order to do so he has to misrepresent the character of the attacks.
Jenkins claims that the Pakistani Jihadis are “locally motivated”. But they targeted Americans, the British and a Jewish centre in the most cosmopolitan city in India.
So Jenkins is wrong both ethically/politically (existential threats to the US are not the only grounds for opposing something), and factually (his fantasy of Jihadis only being locally motivated crumbles when one looks at their actual targets).
There is no mention of not tackling AQ because Jenkins doesn’t even believe they exist (he says this). His is a universe where “the Power of Nightmares” hasn’t been falsified by terror attacks in Europe and where an ad-hoc network or ideology can do no harm because it isn’t the SMERSH-style mirror of the military-industrial complex that nobody claims it is.
If I have misread his smug parochialism I can only apologize. ;-)
dirigible, what you say outside of the context of this article may be right – or wrong – but I can’t tell.
What you say based on the article still is wrong (and, no, I do not continue on this because I like Jenkins – or oppose the notion we should fight AQ – or even because I think there are no reasons to be extra careful when people from India or Pakistan travel to the US or the UK, because a. don’t know enough of him, b. we should and c. there are good reasons to do this).
He does not trivialize. He just takes a different conclusion from yours.
He does not say we shouldn’t show India we care.
He does say these attacks are locally motivated. That position doesn’t – at all – preclude that the attacks did & were aimed at Western/Jew targets. On one hand it ensures publicity (or did you think this was the first time the nation was shamed), on the other hand it avoids muslim casualties and it’ll be less likely to alienate the ‘local’ muslims.
Let me be a bit harsh: it’s not so that whenever whites are shot, the heart of the matter is about whites. That’s not a very cosmopolitan reflex, is it?
Why do I persist? Because I believe it is important not to be sloppy in this, and specifically not when you have the strongest of beliefs in the matter.
PS – Whether AQ exists or not? Maybe we would do well not to be so binary about this. I mean, Cheney’s AQ doesn’t exist because Cheney’s AQ is just that: means to appropriate funds not to help India, but to help Cheney.
Jenkins may be smug and parochial, but he is right. 3000 dead people in the USA, and various numbers in Bali, Madrid and London, do not add up to an existential threat to western civilisation. If every AQ-inspired plot since 2001 had succeeded, they might have killed a few thousand more. It still would not be an existential threat. And it bears adding that what just happened in India is not an existential threat to Indian civilisation either. More people have been killed on religious grounds there in quite a number of years recently, without needing to drag the Global War on Terror into it, and India gets by.
That absolutely does not mean that such terrorism is not worth trying to stop. It probably does mean that it is not worth the ongoing sacrifice of both civil liberties and even the slenderest veneer of moral rectitude that US actions in particular have produced. The monumental shame of trying to legalise torture will, and ought to, hang over the heads of the Bush administration for ever – and it was a complete excess, a gratuitous act of unnecessary and counter-productive political machismo. And let’s not get started on Iraq, shall we?
One could make a very cogent argument that the US government, followed by the UK, has done everything that AQ could have wanted them to do in order to demonise Western values in the Islamic world. The point of terrorism, conceived-of strategically, is to goad your enemy to over-react, to lose the sympathies of otherwise neutral parties, and to stiffen the resolve and raise the numbers of your own followers. It has worked. And since security services continue to brief that the ‘threat’ gets stronger, a WMD attack is likely, etc etc etc, evidently the War on Terror is not being won this way, and probably can’t be.
There is no vision of future success in official public thinking that does not involve more troops, more technology, more surveillance, more vast expenditures of money, spirit and lives, and an absolutely undefined – because undefinable – endpoint. But all we can tell is that, approaching that distant and vanishing singularity, we will be placed under tighter and tighter restrictions, unless something drastically changes. Maybe it will after Jan 20, who knows? One can hope. But one should not pretend that the GWOT so far has been a vast, ghastly fuck-up.
Bugger. ‘has NOT been a vast…’ Teach me to double-negative.
“3000 dead people in the USA, and various numbers in Bali, Madrid and London, do not add up to an existential threat to western civilisation.”
I’m not sure how you know that, or how Jenkins knows it or how anyone does. I’m (I hope it goes without saying) not defending Bush’s record, but I’m not a bit convinced that anyone knows that what a-Q and its colleagues are doing does not amount to an existential threat ‘as we know it.’ One could say that it already has altered ‘western civilisation’ – via Bush’s record among other things.
This stuff isn’t comparable to the IRA campaign or even Baader-Meinhof or the Weathermen – because there are no demands that can even in principle be met. There’s nothing – there’s just a mindless explosion of stupid but effective killing. It could be claimed that not just western civilisation but all civilization is haunted by the awareness that there are people who want nothing but to wipe them all out. People whose only goal is to kill as many human beings as possible, not as a bargaining tool or an attention-getter but for its own sake.
Bush is a ghastly fuck-up, but that doesn’t mean it’s deranged to think a-Q represents something highly sinister.
