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March 01, 2002
On March 10, CBS is
On March 10, CBS is planning to air footage recorded inside the World Trade Center during the attacks. This has prompted a few politicians to issue letters in which they urge CBS to either delay airing the program for another six months (New Jersey's Bergen Country Prosecuter William H. Schmidt), or to "exercise taste and caution" in its production (New Jersey Senators Robert G. Toricelli and Jon Corzine). Some of those who lost people on 9/11 don't want it to be aired at all, which is understandable.
However, the Great Glass Eyes in our homes obey us. We can elect to turn them off, and that is what those who do not want to see this documentary should do. As long as CBS doesn’t indulge itself with “teaser” footage during promo ads scattered throughout regular viewing hours, there shouldn’t be a problem. The promo for the program I saw last night was circumspect.
I do question CBS’s choice of Robert DeNiro as host. Clearly, they intend his presence to emphasize the Heroism and Sacrifice of the day, subtly changing the tone from “sensational new footage” to “portraits of courage.” A bit disingenuous, like all televised attempts to be sensitive and compassionate while trying to gain ratings share.
I’ll be watching, of course. I was there that day. I want to see what was happening 300 yards away from me. I'll tape it, and put the video in the box along with the the newspapers, the magazines, the bit of burned office paperwork and the small jar of thick gray dust. And then I'll put the box in the closet.
Good points in Bruce Thornton's
Good points in Bruce Thornton's "Bad Habits in the Middle East." The important role that ideas of God play in the Middle East, and the fundamentally different worldview produced by moral and intellectual submission to those ideas, is too often overlooked in political discussions of the Middle Eastern problem.
What Thornton misses, though, is that ideas of God are equally important when considering Israeli responses to their situation. The other "big question," as he puts it, is whether Israel is ready to fully reconcile itself with the modern tendency to view the attempted creation of ethnically pure states as ethically dubious.
March 03, 2002
Six years ago, a prescient
Six years ago, a prescient Daniel Pipes produced this piece on the Western influences within militant Islam. It's worth reading more than once.
Like many of the Islamist leaders cited by Pipes, Mohamed Atta studied in the West. He studied architecture at the University of Hamburg-Harburg in Germany, producing an analysis of Alleppo, a town in Syria. His professor gave him the highest possible mark for his defense of it. Given its subject--the preservation of Islamic architecture in the face of modernism--I can only image the sublime aesthetic pleasure with which he anticipated the destruction of the quintessentially modern World Trade Center towers.
I knew of Atta's education. What I didn't know was the extent to which the very foundations of the Islamist movement have been Westernized. We must resist the tendency to regard the radicals as atavistic, superstitious, God-fearing simpletons. Pipes points out that the melding of Western-style notions of political ideology with Shari'a has produced a revolutionary movement that closely resembles twentieth-century Western totalitarianism. This is an ideology of a completely different order than the blustery, eternally offended and easily mocked fundamentalism we know and love here in America. Pipes write, "Islamism's potential grows as do its numbers." That's truly frightening. One of the reasons the Marxist left offers to explain the failure of a socialist revolution to materialize in America is that there simply weren't enough revolutionaries to make it happen here. There are nearly a billion Muslims on the planet, and while they're certainly not all Islamists, it seems to me that the ground is fertile for the planting of the radical seed.
An interesting quote from Hasan at-Turabi, then ruler of Sudan:
"I am for equality between the sexes...a woman who is not veiled is not the equal of men. She is not looked on as one would look on a man. She is looked at to see if she is beautiful, if she is desirable. When she is veiled, she is considered a human being, not an object of pleasure, not an erotic image."
A provocative defense against Western assumptions about the Repression of the Veil, although Turabi probably wasn't the portrait of feminist enlightenment. But it is something to think about as we contemplate our own culture, in which the bodies of women and sexual images thereof are used to sell everything from cars to shampoo, while the genuinely erotic has been replaced by gynecological fuck tapes, voyeurism, and drunken revelers flashing their tits in Daytona Beach and New Orleans.
March 04, 2002
I have a slogan in
I have a slogan in my head, spoken in a tinny yet sonorous Movietone News announcer's voice: "The exit strategy...is Victory!"
Complete with warbling, uplifting lo-fi orchestral punctuation.
What Tom Daschle "gets" is how to float a trial balloon and see how the public reacts. He would've done much better if he had said, "Mr. President, we need to know how we're going to win this!" instead of looking forward to the moment when we pack our bags and go home because we've had enough.
Trent Lott didn't fare much better. With his stern, frowning admonition ("How dare [Daschle] criticize the President when we've got troops in the field�) he reflects the simpleminded lackey's unwavering obedience to his Master's voice.
