Saturday, November 20, 2004
[posted by jaed at 8:40 PM]Darfur
Occasionally, I hear remarks to the effect that America doesn't care about democracy or human rights in Iraq - that all that is a sham - because if we did, we'd immediately invade the Sudan to put a stop to the genocide in Darfur.
I'm trying to imagine what the reaction would be if Bush emerged from the White House and announced that (after consulting with Britain, Poland, Tanzania and other willing partners) the US along with its allies was sending troops to Darfur to protect the Fur and evict or destroy the janjawid.
I don't have a hard time imagining it, actually.
- The cries of "No blood for oil!" would be deafening.
- NGO workers would be found who would claim that Darfur wasn't so bad off, and immediate attention would be paid to other disasters elsewhere. The question would arise "What is America's *real* motive in Darfur?"
- News anchors' brows would be furrowed.
- "The Arab street will explode."
- A "body count" site would be set up.
- Someone would discover a photograph of an American official shaking hands with a Sudanese minister twenty years ago; within five minutes, this would be used as "proof" that America "created" the janjawid.
I suspect eventually we'll do it. It won't be with the support of the UN, since France is a UNSC veto power, has strong oil interests in Sudan, and has already said it will oppose any such action. So the action will be "unilateral", that is, without the approval of France, and "illegal", that is, without permission from the UNSC. And all of the above and more will happen, and the post-humanitarian left will again be found in the forefront of protest. It is as inevitable as the tide.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
[posted by jaed at 8:41 AM]Alternate history
The Diplomad speculates on what might have become of America had it experienced certain crises just a little later in history:
It’s quite possible that the USA would never have come into existence, its independence movement suppressed by “international peacekeepers.” A UN at the time of our Civil War almost certainly would have ensured the emergence of a Confederate States of America. On or about 1863 or 64, as the war seemed headed for a stalemate, we would have seen calls for a negotiated end to the conflict, and, perhaps, the intervention of “peacekeepers” to secure a shaky ceasefire.
Friday, November 12, 2004
[posted by jaed at 11:30 PM]Quote du jour
"Why does France get a pass in its postcolonial interventions? Simply because there are no French to criticize them."
-- Victor Davis Hanson, "The Ironies Ahead"
Sunday, November 07, 2004
[posted by jaed at 5:55 PM]Silliest quote of the day
(And considering that we just had an election that the Democratic candidate lost, with the attendant obligatory wailing and gnashing of teeth, that's saying something.) This does not appear to be parody:
Perhaps the happiest people are those who do not have much choice: Sisyphus may have got used to his rock-rolling lot, rock-bound Prometheus might well have become philosophical about having his liver eaten by a bird for all eternity. They all got off the hedonic treadmill and, as a result, none of them was confronted by the misery of endless choice.Ah, to be chained to a rock having your liver gnawed on. In some superficial ways, this might seem like a bad thing, but at least you're spared having to choose a brand of ketchup.
It occurs to me that it's no wonder people like this did not have any pity for the Iraqis. Self-involvement of this level and degree just doesn't leave room for it, does it?
Saturday, November 06, 2004
[posted by jaed at 10:46 PM]Worth reading
Remarkably thoughtful discussion at Democratic Underground on how the Democratic Party can attract a wider diversity of voter. (Yes, I'm serious. Democratic Underground and "thoughtful" don't often belong in the same sentence, but this one is worth a look.) There is some paranoid crap, of course, but much of the conversation demonstrates people genuinely struggling with the issue.
Most insightful post, by the DU admin who started the thread, concerning socially-conservative Democrats:
107. I think we first need to start respecting them.
And stop treating them like they are morally-repugnant cultural freaks.
Which makes me a hypocrite. One of the core values of DU is bashing socially conservative people. And it has made us very popular.
Friday, November 05, 2004
[posted by jaed at 3:44 PM]The last line of defense
For the last couple of days I've been cruising Democratic blogs, as I did after the 2002 midterm election. Reading the comments, trying to gauge the mood among the party stalwarts. What I'm finding is causing me to think that the party really may be on the verge of becoming irrelevant.
I wondered about this after the spanking the electorate administered in 2002. In that year, for the first time, I voted for all Republicans on the national level. Ordinarily, I think divided government is healthier and vote accordingly, but the Democratic Party's national leadership had managed to convince me that it can't be trusted with governance in wartime. I wasn't alone in thinking that, and the Democrats lost seats when ordinarily they'd have expected the usual midterm gain.
I expected a reappraisal of policy and leadership due to that election. I expected that Terry McAuliffe would be booted out as head of the DNC, for example. I expected the leadership would reconsider their policy of obstructionism. But I didn't see that happen, and the first harbinger of that was blog comments and editorials: we can't let any judges get through. We need to prevent anything supported by Bush from passing.