(One telling bit in Jenkins’s piece was where he sneered at the fact that the CIA predicts a Very Bad Thing happening within the next year – he sneered but without even attempting to explain how or if he knew that that was false. It’s simply not obvious why that suggestion is inherently implausible.)
does not amount to an existential threat to western civilization ‘as we know it.’ I meant to say.
Why is it not an existential threat? Because it isn’t. Certainly not compared to, for example, peak oil. AQ would have to arrange a simultaneous global smallpox release, or weaponise ebola [a Tom Clancy plot], to even come close to being such a threat. They’re a threat to peaceful existence, but not to existence per se – and as such a threat, they would better be dealt with more intelligently, subtly and carefully than they are now.
Meanwhile, behind, e.g., the Baader-Meinhofs, etc, there was just as uncompromising, vapid, unsatisfiable a set of demands for absolute change as there is behind AQ – indeed, if we take Bin Laden at his word, and see him and his followers as wanting to recreate the Caliphate at its greatest notional extent, that’s actually a *more* pragmatic goal than the overthrowing of capitalism sought by assorted post-68 loons.
Don’t get me wrong, line those feckers up and give me a pistol and I’ll cap the lot of ’em for you. But they’re not Satan, they’re just feckers.
“Why is it not an existential threat? Because it isn’t.”
That, Dave, is not an argument.
Well not by itself, but he does go on to make one. Fair’s fair!
Yeah probably, Dave, which is why I (perhaps cheatingly) said ‘as we know it’. But they are more intent on just killing as many people as possible for the sake of doing just that than any previous terrorist group that I’m aware of. The fact that that is the goal does make them unnerving, even before we get to the fact that their other (incompatible) goal is a global Caliphate.
OB
Dave nails it. These fools are being used by Russian oligarchs and Chinese explorers into weapons and intelligence, they’re also enthralled by the new monopolies and diplomacies available in Africa / S-America. But the religious right of Islam ? They are muppets. Deadly muppets, but muppets, as their paymasters know. Same as when CIA controlled them. Dangerous muppets. The long term threat ? Not Islam. No. Sorry, bit drunk now. But long term threat = China calling shots on US debt, and marketing weapons to everyone with a brief case. Think!
JoB- “Why do I persist? Because I believe it is important not to be sloppy in this, and specifically not when you have the strongest of beliefs in the matter.”
Sure, I respect that.
I can only re-iterate that in my opinion Jenkins asks the wrong question and draws the wrong conclusion from it. And that by doing so I feel that his article has the effect that Norm describes. (I certainly don’t carry a brief for Norm).
If I am wrong I apologize.
Dave – “Why is it not an existential threat? Because it isn’t.”
What some of us are disputing is whether this is the right question and whether the phenomenon labeled AQ is of importance only if it represents an existential threat to the US.
Nick S – “Deadly muppets”
I’m having “Meet The Feebles” flashbacks now… ;-)
No Nick, the long term threat is we’ll all be wellbehaved & conforming little twats competing to get the biggest SUV or to earn the most compassion points; & that we’re so indoctrinated we don’t even realize how bad that is.
Right. Which is worse – a world where girls of 13 are stoned to death for being raped, or one where people compete to earn compassion points? No contest, obviously. Former infinitely preferable to latter.
I suppose that’s me being a bully again.
If people wouldn’t conform 13-year old girls wouldn’t be stoned, that’s all – you never were a bully, nor did I ever feel bullied. Compassion is all right, points for compassion are woolliness.
Sorry if I upset you, I didn’t want to relativize such crimes (rather refer to the Big Yellow Threat) but realize the comment could be taken like that.
Allen and Eric: regardless of which party the push to call the city “Mumbai” came from, the fact is it was a choice made by a democratic government and ought to be respected for that. Shiv Sena was elected in Maharashtra; this makes it a Maharasthran government and not a merely “Hindu” one. George Bush wouldn’t have been elected but for the Christian right. Sadly, this does not make him merely a “Christian” president instead of an American president.
As for Suketu Mehta, he’s not a Mumbai resident. He’s based in NY and teaches journalism in NYU. Not sure why his personal feelings on “Mumbai” vs. “Bombay” are remotely relevant or representative of anything.
I’m not sure how you know that, or how Jenkins knows it or how anyone does. I’m (I hope it goes without saying) not defending Bush’s record, but I’m not a bit convinced that anyone knows that what a-Q and its colleagues are doing does not amount to an existential threat ‘as we know it
Well, firstly, I’d say the burden of proof is on those who are claiming that it is an existential threat. An existential threat is one that threatens the existence of something. Where do we see evidence that the jihadis are capable of destroying Western civilization?
Of course 3000 dead doesn’t amount to a threat to the existence of an entire country or civilization, for the simple reason that on a grand scale it’s just not enough deaths to completely destroy a country or civilization. Doesn’t make it any less tragic. Just not an “existential” threat.
the fact is it was a choice made by a democratic government and ought to be respected for that.
Not, of course, that every choice made by a democratic government should be respected. But the choice of a city regarding what to call itself ought to be. You don’t get to rename someone else’s city.
Fear paralyses and those who stoke up fear achieve this result-seems correct to me.