Daschle was right to ask for some more information, but wrong to frame it in terms of defeat. Lott was right to call for strong support, but wrong to frame it in terms of uncritical obedience.
It is a reflection of the thick-witted provincialism of American politicians of all stripes that a significant portion of the leadership in the D.C. swamp doesn't understand the historical nature of the burgeoning conflict.
Our enemies believe that the God of history is on their side. They take the long view, and they want the world. It's our job to stop them from taking it.
Interestingly enough, the New York Times article on the exchange doesn't mention Daschle's "exit strategy" comment--probably for the reasons cited above. Doesn't sound good, does it?
A reader sends this New
A reader sends this New York Times link in with the comment, “Here's why it's so freakin' weird over there…”
Amen. That's the point I was making on Friday (below) about Thornton's piece. Look at this quote from the article, uttered by Moshe Yurovich, a 22-year old yeshiva student from the Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood, in response to repeated bombings there: "When someone who loves you hits you, you don't get angry." Referring not to terrorists…but to God.
Never mind what such an attitude may indicate about Orthodox attitudes towards wife-beating. Some of these Orthodox folks believe that their God, the paternalistic and (apparently) lovingly violent God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is arranging to have them blown up in order to get them back in line. "If we behave better, the troubles will end,” says another Orthodox student.
Now, I'm all for that sentiment if by “behaving better” he means treating all people with respect and recognizing their common humanity in the sight of God. But, what he really means is "We have to study and follow the Torah, keep the Sabbath, and love one another," and by “one another” I am fairly certain he doesn't mean Gentiles, particularly Arabs.
A case in point is currently idling by the curb a block away from my office here in New York: the Chabad Lubovitch Mitzvah Tank. It's an RV that's driven around the city by Orthodox devotees of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, whom they call Messiah or Moschiach. Klesmer music is piped from a little PA horn speaker on the RV's roof. The Mitvah Tank serves as a mobile outreach to members of the Jewish faith, encouraging them in the observance of the Mitzvot, or commandments of the Torah. Along the side, the Mitvah Tank reads: “Torah Education…Holy Books…Sefer Torah…Tefillin…Torah…Shabat Candles…Kashruth…Charity…Family Purity…Love Your Fellow Jew…Mezuzah.”
Not “Love Your Fellow Human Being,” or even “Love Your Fellow Man.” Love Your Fellow Jew. The rest of us, it seems, will have to make do without the Rebbe's Charity.
The Mitzvah Tank is a gasoline-powered representation of an ethnically-based eschatological worldview in which the end of history is rapidly approaching. Such a viewpoint doesn't bode well for the prospects of peace…after all, when the Messiah comes, it will all be moot, won't it?
The Islamists would force compliance with Sharia for everyone, Muslim and infidel alike. The Orthodox, it seems, only truly care about their own relationship with God, and merely suffer the existence of the rest of Gentile mankind. That's not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination, but still carries with it the unpleasant sense of a people set apart from the rest of humanity.
I can only hope that the fundamentalists among the Muslim and the Jewish peoples fail to achieve any more influence within their respective communities. They're both flip sides of the same corrupt coin, and it is the responsibility of the majority within both faiths to decry such prejudices.
A reader writes in response
A reader writes in response to my comments Sunday about the veiling of women:
"The problem with this argument [made by Hasan at-Turabi] is that it places the blame for women's objectification on women's bodies, as if they are inherently dangerous and by their very existence produce spontaneous eruptions of lust in the innocent men who walk the planet with them.
The objectification lies not within the female form but in the eyes of the beholder, who refuses to look at a woman (however she is clothed) as a person rather than an object. When Victorian women were covered in cloth from neck to foot, their male compatriots managed to objectify their ankles.
Veiling a woman to render her "non-erotic" is like treating smallpox with a topical salve."
That is indeed the problem with that argument, and it’s why I’m not advocating veiling women.
What Turabi is saying, in effect, is that it is within the nature of males to objectify women. There is no male “innocence,” here, quite the opposite. It is because all men cannot be relied upon to have developed the refinement required to respect the personhood of women that it is more practical to short-circuit their natural tendencies. It is not the uncontrollable, destructive sexuality of women that Turabi sees as the problem. It is the uncontrollable, destructive sexuality of men, and the blame is theirs. As pointed out, even female ankles could not escape the Male Gaze (to use a drippingly PC term from the bowels of Academia).
To put it another way, Turabi might have regarded it as a sad commentary on the state of Muslim culture that its men cannot be relied upon to exert a civilized restraint upon their thoughts and inclinations. My point was that, inasmuch as the solution of the veil is problematic, so too is the American solution. Our solution is, of course, no solution at all. Nothing is covered, nothing is hidden, all is exposed, and there is no longer a tradition of male restraint or refinement.
