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Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress presents us with a school of philosophy, led by Mr. Wisdom. (Definitely not to be confused With Reason, the imperious female).
Mr. Wisdom claims to have arrived at the truth of the human condition, even though he has stopped well short of the destination that the pilgrim eventually reaches. He says it is an error to believe heaven and hell, and the places by which John is learning to orient his life are real; but it is also an error to believe that they are merely illusions. "...the wise man, ruling his passions with reason and disciplined imagination, withdraws himself to the middle point between these two errors, having found that the truth lies there...."
The gist seems to be that there probably is something truly good "out there" somewhere, and it is what we mean when we think there is an ultimate goal to life. But if there is such a thing, it must be so good that to actually attain it could only lessen it. At the same time, the striving for it brings out a lot of "high" attainments, so it should not be given up. "Abandon hope: do not abandon desire." One of Mr. Wisdom's students says that the other lands which are actually visible across a chasm are "not an illusion," but "an appearance." "It is a true appearance, too, in a sense...But don't think you can get there."
The big joke in this part of the book is that Mr. Wisdom believes he has arrived at way of life which is satisfactory, or should be, to all his students. Mr. Wisdom offers his guests "a loaf, and cheese, and a dish of fruite, with some curds, and butter-milk," but no wine. (Isn't this now called the new California cuisine, or something?) Without telling him, all his students sneak out at night to enjoy champagne, cold chickenand tongue, and hashish. More intriguing, some delicacies come from religious believers, who might seduce these young philosophy students away from Mr. Wisdom. There is claret from "Mother Kirk," caviar from the Theosophists, and brandy from "Mr. Savage's dwarfs" (followers of Nietzsche, including, surprisingly, Marx). In fact the students are powerfully drawn to one sect or cult another--Mr. Wisdom's example is not seductive or persuasive to any of them.
We learn more near the end of the book, when the now saved pilgrim goes by Limbo. Who lives there? he asks.
The Guide replies:
"Very few live there, and they are all men like old Mr. Wisdom--men who have kept alive and pure the deep desire of the soul but through some fatal flaw, of pride or sloth or, it may be, timidity, have refused till the end the only means to its fulfilment; taking huge pains, often, to prove to themselves that the fulfilment is impossible....To stay long where he lives requires both a strange strength and a strange weakness. As for their sufferings, it is their doom to live for ever in desire without hope."
Is the Landlord being unduly harsh with such people? They are permanently left with a desire for something high. John says, in language that goes back to his original desire for an island: "Even the wanting, though it is pain too, is more precious than anything else we experience." The Mr. Wisdom-types never become corrupted.
To a great extent this is borrowed from Dante's Inferno (Canto IV).
As one site from the University of Texas says:
"The concept of Limbo--a region on the edge of hell (limbus means "hem" or "border") for those who are not saved even though they did not sin--exists in Christian theology by Dante's time, but the poet's version of this region is more generous than most. Dante's Limbo--technically the first circle of hell--includes virtuous non-Christian adults in addition to unbaptized infants. We thus find here many of the great heroes, thinkers, and creative minds of ancient Greece and Rome as well as such medieval non-Christians as Saladin, Sultan of Egypt in the late twelfth century, and the great Islamic philosophers Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd). For Dante, Limbo was also the home of major figures from the Hebrew Bible, who--according to Christian theology--were "liberated" by Jesus following his crucifixion." Someone else on the web suggests that Dante is clearly putting himself above everyone in Limbo, since he goes onward and upward.
Here we find wise people living "in desire without hope (che sanza speme vivemo in disio). I'm not sure they're as much to blame in Dante as they are in Lewis. Lewis, without getting into Old Testament heroes, poets, Moslems, or unbaptized infants, says the non-Christian philosophers "suffer a fatal flaw, of pride or sloth or, it may be, timidity." Dante says simply that they came before Christianity, and "did not worship God as one must (non adorar debitamente a Dio). "For such defects, and not for other guilt (Per tai difetti, non per altro rio) they live as they do.
This sounds like the life that Socrates says in Plato's Apology would be quite enjoyable for a philosopher. Dante certainly provides a basis for a discussion as to whether there is any reason to leave limbo.
I have two more offerings on this theme: Justice and Wishful thinking; and then (in another post) philosophers in limbo (living with desires, but no hope).
Lewis has an ingenious treatment of wishful thinking in Pilgrim's Regress. Sophisticated people tell the pilgrim that religious belief results from wishful thinking--the desire for a father figure to take care of things, a crutch, and so on. The rather imperious female figure of Reason sets John straight on this about half-way through the book. The "wish-fulfillment" theory must mean that all sane people have these desires for a father-figure, and so on, but it is only the pious who give in to these desires. "Now think. Is it really true that [a number of vicious characters] are going about filled with a longing that there should be a Landlord, and cards of rules, and a mountain land beyond the brook, with a possibility of a black hole?" (The protagonist, John, laughs uncontrollably).
The "black hole" represents hell, so the idea here is that many sinners do not wish for any full-blooded religion to be true at all; they would fear and dread the reality of a just God. In The Great Divorce, Lewis presents a whole class of people who are presented with the reality of heaven, so that they only have to say "yes" to be accepted there, but they refuse. As a friend of mine said, it is probably un-Platonic to believe there are such people.