When your party loses an election, you can respond in any of several ways:
- You can say "We really did win, but the other side cheated (or the rules are wrong, or their application was capricious." This was the majority sentiment in 2000. Jeb Bush somehow changed the results in Florida. Our candidate won the popular vote, so the electoral college should be abolished. The Supreme Court decision was bad and indefensible. We wuz robbed.
In this case, you'll go for more accountability, or changes in the process, or for a larger margin so that it can't happen again. You'll demand changes in voting law, such as provisional ballots and retiring of punchcard voting machines. GOTV activities will be a prominent part of your strategy, to increase your margin of victory. Politically, you will be obstructionist, blocking appointments and policy changes. - You can say "We would have won, if only we'd gotten our message out. The electorate simply didn't hear it, or didn't understand it." This was a very prominent sentiment in 2002. Fox News isn't spouting our line, and a lot of people watch Fox. Americans don't know anything about foreign countries and need to be educated. Our message isn't boiled down enough for the public to resonate with it.
The tendency if you believe this is to repeat what you've been saying, only louder and slower. You'll fund organizations to get the message out with ads, posters, and web sites. You'll hire spinners. You'll concentrate on the media. Obstruction will again be a part of your approach in the legislature. - You can decide, "We lost because the voters are evil or stupid." Southerners are all racists, and we're the party of justice, so no wonder we can't win the South. We lost because homophobes turned out for gay-marriage initiatives. They're all Jesus freaks anyway. Can we secede from the rest of the US?
This attitude is the last line of defense against taking a good, hard look at your policies. It's the last line because there really is no strategy to take if this is the situation: if your candidates lose because the electorate is irredeemably bad, there's no point in changing the message or the policies to appeal to it. By definition, policies that appeal to a bad electorate are bad themselves. (The only cure is to remove the electorate and substitute a new one.)
A political movement that finds itself in this position has three choices: move to a more enlightened country in order to be with fellow good people, mount a coup of the good people so that they may rule while ignoring the bad majority, or huddle with one's fellow good people and try to ignore the rest of the country.
The Democratic Party will become what a few people already call it, the party that hates America, and its national politics will be characterized by spitting at most of the country, alternating with invitations to become more like the blue states.
Needless to say, if this happens, the Democratic party will not be a national party any more.
More later....
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
[posted by jaed at 2:17 AM]If Kerry is elected to the presidency of the United States today...
(This is related to something I wrote in comments at Allah is in the House a while back:)
I will not cheerlead American diplomatic defeats, express hope for American setbacks, or look on anti-American protests with creamy satisfaction. I also will not exaggerate American losses or use them to attack the president for the sake of attacking. I will not take the position that as long as Kerry is the American president, I'm anti-America.(Criticism is not insult, however, and I won't pledge not to say things like "Such-and-such a policy is a serious mistake and I believe it will get people killed." But I hope I'm above idiotic insults. Or any insults, come to think of it.)
This may be easier for me than for some, because I'm not anti-Kerry per se. I think the election of Kerry would be a disaster for this country. I think it will result eventually in many thousands, possibly millions of deaths. I think that this is true even if Kerry follows Bush's policies or even improves on them, because a Bush defeat will be seen by the world as a renunciation of the policy of fighting back, as an apology for dissenting from Chirac's foreign-policy dictats, and as a general loss of will. It will give new heart to our enemies, dismay our friends, and cause our allies to feel the sensation of a limb being sawed off behind them.
But I don't hate the man. I'm bothered by some aspects of his background - his post-Vietnam conduct in particular - but I don't dislike him. Under other circumstances he might make a perfectly decent president. It's not nearly as hard for me to forswear this sort of thing as for someone who has a visceral dislike of him. And I know that tit-for-tat is a powerful human motivation and that the last four years have seen anti-Bush hatred - raw hatred - the likes of which I'm not sure this country has ever seen.
However. "Nyah, they did it first!!!" is no justification for the sort of pernicious nonsense that's been coming from Bush-haters, nor will it justify anything similar aimed at Kerry. This is not a child's game of tit-for-tat. This kind of personal attack on the president - any president - DAMAGES THE COUNTRY. It encourages the enemy. It diminishes, in the eyes of neutrals and friends, the man who speaks for the country. It gives America-haters in other countries plentiful raw material - "see, even the Americans themselves..."
I'll be blunt: if DAMAGING THE COUNTRY seems like a small price to pay in order to vent your spleen about the Democrats, you're no better than the average DU troll and I'm ashamed to call you "countryman".
May whichever candidate wins the election become the greatest president in the history of the United States of America.