Turabi did not say that the veil rendered the woman “non-erotic,” he said that it prevented her from being viewed as an “erotic image.” The difference between “erotic” and “pornographic” is famously one of interpretation, but in its most refined sense the erotic seems to have more to do with what is hidden than what is exposed. In the same article Shabbir Akhtar holds that the veil renders a woman more erotic, which is to say that it lends a refinement to female sexuality that is missing in a pornographic culture such as America’s.
Given that objectification is such a problem, solutions to it ought to be examined for their efficacy. The veil, at least, has the potential to instruct a society by offering a tangible sign that such objectification is not the mark of high culture. Here in America, there is no such potential.
March 05, 2002
Oh, dear. It looks like
Oh, dear. It looks like the crematory in Lafayette, Georgia is working after all. Which means that Ray Brent Marsh may have had other reasons for keeping 300 corpses around. There's also the matter of the pictures of decomposing bodies he apparently kept on his computer.
A regular Necropolis! Who knows what "based on true events" films will be made of this. The terrible tale of Mr. Marsh, living alone at his crematory in rural Georgia, stacking corpses like cordwood, just to...have them around for company? Produce really great mulch for flowerbeds? Or...something else?
Calling Tom Savini!
March 06, 2002
After reading Andrew Sullivan's Dish
After reading Andrew Sullivan's Dish today, I'm a bit puzzled. Not by him--by my own reaction to the same news. I think Andrew lives in or near D.C. I live in New York City, and I work about 300 yards from Ground Zero. I, too, saw the splashed headlines about the nuclear possibilities. But the news--which would have driven me from the city for at least a week, had it come out in October--barely registered.
I find that very odd.
But I think I understand it: I've already been through one catastrophe. I'm buying a house outside of the city, and I'm getting the hell out. I never really liked it here, anyway, and with technology being what it is these days, my work is mostly portable. I probably won't be able to leave for a couple of months, though. So I bide my time and go about my business, keeping my focus very narrowly on my goal: getting out. Although I feel guilty for saying it, I think my lack of reaction boils down to "Just wait until I'm gone, please." Because I was so close on 9/11 (and God knows there were thousands who were much closer), those splashed nuclear headlines seem to have my name on them. Right now I can't afford to indulge myself in panic, because I'm driven: get out. Get safe.
Every time I see some jackass mouthing the "I'm going about my business as usual, because if I don't the terrorists have won" line, I want to reach through the television and punch them in the head. The only way any of us here in New York can go about our business is by pretending that it won't happen again. Anything else would send us all raving into the streets.
But, like Andrew, I'm pretty sure that it will happen again. My irradiated corpse will neither give nor deny the terrorists victory. So off I go!
FrontPage and Andrew Sullivan both
FrontPage and Andrew Sullivan both have links to this, as I discovered after reading it. Norman Podhoretz on the necessity of mounting an intellectual defense of America's elevated place in history, to coincide with the rise of national unity post- 9/11.
He's right. And that's not just a pun.
Or, maybe my corpse won't
Or, maybe my corpse won't get so irradiated after all. The New York Times offers "Nuclear Officials Describe 'Dirty Bomb' Scenarios."
Could just be aimed at calming down a freaked-out populace that's pissed at the government for keeping the October Scare under its hat. Worth a read, anyway.
Of course, there's still the matter of all those loose Soviet nukes floating about, God knows where...
Our Good Friend and Ally
Our Good Friend and Ally may be spying on us. Who'da thunk it?
March 07, 2002
No, wait! My corpse will
No, wait! My corpse will be irradiated! Further expert testimony on nuclear annhilation from the New York Times. Just compare today's Standard Media, Inc. Risk Assessment
"Dr. Kelly offered a case study of what might happen if a dirty bomb containing a cobalt food irradiation bar exploded at the southern tip of Manhattan on a day with a light wind blowing toward the northeast. He calculated that Manhattan as far north as Central Park would be contaminated at levels similar to those in the permanently closed zone around the Chernobyl power plant. Manhattan would have to be abandoned for decades, Dr. Kelly said."
with yesterday's:
"Such a weapon [a dirty bomb] could contaminate dozens of city blocks with radioactivity, but not kill a soul, the officials told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. Or it could cause a few more cancers later in life for its victims -- say, four additional cancers in 100,000 people."
Of course, yesterday they were talking about a bomb laden with less-deadly strontium and cesium isotopes, and today they're talking about The Big Ugly, Cobalt-60.
Isn't it a pity we don't spend more on science education, so that the general public could decipher all of this and make decisions about just how worried to be! Would it kill anyone to publish a handy, bullet-pointed chart, instead of just releasing declaration after contradictory declaration with little or no context?