There may be very few people who are ready to "take inventory" of their own souls, list their sins, and even become candidates to be believers who humbly seek forgiveness. On the other hand, it is surely a common or even universal phenomenon that human beings hope there is going to be justice in the form of punishment for their enemies, whether their transgressions are small or large, while also hoping that their own sins can be forgiven somehow. Isn't belief in Christianity and other faiths partly a belief that there will be two groups, no matter what we do--those who suffer eternal punishment, and those who enjoy eternal rewards--with an over-riding desire to join the latter?
Lewis seems confident that there are many people in hell, and it also seems he finds this deeply satisfying. Richard Neuhaus recently stirred controversy in First Things by suggesting that hell may be totally unpopulated. His critics were able to quote Scripture against him, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that they want to be sure there are many sinners who are suffering. Nietzsche suggests in the Genealogy of Morals that this is an important psychological basis for Christianity (First Essay, Section 15).
Back to the Republic. My teachers used to say that the first known use of the word "theology" appears in Book II of the Republic. Socrates asks: what should we teach young potential guardians about the gods? The main teaching is that gods don't do anything that we would regard as vicious if a human being did it, so many classic tales in Homer must be edited accordingly. The more surprising teaching is that gods may not do anything bad to human beings at all--not even as punishment--and they may not help friends or hurt enemies among human beings (380b-c, 382d-e). The thought seems to be: it is natural to turn to the gods, and seek the support of the gods, in a discussion of justice. We all have experience of the fact that in life as we know it, the unjust flourish, and the just suffer. Many of us wish it were otherwise--at least, when we identify with the suffering just. But if gods are "good" enough to help with justice, it is not clear why they would have anything to do with justice, or with the weak human concerns that make us seek justice.
Quite simply, to say God is "godlike," and thus good, and then to say He is just, may always be incoherent.
It is a further argument that to say God is in an important respect mysterious or unknowable, and then that He has specific qualities that can more or less be comprehended by us, may always be incoherent.
It is relevant to put Lewis into a philosophic context because, particularly in Pilgrim's Regress, he presents his character as thinking through the main features of several philosophic schools of thought.
In Plato's Republic, Socrates presents the just city--or several cities. As Allan Bloom says in his famous book, The Closing of the American Mind: "The regime of philosopher-kings is usually ridiculed and regarded as totalitarian, but it contains much of what we really want. Practically everyone wants reason to rule, and no one thinks a man like Socrates should be ruled by inferiors or have to adjust what he thinks to them." Then comes what might be called "the bad news from those pesky Straussians": "What the Republic actually teaches is that none of this is possible and that our situation requires both much compromise and much intransigence, great risks and few hopes. The important thing is not speaking one's own mind, but finding a way to have one's own mind." (p. 266)
Roughly speaking, the Republic teaches that if we think of others, or rather of "the city," "the common," "the whole," more than of ourselves, we can achieve justice. This has at least some correspondence to the view of Christians and other believers that in purity of heart lies the way to salvation. At every stage, however, Socrates suggests that the problems are so severe as to require fantastic solutions. If the problems are so severe as to require such solutions, they are also so severe that the solutions won't work.
Citizens (especially the warrior class) are literally expected to have no awareness of their own bodies as anything that deserves to be protected against others. The reason is not really that the soul is higher than the body, but simply because bodily desires, and related personal emotions including love, make it painfully obvious that we do not have exactly the same interests as our fellow citizens.
Plato almost makes his reforms plausible, and they have no doubt influenced many communes over thousands of years. But he also allows anyone who reads and thinks carefully to see problems. Children are to be exposed to war from a young age--since that is to be their main business. To keep them safe, arrangements are to be made to whisk them away on horseback when there is danger. Meanwhile, females are supposed to be fighting side by side with males. (Including sister and brother, who may be married without knowing that they are previously related). The problem is this: if danger to the children threatens the city's future, what about danger to women of child-bearing age? To speak brutally, there are more children where those came from, but if all the women of child-bearing age are killed, the city dies as well.
Why does Socrates (and Plato) let this clumsy error stand? Because for the sake of justice, women must be aware of themselves as women, tied to specific children and families, as little as possible. If they are aware of all those things, they always know there is a sane reason to protect their own children, and run away rather than protect the city. Of course, real people do not always run away; but presumably this is not because of a love of justice but because staying with the group is the best way, all things considered, to get what one (selfishly) wants.
If men are more inclined to leave their families for war, does this mean they are more just? No, once again it seems more a matter of satisfying, not denying, personal desires. Socrates says the most successful warriors should be rewarded by getting their pick of sexual partners(468b-c). This means personal attractiveness, not what the city decides, is very important after all. (It seems that communal living can accept a variety of sexual practices, but not heterosexual monogamy: promiscuity leaves one more open to what the group (or its leader) wants; polygamy establishes a clear hierarchy; and then there is a vow of chastity).
Of course there are real human beings who make noble sacrifices, and Socrates seems in a way to be asking just a bit more than usual of such people. He suggests more and more, as the dialogue goes on, that the guardians can expect to be treated like gods after they die. (See 372b, 416e, 468d-469b. The desire for such treatment is surely "higher" in some way than the mere desire to score with women, but it is still (in a funny way--Achilles decides in the Odyssey that it's not worth it)--a desire for happiness for oneself, not for justice for all.