This reminds me of being told in October to "be vigilant" without being told a single thing about what to be vigilant about. In this time of crisis when the public--especially the urban public--needs to be involved in homeland defense, the media has been inexcusably remiss in providing clear and cogent information. "Duck and Cover" may have been laughably ineffective as a method for surviving a nuclear strike, but every schoolkid in America knew about it. We need something similar: "Six Suspicious Signs: Be Aware In The Subway!" or "How To Spot A Bomb."
For my own part, I think the likelihood of a loose Russian nuke falling into the hands of our enemies is far greater than the use of a dirty bomb. To make the highly effective cobalt-60 bomb would require the theft of the most tightly controlled radiation source in the country, along with appropriate shielding and protective gear, so that they could transport the material, store it, and grind it into powder without dying. Also from today's NYT article:
"An individual physically handling an unshielded single source rod [of cobalt-60] would receive a lethal (death within weeks) dose in about a minute, and an incapacitating dose (immediately deadly) in about 20 minutes."
There you have it.
Gosh, I feel better already.
The Unveiled Reader sends this
The Unveiled Reader sends this ABCNews.com link about the veiling of Muslim women.
Reading it, I was reminded of a scene at a press conference where the Foreign Minister of the Taliban--unaccompanied on his trip to the U.S.--faced the press corps around the time that his fellows were blowing up Buddhas. At one point, a woman in the crowd of reporters leapt to her feet and began screaming--and I do mean screaming--at the hapless Minister, producing a full burqa from beneath her coat, unfolding it and waving it about. She was a total spectacle. I wondered at the time what the Afghani must have been thinking: "Why are you showing this to me? I see them every day. You are a very strange woman." I thought she made a complete and incoherent fool of herself.
The point is made by the article: How important is what a woman wears when the woman hasn't eaten in days? First things first, please!
It is the Western problem: we are so steeped in abstract theory that we ignore the real problems of humanity in the muck.
March 08, 2002
Peggy Noonan offers one of
Peggy Noonan offers one of the first of what will I'm sure be many other “six months” pieces. I've got one on tap myself.
This one is notable because it combines cloned Chinese Rabbit Men with stigmata and Tina Brown, sprinkled with some assumptions about smaller dark people and taller white ones. I'd like to find the subway Ms. Noonan rides, and give it a try—I certainly wouldn't call the N/R/W line “darling,” even on its best days. Perhaps if I rode it for 12 years and prayed the rosary the whole time, I would. I find very little of the “we're all in this together” feeling to slather around, particularly when folks are trying to cram their wide asses into spaces not big enough for them and the urine-stench of Grand Central is oozing through the open doors while the subway remains stuck motionless in the station. That's why I generally bike to work.
The life here in New York, to me, is insect life: the incessant rustling activity of other humans, close by, anonymously sharing intimate space. I'm tired of living in a box surrounded by other boxes; I'm tired of hearing other people's noise in my home; I'm tired of the loudness, the particulate pollution, the unnatural edges of concrete and asphalt. It's a certain kind of person that thrives in this environment, and I'm not that kind. I've met more people I like and keep in touch with while spending weekends in the Hudson Valley than I have while living here for four years.
And now, to top it off, my prescient imaginings have come to apocalyptic life. When I started working downtown, I would occasionally look up at the knife-edged towers and think, “What would I do if an airliner hit one of them?” I'd look around, trying to figure out where shelter would be found: under the overhang in front of the Brooks Brothers? In that doorway over there? Perhaps down in the subway station.
So, no thanks. I don't need to move to Kansas to feel safe. I just need to spend less time in this bull's-eye.
FrontPage links to this story
FrontPage links to this story of freshman mortarmen in Afghanistan.
There's a sequence at the end that's almost comedic: first, our boys are pinned down by al-Qaida mortars, firing from three positions over two miles away. So they call in air support. Two of the positions are flattenned, but the other ridegetop position stubbornly remains untouched. The 'Qaidas--wily devils that they are--hide until the air support's ordinance has detonated, then pop up, wave mockingly, and fire off some more mortars. Somehow, they manage to do the same thing when our boys return fire with their 60mm mortars.
But, ah! We know mathematics, and are also wily. Our Captain Butler has his mortarmen calculate how long it's taking the shells to reach their targets. As it turns out, the 32-second travel time gives the 'Qaidas plenty of time to hide as soon as they hear the mortars go off.
So, the good Captain calls in air support, and orders his mortars fired at the exact moment the mortarmen hear the ordinance detonate. The 'Qaidas hide, then pop up, wave mockingly...and explode.
D'oh!
March 09, 2002
So…the fellow who brought the
So…the fellow who brought the NYC nuke plot info to the Feds made it up. He claimed to have overheard it in a Las Vegas casino. Lovely.
Another Muslim with visions of black-eyed virgins sucking him off in Paradise walked into an Israeli café and killed lots of people. Swell.
The U.S. is working up its nuclear contingency plans. Another “secret report” that got leaked to the press, which means another message that the government wants sent. The message: do not fuck with us. Great.
Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin shoots his mouth off once again, having failed to keep his promise to leave the country. Another actor who thinks that exposure must mean that he has something intelligent to say. What “moratorium” on criticism of the Bush government, Alec? Folks like you, Sontag and Chomsky have reams of press plus hours of radio and TV time. Bush was bashed left and right for his steel tariff decision, something that I don’t pretend to understand and therefore don’t comment on. What do you understand, Alec? Judicial activism? Constitutional law? Political philosophy? Idiot.
March 11, 2002
A reader brings this Middle
A reader brings this Middle East Media Research Institute article from December of 2001 to my attention. In it, Benny Morris--author of the fat and mostly balanced treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict, "Righteous Victims"--essentially denies his previous, left-leaning support of the notion of total Israeli agression and Palestinian victimization.
This is what happens when a movement hits the same violent note again, and again, and again. They lose any support they might have had, as their barbarity makes even theoretical sympathy untenable. I am simply amazed at the Islamist mindset, the death-orientation, the sheer medievalism. I'm beginning to agree mightily with Our Man Pat Buchanan: just leave them alone. Let them suffer and die in their own struggle to achieve democracy. Let them establish their theocracies, and then let the oppressed populace rise up and throw them down. Let the people see what happens when we totally withdraw all of our support from them. Let them experience the chaos of their own inept leaders and the fiendish results of their own primitive mindsets.
Well, I was supposed to
Well, I was supposed to have my own contribution to the Six Months boulliabaisse done by today, but it's not quite done yet. Such is life. In the meantime, I sit here three blocks from Ground Zero and remember the day.
March 12, 2002
So the Israelis aren't spying
So the Israelis aren't spying on us. That's a relief. Daniel Pipes cries "foul!"
Good thing we've got the Internet to tell us what's what, huh?
March 13, 2002
Hey hey, kids! It's Moral
Hey hey, kids! It's Moral Idiocy Time! Check out the fellow who can't tell the difference between the current administration and al-Qaeda. Kuttner damns George W. Bush as some all-powerful overlord, able to implement every "reckless scheme" he comes up with, unopposed. The very fact of Kuttner's publication gives the lie to this fatuous argument. Before Bush was elected, his critics thought him ill-equipped, uninformed, and incapable. Now, he is suddenly in danger of becoming an all-powerful tyrant.
Attempting to create an equivalence between a president who serves at the pleasure of the electorate (say what you will about the first election--I guarantee you that the re-election won't be as close) and a group of terrorist thugs who serve at the pleasure of their psychopathic master and an imaginary God is the move of a sloppy thinker. Attempting to create an equivalence between the ill-fought war in Southeast Asia and the nascent struggle against stateless medieval terrorists who are seeking nuclear capability is the move of a dangerously ignorant sloppy thinker.
For some sense, read James Nuechterlein.
Interesting to note how ABC
Interesting to note how ABC News backs up UN policy initiatives by choosing the footage it shows. This evening on the 6:30 newscast, I watched a Palestinian fire his automatic rifle pop-pop-pop at an Israeli tank from a position behind a building. There was a pause while he pulled his rifle up, checking it, and then the area he was using for cover simply exploded into flame and smoke as the tank put a shell right into it. It’s a good thing they got him, or those anti-tank bullets he was using could have gone right through that armor and killed everyone inside!
Given the reported American authorship of the Resolution and President Bush’s scolding of Israel for its recent activities, it seems as though America may be taking on the parental role required: If you kids can’t get along, you can both go to your rooms without any supper.
Not exactly a trenchant political analysis on my part, but lord someone needs to smack those folks around over there. Recently, I’ve gotten so deeply involved in the mess that when things really started to heat up—a dozen dead one day, thirty the next, and on and on—I started to simply feel sick at heart. Every day, it was more of the same…Palestinians proving their faith and devotion to the cause by hurling themselves into death with the grim resolve of martyrdom…Israelis proving the size of their nationalist balls by taking out individual riflemen with tanks.
Wicked monkeys, all.
March 15, 2002
And so it goes…Sullivan's dish
And so it goes…Sullivan's dish (03-14, “Bush vs. Israel”) points out the subtleties I miss…like I said, I'm just sick about everything over there…and tired…no, the Palestinians shouldn't do that…those bad things…with the exploding in the cafés and so forth…yes, Israel can defend itself…and should…but gosh, don't you wish they would have thought about this when they decided to build settlements in occupied lands? Wouldn't it have been nice if Ben-Gurion and the rest of the Zionist visionaries had come up with something other than ‘relocation' as a plan for dealing with the folks who lived on the land they coveted? Wouldn't it have been wonderful if the British hadn't promised the land to both the Jews and the Arabs in exchange for support during WWII? There is the stink of primitive monkey evil all over that swatch of wretched earth…that miserable dusty corner of the globe where rocks and walls are holy, and worth shedding blood upon…that desert that breeds madmen and prophets with honey-drenched beards and locusts stuck in their teeth.