Much of this can be said without referring to philosopher-kings themselves. The proposal that philosophers should rule re-states all the problems of individual happiness vs. justice in a very straightforward way. Philosophers really want one thing, and they want it erotically, passionately--to philosophize. The good news, one might say, is that they don't want the things for which politicians usually become corrupt, such as money and honour. The bad news, however, is that they don't want to rule. Ruling would take them away from philosophizing. (The philosoper-king proposal violates the "one man/one art" principle which is supposed to be the first rule of justice).
Again, we want to be guided by the wise, and we might be fooled by the philosopher's ascetism into thinking he is somehow pure or even holy. What he is, however, is preoccupied with concerns that have little to do with us. Socrates finally says it is a "coincidence" if a philosopher rules, and that philosophers will probably have to be forced to rule (519d-520d). Socrates admits that in a city not ruled by philosophers, this would be unjust.
To pile another over-simplification on top of others, in the Republic Socrates is constantly trying to banish eros, which is a longing for personal satisfaction. In the Symposium eros is allowed to take centre stage, and it does not appear that there are a lot of people lining up to be self-sacrificing citizens. Even in the Republic, however, we get at least passing glances at a lot of things that people expect to be part of, or the defining feature of, happiness. Certainly giving up lowly or everyday things, sacrificing for something higher or more lasting, is part of human life. It may be an attempt to re-capture those elusive perfect moments of childhood. But Plato's teaching seems to be that philosophy provides the way of life that comes closest to satisfying complex human desires. This way of life is "just," or satisfying to all the desires the good citizen might think of, only in a limited or indirect way.
C.S. Lewis was a great Christian apologist, and a powerful writer. I think what makes his writing powerful is that he focussed on psychology--why do people do what they do, and why are they more likely to find what they are looking for with Christ than in the way they are living now? I'm pretty sure he was a very good if not great psychologist. One friend of mine said once that if you encountered Lewis before you encountered Nietzsche, you would be inclined to think Lewis was right.
In Pilgrim's Regress, Lewis presents a character a bit like himself who is drawn to find a "perfect island" of which he has had only glimpses. The island is so perfect that the longing for it is sweeter than the satisfaction of any other desire. As Lewis says in his introductory remarks, if nature makes nothing in vain, it makes sense that such a powerful longing is pointing us towards something. The book makes it clear that the goal of the longing appears as different things to different people. The main point is that it is something like perfect happiness, for which we long, and of which we get intimations, especially as children (when we are more naive or open to such things).
I think Lewis is right that such a phenomenon is fairly common. I'm not sure what actually happens in childhood, or if we remember it correctly, but as adults we look back and think we glimpsed, and even in a way enjoyed, perfect happiness for fleeting moments. (Obviously this might not be true of absolutely miserable childhoods). Update: I think "le pays bleu" is the French expression for childhood which captures this perfection and innocence.
The phenomenon is familiar in songs such as "Over the Rainbow," and Stevie Wonder's "I Wish." I think it is expressed beautifully in a Lauryn Hill song from a great album, "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill." The song is "Every Ghetto, Every City." There is a kind of chorus: "Every ghetto, every city, and suburban place I've been; make me recall my days in the New Jerusalem." "New Jerusalem" clearly refers to childhood, at least as Hill remembers it as an adult; key phrases are "we thought we'd all live forever," and "Unaware of what we didn't have."
I think much of political philosophy takes its starting point from human desires for perfection: justice, noble deeds, living by divine truths, and indeed happiness. The massive problem is not simply an adult realization that we as individuals cannot achieve all that we have (at one time or another) wanted. This is the problem to which Lewis says he has the solution--God can do for mere humans what they cannot do for themselves. (See Lauryn Hill's
newer song
"Oh Jerusalem"). The deeper problem is that the things we want are logically incompatible; to succeed in one is to fail in another, or to leave behind anything we recognize as humanity. One way to put this is: there may be happy beings in Heaven, but it seems unlikely they are human beings in any meaningful sense, so their happiness is hardly relevant to us.
I think the account of justice in Plato's Republic is highly relevant here. I will try briefly to recall some of what I learned in grad school, and subject Lewis to the kind of treatment he might get from a student of Socrates.
More later.
I'm really going to have to write on something else soon, but here are a few thoughts for today.
The one Middle East file that has been important for every president since the 50s is "Israel vs the Palestinians." As of late yesterday I still thought Bush had done pretty well on the "road map." This piece suggests the major parties were prepared to start another 90-day cease-fire. What I especially like is the idea that Israel would identify leaders who, according to their investigations, were about to attack Israelis, but rather than simply attack pre-emptively, Israel would give the Palestinian authority a certain amount of time to get these individuals off the street.
Today the articles on the web are gloomy and gloomier. Israel has apparently identified all Hamas leaders as targets, whether or not they are somehow "moderate." They have killed another leader who was apparently not a moderate.
One school of thought says the Israeli approach will radicalize Hamas, reinforce the view among the Palestinians that Israel only understands violence, and help Hamas and the other terrorist groups with recruiting. There is still an optimistic view that Israel is taking some tough steps that must be taken in order for negotiations to be meaningful, and the Palestinian Authority had proved itself unable to take these steps.
Within the PA itself, Abbas is apparently in serious trouble, and Arafat is making some kind of return, even though the U.S. has said they will refuse to negotiate with him.
In Iraq, another massive bombing. At a minimum, the U.S. will probably have to speed up its timetable to get Iraqis in charge of internal security.
Meanwhile the WMDs issue, or more generally, the issue of the reasons that were given for a U.S. and allied invasion of Iraq, is not going away.
On the one hand, Washington is still saying officially that claims to the effect that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction were and are true. "We're finding WMDs, and we'll report on some--just you wait and see." (A report from David Kay is expected within days). On the other hand, a full-scale re-examination of the alleged defectors from Saddam's regime, along with other sources who told about WMDs, is under way. Why? Because it's possible all, or almost all, of their claims about WMDs, including those that were heavily reported in the New York Times, were lies. (See Jack Shafer in Slate and Josh Marshall, both linking to the L.A. Times). (Marshall also has a link to the Boston Globe, as discussed below).
The natural question is: who would have gone to all this trouble to make decision-makers believe lies about WMDs in Iraq? The answer we're getting is: Saddam. The alleged defectors either were working for him, or were themselves duped by agents of Saddam. Wait a minute. Saddam wanted the U.S. to believe he had WMDs? Even though this was likely to provoke a U.S. invasion, with or without UN sanctions, and thus the end of Saddam? I don't know--no one ever accused Saddam of being suicidal.
Shafer has an answer for this: Saddam had a consistent policy of maintaining "ambiguity" as to his exact state of military preparedness. He wanted to frighten his immediate neighbours, while providing some reassurance to the international community that he wasn't an immediate threat. I say again: if Saddam actually conspired in 2002 and 2003 to deliver messages to the U.S. on the ridiculously high side as to what weapons he had, that was suicidal.
(This is also the problem with saying that Saddam was part of the planning for 9/11. At 8:00 a.m. Eastern on 9/11, Saddam had everything his way. He had kicked out the UN inspectors, he apparently could develop WMDs if he wanted to (most observers thought he did want to), the sanctions were hurting his people but not him, and it looked like the U.S. would leave him alone indefinitely. By noon he was toast. Wouldn't he have anticipated this result?)
Marshall seems to be working his way towards a different answer, although he doesn't spell it out. The only way for Ahmed Chalabi to have his ambitions realized in Iraq was to get some some U.S. and other Western forces in there, and topple Saddam. How were the "defectors" identified, brought forward, and introduced to U.S. officials? Usually, it seems, Chalabi was the intermediary. It's hard to believe he made up the whole thing himself, but the whole story is taking on a Monty Python quality. (For more on Chalabi in Marshall see here. In this piece, Marshall cites some of the growing suggestions from Bush supporters that Chalabi should have been supported more, not less, in the pre-war phase. See also here.)
Shafer still thinks that although a specific subset of claims that Saddam had WMDs might turn out to be entirely untrue, it still might be true that WMDs are going to be found.
Marshall, on the other hand, cites a report in the Boston Globe that seems to be based on an advance copy of David Kay's report. Saddam had "parts and plans" of weapons, spread throughout Iraq. The implication (not spelled out): he may not have had any actual weapons. All the "programs" were supposedly "intended" to be pulled together quickly. Admittedly, nuclear weapons might take longer: "many months, if not years."
As Marshall shows, there is an attempt here to show that what has already been found, even if it's only a centrifuge that could have peaceful purposes, really counts for something; it's part of a "program." At the same time, there is a barely concealed admission that no weapons have been found, and even parts of weapons are very hard to find and/or may be non-existent. What we can say existed, with some confidence, is "programs." Marshall says indications are the programs were actually "shuttered," but there was a knowledge base being kept on ice. Saddam would only have built actual weapons if sanctions were lifted.
Apparently, then, even this report won't say Saddam was an imminent threat to any other country--certainly not to the U.S. The repeated suggestion will be that Saddam intended to build actual weapons as soon as sanctions were lifted, and that he was keeping a knowledge base, along with odds and ends of "dual-use" parts, to allow for this. The ingenious part is that the more one says "but there's virtually no actual evidence of this," the more the answer is "you see how clever he was?"
Marshall has also dealt with the same L.A. Times story that Shafer discusses. Besides the business about "defectors" and Chalabi, the Times piece has this nugget, apparently also based on David Kay's report:
"Evidence collected over the last two months suggests that Saddam's regime abandoned large-scale weapons development and production programs in favor of a much smaller, "just in time" operation that could churn out poison gas or germ agents if they were suddenly needed. The transition supposedly took place between 1996 and 2000. But...the weapons hunters have yet to find proof that any chemical or bio-warfare agents were produced after 1991."
My questions: how exactly did U.S. intelligence work in the preparation for Gulf War II? Did they simply question the guys that Chalabi rounded up for them, then put a phone call in to the Brits, and hope for the best? Does all this reveal the terrible truth of the admission shortly after 9/11 that the U.S. is short of employees who speak either Farsi or Arabic? Did they tell Bush (and Blair) what they wanted to hear? Was there a bureaucratic struggle (as many have speculated) between the CIA/State view and the Rumsfeld/Rice/White House view? Did Bush, in the end, go against the weight of evidence and advice from the CIA, and rely on much skimpier and less reliable evidence that Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz had from their friend Chalabi? (See here and here).
Finally, on Al Qaeda. Glenn Reynolds is still suggesting that every time a member of Al Queda is rounded up in Iraq now, this is confirmation that Saddam had a working relationship with Al Qaeda before March 2003. From all we are hearing, it is possible that there were few or no members of Al Qaeda in Iraq until after the U.S. invaded. Ansar al-Islam (Chalabi's preferred enemy) is a different story.