Meanwhile, Horowitz comes up with this cheery tidbit. We have truly dangerous, hateful traitors in our midst. Perhaps those who believe that the events of September 11 were anything but morally repulsive need to be taken to the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago, soaked with jet fuel, set on fire, and thrown off. On the way down, they can contemplate the justice of their punishment, and decide whether those office workers and firemen deserved to die, their bodies aflame, crushed into spaces no thicker than a sheet of paper, or rendered unidentifiable by the impact of a 90-story fall onto plaza concrete.
My first response, on 9-13-01, was to write a tirade about the American failure to uphold justice throughout the world. There is a theological perspective that simply states: there is no perfect Justice here, because this is an imperfect world. Perfect Justice is only found in the hereafter. Unlike me, these people—Sontag, Chomsky and the like—do not have the excuse of naiveté to explain their continued refusal to acknowledge the inherent absence of good in the acts of 9/11. These are educated people who firmly believe that flying airliners into skyscrapers is a reasonable act.
We have sunk so deeply into the swamps of relativism that life itself has become meaningless in the face of all-encompassing Theory. It is only since wiping the dust of buildings and bodies from my brow that I have come to realize that, even in the absence of God, simple reverence for life commands us to condemn atrocity. The fact that the United States government often fails to perfectly uphold such principles everywhere, at all times, is not an indicator of complete moral failure. It is only an indicator of imperfection.
Think of it this way: elsewhere in the world, women fight for the basic right to participate in government, to drive, to wear the clothes they want, to leave the house unaccompanied, and to have their genitals left unmutilated. Here in America, women fight for the final 25 cents needed to bring their average wages up to par with their male counterparts. Elsewhere in the world, speaking out against the teachings of religious authorities results in exile, persecution, and death. Here in America, the Church must defend itself against just criticism when its priests commit acts of sexual predation upon children. Elsewhere in the world, the people have no recourse to information other than that provided by their governments or their religious figures. Here in America, we have so much information, from so many different sources, that the only determiner of proffered truth is the reasonableness of the proposition, the argument used to convey it, the information that backs it up, and the intelligence of the person contemplating it.
What we're doing in America is working out the kinks and details in a relatively new system of government that is the freest the world has ever seen. Much of the rest of the world hasn't even decided whether everyone deserves to live or not.
The very process of criticism, even that leveled by such moral idiots as Sontag and Chomsky, is an indicator of the superiority of our system of governance and of those like it. The very fact that we don't imprison, torture and kill these people, but allow them to have their say, however they can manage to get it out, supports the open nature of our society. What is their objection? That the ubiquity of the “party line” promulgated by Standard Media, Inc. is equivalent to their repression? Get with the program, people! You are not the majority. The fact that very few people outside of your own precious, utopian revolutionary circles agree with you is simply an indicator of your elitism and the pragmatic common sense of the vast majority of the population.
Yes, the United States has done evil things, in the service of questionable ideas. But here, at least, our government hides such acts, knowing that, if made public, the citizenry would cry aloud in moral revulsion. That indicates that there is at least an awareness that such acts are wrong. Compare that with the joy in the Muslim world at the deaths of innocents, the pride with which Palestinian mothers strap toy explosives to their children, the celebration of suicide.
Our government may do shameful things. But at least we have a sense of shame.
Weird. My trusty information spies
Weird. My trusty information spies tell me that someone from the Weapons Division at the Naval Air Warfare Center has visited Astonished Head three times this month.
Perhaps my recent ranting about various weapons of mass destruction has gotten the site caught up in some sort of routine 'Net keyword sweep.
My tax dollars at work! Go, man, go!
Either that or some government employee is surfing when they ought to be working.
My tax dollars at work! Go, man, go!
March 17, 2002
This is why...yes...perhaps the Islamists
This is why...yes...perhaps the Islamists can tell us all about the last time American servicemen walked into a mosque...and deliberately threw grenades at the worshippers bowing down before their God. More primitive monkeys willing to kill to defend the anthropomorphic honor of their holy rock.
In that vein, here is a thought-provoking Christian treatment of the reality and uses of violence, from J. Bottum. Commenting upon the work of René Girard, Bottum points out that our failure to appreciate the "sacrificial logic [of] mythic cultures" is not serving us well. The Christian sacrifice of Christ, he maintains, is an alternative to something. That "something" is the literal presence of sacrifice, human and otherwise, that formed the foundation stones of so many prior cultures, in the West and elsewhere.
What we are forgetting is that the Islamist conception of Muslim culture requires blood...human sacrifice. Muslims willing to die by slamming planes into buildings, by strapping explosives to their bodies, by hurling themselves into waiting Israeli guns. This is an ethos and a mythology that is not from the time of Muhammad; it is from the time long before, the time of tribes, and magic, and blood ritual.
The soft pacifism that is rearing its head, Bottum maintains, is acting as midwife to the re-birth of an ancient, dark culture, explicitly founded upon blood sacrifice. It is our duty to prevent this from happening, and to do that it is permissable to use the ancient, dark tools of violence.
What we are confronting is a culture that has not shed its explicit belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice. It is as if the Aztecs, instead of cutting out individual hearts with knives of obsidian, had developed nuclear weapons and satisfied the blood lust of their gods with tens of thousands of burnt offerings at a time.
Those among you who have been educated in today's anti-Western doctrines will point to the American foundation, built upon the blood of the aboriginal peoples of this land. This is true: our vision of Manifest Destiny allowed the westward expansion to proceed without regard for the lives of the Native Americans, and upon the backs of the Africans we brought here. However, as a culture, we have progressed. We recognize that these acts contradict the statements of our founding. These deeds are now decried, and are the cause of epic cultural battles. We recognize the need to atone, and we wage rhetorical war among ourselves over the form that our atonement should take. In short, we have recognized that the blood spilled upon our foundations cries out for justice and for recognition. And make no mistake: it was only through the most convoluted thinking that we were ever able to justify these acts, and they were never regarded as sacrifices demanded by God.
This is not so for our Islamist enemies. Blood is the intended wetting agent for the mortar of their cultural foundation. That is the difference between the World Trade Center and the bunker at Al-'Amariya. We, at least, try to avoid shedding the blood of innocents. Our enemies choose to shed it, with deliberate intent, and are morally motivated to do so as part of their religious and ethical worldview. Furthermore, they regard the sacrificial shedding of the blood of their own as necessary for the establishment of their chosen culture. They are trapped in a time before civilization, when gods walked the earth and demanded the lives of their subjects as tribute.
March 18, 2002
D'oh! Horowitz retracts the "cheery
D'oh! Horowitz retracts the "cheery tidbit" I linked to in my 3/15 post. Perhaps I'm too ready to believe the Horowitzian line...on the other hand, I stick by my characterization of the soft pacifists who are incapable of seeing the moral difference between 9/11 and the unfortunate consequences of misguided American policy.
So there!
Hmmm. When was the last
Hmmm. When was the last time a sitting American Vice-President engaged in shuttle diplomacy among Arab nations? That would have been Al Gore, in April-May of 1998. He visited Israel for its 50th Anniversary celebrations, then swung by Saudi Arabia and Egypt, essentially just saying hello.
Over the course of 1999, former Secretary of State Albright visited Egypt (three times), Saudi Arabia (twice), Jordan, and Syria (twice). Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen visited Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, and Oman, also in 1999. In 2000, Albright visited Syria and Egypt. In 2001, Colin Powell visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait.
Vice President Cheney, on the other hand, visited Kuwait, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Yemen, one after the other...and swung through Israel on his way out. One visit by the second-most powerful man in the United States to nine Arab nations, plus Turkey. The only Arab nations he didn't visit? Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Syria wasn't named in the "axis of evil," but might as well have been.
It's just a hunch, but something tells me that there was more to those visits than, "Guys, we're really, really serious about this Palestinian thing." Cheney has delivered the message to those Arab countries that we give a damn about, and to those non-Arab countries that are strategically important to the efort: we are going to take action against Iraq.
Add a boatload of 1,000 Kurdish refugees appearing from nowhere to dock in Sicily, with attendant airtime on tonight's national evening news, and you've got the first bits of media mortar slapped onto the foundation stones of our eventual invasion of Iraq. 300 of the refugees, Our Man Peter Jennings tells us, are children. Seven or more are pregnant, one has already been airlifted off and given birth.
Remember the Kurds? Sadaam Hussein killed lots of them, using nerve gas and other nasty things.
Let's see...Vice-President of the United States...nine Arab states...Kurdish refugees on the evening news...gosh.
We'll be bombing Iraq within six months.
March 19, 2002
Hello, Europe! The first readers
Hello, Europe! The first readers from France and the U.K. have visited Astonished Head this week.
Here's a potential propaganda conflict
Here's a potential propaganda conflict for you. This Wasington Post article summarizes the New Yorker magazine report linking Iraq to al-Qaeda. However, the report indicates that the terrorist group Ansar al-Islam, trainined in al-Qaeda camps, is made up of Iraqi Kurds as well as Arabs.