One thing that is touching about the present President Bush is that he seems determined to rescue his father's causes, even if that means confirming that his father left problems behind him.
Bush Senior famously raised taxes after promising not to do so. Junior seems determined to cut taxes every year, and to promise to cut taxes even more than he cuts them.
The reason Bush Senior raised taxes was that he wanted to balance the budget, and didn't see any way of making enough spending cuts to achieve this goal. Junior seems blissfully unconcerned about a growing deficit.
Bush Senior talked about the "thousand points of light"--non-profit, volunteer and church groups doing a lot of good for the poor and society, so there was no need for government to take over. This was probably never much more than a slogan for him. Bush Junior has talked about "faith-based initiatives" (unlike his father, he is apparently a born-again Christian). Once again, it does not seem this really means very much in policy terms, other than support for school vouchers, which are indeed a defining issue between most Democrats and many Republicans.
Bush Senior may have hesitated before doing anything at all about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. There is a legend that Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney helped persuade him that it was possible to assemble the great "Coalition." [Update August 30: all I can find on the web are some references to Mulroney persuading Bush Sr. to get Security Council sanction, instead of acting unilaterally. This unauthorized biography of Bush Sr. says a leak to the effect that he was surprised by Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, and unprepared for any response, was ordered by Bush Sr. himself while he worked to persuade various elements of the military and bureaucracy that war was unavoidable.]
Saddam may have thought he had tacit approval (from the U.S.) to at least take the oil fields and refineries in the north of Kuwait; see the April Glaspie episode. Once Bush took action, he did so, of course, on a prodigious scale, but then he made the controversial decision not to pursue Saddam back to Baghdad, and not to overthrow his regime. In fact, the U.S. called off a no-fly zone that was protecting Shiite rebels, and Saddam proceeded to slaughter roughly 100,000 of them.
Two years later, an attempt was made to assassinate Bush Senior, and the Clinton Administration concluded that Saddam gave the order for that attempt.
Bush Junior got the chance to take Saddam out completely. This personal motivation must have counted for something--perhaps even more than Rumsfeld wanting to demonstrate the effectiveness of a small, high-tech force, so as to defeat his bureaucratic opponents as he reforms the Pentagon. (Link from Kausfiles, scroll down to March 30. As Kaus says, Rumsfeld presumably would not have exposed U.S. troops to unnecessary risk simply to win the bureaucratic battle; he must have wanted to conduct war in several theatres at once).
Analogies can demonstrate very lazy thinking. The new situation, which we all want to understand, is confusing, and we sense it would take a lot of study to say much with confidence. Saying that in some important respects it is analogous to a situation we know better--possibly because it is in the past, and has been more studied--can provide a tempting short-cut.
I for one am all for this short cut. I think this is the kind of thing that gives political scientists a bad reputation--for coming to conclusions about historical events without in-depth historical knowledge. Here goes anyway.
I have touched on analogies between the "War on Terror" and World War II, on the one hand, and between the present U.S. occupation of Iraq and either "Vietnam" or "Beirut" on the other.
Here are some analogies offered by people who are sympathetic to President Bush, but believe he may be getting into deeper trouble--yes, possibly even the q-word.
In the Spectator, Matthew Parris worries that the U.S. might be getting into a situation like post-1970s Northern Ireland or 1950s Algeria (where France was the colonial power). He thinks a truly popular colonial administrator can really help, and he even suggests Paddy Ashdown (now busy in Bosnia).
Jim Pinkerton worries that the U.S. may find Iraq becoming more and more like the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli occupation.
"In those two zones, the once mostly secular Arab population has been radicalized and Islamicized by 36 years of Israeli rule. And now, few believe there's a Palestinian majority yearning for peace with Israel; the occupied territories are a 3-million-person factory for the creation of suicide bombers."
I guess I'm still zig-zagging to some extent on the War, whether the U.S. is doing more harm than good, etc.
Tim Cavanaugh has an outstanding interview with Jessica Stern on the Reason web page. The occasion is Stern's new book, Terror in the Name of God.
Stern is hard to pin down as to whether she is pro- or anti--Bush. She still seems to think substantial evidence will be found both of WMDs in Iraq, and of links between Saddam and Al Quaeda. On the other hand, she fears the U.S. may be making the same kind of mistake in both Afghanistan and Iraq that it made in supporting the mujahadeen war in Afghanistan in the 1980s--that is, unintentionally making anti-Western terrorism stronger instead of weaker.
She has studied many individual terrorists in some detail, and she is obviously very concerned that they may have no motivation in common such that "we" can reason with them. Supposedly the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia was a major grievance for Bin Laden, yet it was precisely when there was a clear commitment to remove all these troops that terrorists struck at Riyadh in May. Specific grievances come and go; there may be no clear thread other than hatred of the West. Stern is confident that when Bin Laden announced his willingness to attack U.S. civilians, not just the military or officials, some of his followers left him. Stern says there is widespread hatred or fear of the New World Order, and corporate globalism, which has the potential to unite international anti-Western terrorists with those in the West who sympathize with some of their views.
Some terrorists can evidently be motivated by money, which as Stern says is reassuring. Many of them, like the Saudis who attacked the U.S., are not poor. She is concerned that "membership" is so variable and changing that free-lance haters could join up for a short time or longer. For example, home-grown American terrorists, full of hate for their own government and prepared to kill civilians, could conceivably become allies of Bin Laden's. (She doesn't think this has happened yet).
Cavanaugh gets Stern to talk a bit about the anti-Soviet Afghan war of the 1980s. She says the importance of this war still tends to be under-stated in the West. This war proved the possibility of a successful international jihad, uniting Arabs and other Moslems in a way that had not even occurred in the major wars against Israel. She says the official terrorist account is that they defeated the Soviet Union largely on their own--overlooking financial contributions from the U.S. and others. (My line is that this may have been the first (primarily) Moslem Arab victory in about 500 years--other than the guerilla actions against the Germans in World War I, led by T.E. Lawrence).
Cavanaugh says, and Stern agrees, that the U.S. should have a better reputation with Moslems than it does. It needs to sell itself more. She actually recommends more exchange-type programs to get Middle Eastern males, in particular, living and studying in the U.S. As she says, this is exactly what the U.S. government seems to be preventing.
Lots of food for thought here.
Update August 30: Ann Coulter has singled out one comment by Jessica Stern for criticism: "America has taken a country that was not a terrorist threat and turned it into one." (Apparently from an op-ed in the New York Times, which would require a link. For Coulter you may have to click and scroll to August 28).
I will bring this back to the War on Terrorism, I promise.
One great find in my grad school years was Xenophon's Education of Cyrus. In professional academic circles this book "belongs" to classics professors, who treat Xenophon as a rather dull general who wrote about his own exploits or about the interests of a gentlemanly Athenian. They reject any attempt to argue that Xenophon might have been a first-rate student of Socrates, i.e. that he has something to teach us.
As the sex education part of Monty Python's the Meaning of Life demonstrates, you can make anything boring if you present it as part of regular classroom learning. Xenophon's Education of Cyrus is, if nothing else, a fantastic adventure story about a man who grows up in the royal family of an obscure part of Asia, and ends up conquering much of the known world. The book constantly emphasizes the art and wisdom he has to employ to win over different groups of people and individuals--some by force or battle, some by appeals to self-interest, some by what can only be called seduction. There are "side" stories in which Xenophon allows us to reflect on how many aspects of life affect, and are affected by, the career of the great conqueror. Can he have any close friends? A love life? A family? Any of these might threaten his political and military conquests. What is the relationship between politics and happiness? Anticipating Machiavelli: what is the relationship between the virtues that are needed for political/military success, and virtue in general, including what we call the moral virtues?
Can political loyalty actually be built on several different bases, or are many of the "regimes" built by Cyrus quite ephemeral? Do each of the ways of life of which we get at least a glimpse--close friends, people with loving families, two ambitious lovers like Antony and Cleopatra--somehow make the others in the book look incomplete? Are they all in fact incomplete? In Plato and Aristotle we would expect the great contrast to be between all other lives and the philosophic life, represented by Socrates. In Xenophon there is barely a glance at such a life, but it is an interesting glance.
All of that is preliminary. I want to say that the opening of the book raises questions about what has been called "Oriental Despotism," and this is of at least some relevance to questions in the War on Terrorism, including whether it will be easy for the U.S. to build a democracy in Iraq.
The opening chapters prepare us for a story that focuses on Cyrus's deeds by indicating his true importance. Ruling human beings is very difficult, we are told, and Cyrus has excelled at this art; indeed he has made it look easy. His accomplishment must be remarkable--not nearly as easy as it looks--since it is so rare. Admittedly, we might question whether it is really Cyrus himself who deserves praise, or a kind of political science, or science of ruling, which in principle could be taught to many people by a teacher such as Xenophon; Cyrus shows that ruling can be easy if it is done "scientifically" or "with knowledge" (episteme).
What is the difficulty in ruling human beings? Apparently, it is the loyalty people have to something other than the would-be ruler(s). In the opening we are told of loyalty to regimes: democracies are ovethrown by those who would prefer "any other regime (politeia)"; monarchies and oligarchies are overthrown by democrats. In the third chapter we are told that each people (ethne) tends to be loyal to its own king; thus it is impressive that Cyrus became ruler over so many peoples, some of them a vast distance from his home, and speaking many different languages.
In between these two accounts of the difficulty of ruling, Xenophon compares human beings to animals, especially herd animals. He strongly suggests human beings are not inclined to take direction, or feel gratitude to their keepers. Perhaps human beings have a natural desire for freedom, which indeed would pose a difficulty for all rulers, including managers in large organizations.
All of this is enough to make Cyrus's accomplishments appear very impressive indeed, and it even anticipates some of his most successful measures. He leaves local rulers in place where possible, so that people continue to see a ruler who is "their own," and thus keep at least the appearance of "freedom"--that is, freedom from foreigners. Cyrus also creates incentives--both rewards and punishments--for individuals to do his bidding; he doesn't expect them to do as he wishes with no benefit to themselves.
On the other hand, however, Xenophon quietly introduces a theme in these same early chapters which might make us question whether Cyrus's accomplishment was as great as it might appear. That theme is: Europeans (i.e. Greeks) vs. Asians; or as we would say, the West vs. the East. Xenophon provides evidence that the Greeks have achieved actual political life, with a variety of regimes and a debate about ways of life. The Asians seem to have accomplished nothing better than what we might call "Oriental despotism."
The regimes or politeiai listed at the very beginning are arrangements of the polis or city, as their common root implies. The city is not simply an agglomeration of people that has reached a certain size. It is a place with a certain awareness of choices that can be made, of freedom not simply from what is foreign, but freedom to choose. In the ancient world, outside of the Greek city and then the Roman republic, one could almost say there was either absolute monarchy or anarchy. Even monarchy has a different meaning when it is chosen by a city--it is more likely to be defined by laws, for example. For the Greeks, rule that was utterly lawless was tyranny. This did not necessarily have the same negative connotation it does now, but it surely implied a lack of true political life.
The peoples or "ethne" who love their kings are all or almost all Asian. Their kings, including Cyrus, are not monarchs but "basileuoi." When he generalizes to say all peoples love their kings, Xenophon says "those in Europe are still free and self-sufficient to this day"--presumably this means "unlike the Asians, who were conquered by Cyrus and perhaps by others." When he lists all the peoples conquered by Cyrus, he includes the "Asiatic Greeks"--not the Greeks proper.
Finally, when Xenophon turns to Cyrus's childhood and describes ancient Persia, he describes it as "polis," or a Greek city, which it surely was not. As one editor says, the description does not match Persia, but Sparta, about which Xenophon wrote elsewhere.
Xenophon lets us see a difference between Greeks and Asians that is probably in favour of the Greeks; but he doesn't emphasize it. Clearly he wants Cyrus's accomplishments to be as impressive as possible, so he doesn't want to say "not bad for an Asian," or "not bad for someone only conquering Asians." He doesn't simply wish to escape from crude or well-informed bigotry, however. He wishes his book to teach us something about ruling in general, human beings and their nature (physis) in general. If he allowed the book to be only about Asians, and only about some historically accurate Cyrus, it might fall short of this goal. Thus he fictionalizes where necessary not simply to help Cyrus, or beautify him, but to make this book as instructive as possible.
Cyrus's education is unique, on the surface, in that he goes back and forth between two Asian royal households. Xenophon makes his education even more remarkable: part Greek, part Asian, and in a way partaking of the best of both?
Again I end with questions. Is any of this stuff from long before Christ of any relevance to West vs. East today? Greek rationalism is surely still one of our guiding lights. Greek regimes were usually unstable (although Sparta's regime lasted for 800 years), and Greek cities turned out to be quite easy for Alexander and then the Romans to conquer. What has allowed the West to build more lasting institutions? Part of the answer may be monotheistic religion; and it could be argued that this is always Oriental religion. We live under absolute monarchy or tyranny in one part of our lives; and then we can exercise our freedom in other parts. (Some of the people ruled by Cyrus start to see him as a god. When Catholics say "kyrie eleison," they are saying "Cyrus have mercy"--the name Cyrus having become a synonym for "Lord.")
Obviously I'm rambling a bit.
The War on Terrorism? Iraqis, like anyone else, probably love their freedom, and are likely to resent a foreign invader. If they are Asians in some meaningful sense, they may prefer a native ruler, even a brutal one, to any regime that seems foreign. Something like that, at any rate, is implied by those who say the U.S. does not understand what they have gotten in to. (Of course, one answer is : look at Japan post-World War II? Worship of MacArthur?)
On the other hand, the modern West may have found a way of perfecting the initiatives that the fictional Cyrus began in a more tentative fashion. Allow individuals to pursue their self-interest within some over-arching order. It has worked before, and it might work again.
I'm not sure about the War on Terrorism itself, but the battle lines in the debate over the war now seem to have been clearly drawn.
Critics of President Bush say Iraq now resembles Lebanon in 1982 if not Vietnam in the early 60s--an inscrutable and dangerous morass, if not a quagmire. The U.S. should pull out (or surrender authority to a truly multi-national force), more or less gracefully, with the understanding that problems in Iraq are simply too many and too complex for the U.S. to deal with them successfully. Not enough thought was given to problems of military occupation in advance, and the sight of armed U.S. troops performing various tasks, while the economy remains in a slump, can only cause a deepening backlash. The analogy might be to the ending of the movie "Chinatown": "never mind, Jake, it's Chinatown"--meaning, you'll never understand it, you'll only put yourself in danger, and you'll probably do more harm than good. (Scroll down to the very end.)
President Bush's duty is to protect U.S. civilians, and it is increasingly unlikely that invading Iraq had much if anything to do with that essential task. There have been
signs of "moderating" or "Westernizing" in various Middle Eastern hotspots, but many of these trends were developing before the U.S. invaded Iraq; it's not clear what if any positive effects the invasion itself has had (other of course than the removal of Saddam's regime); and a long, trouble-prone occupation is likely to make things worse.
On the other hand, Bush has many defenders who are more convinced than ever that he and they have been right all along. There is some more or less monolithic terrorist movement or organization, committed to attacking the U.S. and other Western targets, and closely allied with suicide bombers in Israel. The terrorist acts of these groups are basically disconnected from any real grievance; they are the acts of enraged or deranged people who simply want to prove the success of the West is a lie, or can be reversed by pinpricks of terror. The terrorists speak, or claim to speak, for an impoverished and desperate Arab and/or Moslem world; but instead of working for progress at home, they simply want to hurt the West (including Israel).
By fighting in Iraq, on this view, the U.S. is leading the fight for a noble cause for the whole world. They are going to weaken or eliminate despotic regimes that foster terror; and strengthen or build new and better regimes. There is an analogy to World War II: the U.S. military will go beyond protecting U.S. civilians, and re-make substantial parts of the world to make it a better place. Anyone who opposes U.S. actions must be cynically indifferent to the fate of Iraqi children, and children in many other parts of the world, including the U.S. The two bombings in one day--one targeting the UN in Baghdad, the other in Jerusalem--confirm that there is one more or less united terrorist enemy, and the U.S. has been making progress against it.
There is a great deal of overlap in these two accounts. What the U.S. is doing is risky, and based on very skimpy evidence (as far as we know). For critics, these facts make the enterprise stupid, and contrary to the real interests of any U.S. government. For defenders, they make it noble. As Mickey Kaus might say, "stupid" and "noble" are not necessarily contradictory descriptions. (To show how high-minded I am, I won't mention--well, I'll barely mention--the "Karl Rove is just trying to win the 2004 election" meme, or "it's all about oil.")
Perhaps Bush's most sophisticated defenders are now arguing that the occupation that seems so unplanned and floundering is actually a work of genius. Iraq is being used as "flypaper" to attract all the anti-U.S. and anti-Western hooligans to one place, where they can be killed with impunity. Here is where the same facts will lend themselves to contradictory interpretations. If there is an increase in terrorism and sabotage in Iraq, critics will say that normally law abiding Iraqis have been driven to desperation by the U.S. occupation; Bush defenders will say the U.S. is providing a target for existing terrorist groups, all somehow linked to 9/11, and increasing violence is a good sign rather than a bad sign. Mickey Kaus
has tracked the "flypaper" argument as it has moved from rather obscure blogs into the mainstream.(Scroll down to Daniel Drezner, and then to Wednesday, August 20, "It seems like only yesterday....").
I share the skepticism of those who think the Bush defenders have a view of the whole world, and of entire civilizations, which seems to have been sketched on the back of a napkin. There are real questions as to who is responsible for what bombing, and to what extent various terrorist groups are working together. In World War II, long before Pearl Harbour, no one had to prove that the evil regimes of the Axis existed, nor that they were collaborating in an attempt to conquer the world. It just seems there is room for honest doubt as to whether there is a similar enemy today.
Having raised doubts about the "World War II" analogy, I'll raise questions about the "Vietnam" analogy as well. The Vietcong were not a truly indigenous force of South Vietnamese, motivated by a determination to resist all foreign invaders, perhaps especially the U.S. Instead they were shock troops of the Communist regime in Hanoi, supported by China. Once they gained victory, they became allies of the Soviet Union. In Iraq today, China is not a factor, and there is no Soviet Union. This is more of an "authentic" opportunity to see if Americans, with their noble purposes, can win the hearts and minds of a people.
For many people, replacing a U.S.-only action with some kind of truly multi-national action, under the auspices of the UN, would make the mission more promising even if there were no more convincing evidence as to who the terrorists are, or what they are up to. Why? For one thing, the UN actually employs people with skills and experience in many of the peace-keeping or nation-building activities that Iraq now needs. They also have staff who, ahem, speak Farsi or Arabic, or both. So they might be of more actual practical help, and they might attract less resentment or hatred than the Americans. Maybe the bombing of UN headquarters makes this unlikely, or maybe some small group of terrorists just wants the UN to leave.
My biggest concern is that the President's Sunday School baby talk is not helpful. [Update August 26: after thinking about it for a few days, I take back that expression. It is not for me to criticize the President in such a personal way. Josh Marshall puts it much more diplomatically; see link below]. Obviously international politics is a world of moral ambiguity. Every U.S. president since Nixon is going to engage in "constructive engagement" with China, which can still be fairly described as a brutal tyranny. The U.S. has entered negotiations with North Korea, a member of the badly named "Axis of Evil." The President's spin doctors are saying North Korea gave in by agreeing that the talks will be multi-national, not bilateral; but in fact the U.S. has agreed to private talks that are indeed bilateral. It is Bush who has already agreed to conditions--probably wisely.
Naomi Klein repeats claims that the government of the Philippines has committed acts of terrorism against its own people in order to blame some nebulous "terrorists," and create a pretext to invite U.S. forces to return to that country.
Update August 24: here's the link.
In Indonesia the U.S. is allied with a fairly scummy government. And of course, the only government that has been really closely linked to the attacks on 9/11 is that of Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. has proceeded against them with kid gloves.
Some remaining questions about the Iraq operation specifically: Is there some big terrorist group with many tentacles, more or less co-ordinated, or not? If so, are its numbers at least manageable/finite, so that they can be drastically reduced in two or three military or pseudo-military campaigns? Is there a point at which U.S. military actions cause more terrorism, rather than less? What will a future "all-Iraq" government look like? Will it be any kind of democracy?
Update: Josh Marshall has an excellent interview with Peter Bergen. Marshall thinks that in Afghanistan, the U.S. drained the swamp; but in Iraq, they are creating the swamp. Bergen does not seem quite so gloomy, but he does say Al Quaeda forces are coming in to Iraq both because it is a great opportunity to attack an "infidel" American military force far from home, in the heart of the Arab world, and because there is now a crack down on terrorists in Saudi Arabia. Bergen says it is impossible to predict what will happen in Iraq--the outcome could be very good or very bad.
Update August 24: Of course, treating Iraq as fly-paper to attract terrorists is very different from liberating Iraqis--including children. This means making Iraqi civilians hostage to a war that will probably escalate, not decrease, and may go on indefinitely.
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