So, let us sit back and witness the fine parsing that Standard Media, Inc. and our Government will have to perform: the Kurds are oppressed by the Tyrant Hussein, and we must liberate them. But these Kurds are bad terrorists, and we must shoot them.
The Delphic oracle was huffing.
March 20, 2002
There are two pieces today,
There are two pieces today, from opposite sides of the political spectrum, that perfectly encapsulate two disparate ways of looking at the world and the people in it.
The first is the lead piece in Frontpage Magazine, by Editor David Horowitz. In it, he paints his usual ideological portrait: we are entering the time of Great Conflict, where the near East will try to destroy the West. We are entering a war that will permit no compromise, only victory or our destruction. Israel, he maintains, is our front line position in this war. That country and its neighbors are like the two stones of a mill, and their heavy, grinding points of contact are the end product of the driving force of the cultures of the West and near East. It is an abstract piece, where nations represent not individuals but ideologies, and clash in the rarified space of ideas as much as--or more than--they do on the real fields of battle.
Contrast that with this piece in today’s Salon. It’s an interview with Filmmakers B.Z. Goldberg and Justine Shapiro, whose documentary “Promises” is up for a Best Documentary Oscar. Made between 1997 and 2000, the film follows seven young Israeli and Palestinian children as they live their young lives in the midst of burgeoning conflict. I saw the film when it aired on PBS in December, and it is indeed very affecting…heart breaking, actually. To see such young children already mouthing the ideas and prejudices of their elders is nearly enough to rob one of all hope. ‘Nearly’ enough, I say, because one of the documentary’s centerpieces is the meeting of Faraj, a Palestinian boy, and Yarko and Daniel, two Israeli boys, at Faraj’s refugee camp home. For a brief moment, the commonality of the human desire to know and be known is there. But, by the end of the film, checkpoints and increased hostilities have prevented further meetings. Faraj, now two years older and entering a disillusioned adolescence, has the nascent spark of the Intifada in his eyes. Yarko and Daniel have pulled back, both because of the danger and, one senses, because of their parents, who seem to have decided that they have done their bit for peace.
It is these children, and thousands like them, who are the grist between Horowitz’s millstones. These are the young people who will grow up imbued with the ideologies of their parents, and who will be ground to dust by the forces of history. It is all very well for Horowitz to blame the Arabs, and to portray the Israelis as vanguards of Western democracy who just want to live in safety. It’s very tidy, rhetorically comfortable, and an easy position to argue from. It’s also overly simplistic, and very nearly inhuman. Ideologies are created, believed, and conveyed by people. They do not descend to earth from somewhere in the ether, like voodoo spirits, to ride their hapless subjects.
That we must defend ourselves from the ancient sacrificial evil of our enemies is beyond question. But we must be careful that we do not become cavalier about those human beings who will pay the price during the course of that defense.
Like George Will and Rush
Like George Will and Rush Limbaugh, Frank Gaffney apparently believes that Israeli lives are worth more than American lives:
"...the United States has lately resumed its strident criticism of Israeli efforts to prevent terrorists from inflicting further damage on the Jewish State at a rate that is, calculated on a per capita basis, far in excess of the losses we suffered on September 11."
As I stated previously ("Counting Corpses, 12-18-01"), putting such mathematics into the service of an argument intended to elicit a moral response is manipulative at best. One human life equals one human life; that is the only legitimate equation. Even God himself did not value the Jews more because of the size of their population:
"The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people. But because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers." (Deuteronomy 7:7–8).
If God thinks that the relative size of a given population has no effect on its worth, why do Will, Limbaugh, and Gaffney?
March 21, 2002
Reuters treats us to some
Reuters treats us to some gore. What a lovely thing to see, no? Perhaps if they showed us equivalent images of every corpse on both sides of the conflict we here in the relative calm of America could more fully appreciate the nastiness and general incivility over there.
Perhaps someone can answer a question for me. Supposedly, leaders of Israeli and Palestinian security forces were going to meet today, and it was anticipated that a cease fire would be declared. Citing today's Suicidal Idiot, Sharon cancelled the meeting. Thus, the cease fire was cancelled because the Palestinians...what? Violated a cease fire that had yet to be declared?
Demanding a cessation of hostilities before a cessation of hostilities is declared seems a bit...well, off to me. I suppose it's too much to expect sense from either side at this point.
March 25, 2002
Century 21, the department store
Century 21, the department store on Church Street that has been closed since September 11, reopened on February 28. So, too, have the streets running west off of Broadway. The small park near my office between Broadway and Church Streets remains fenced off, the trees and benches gone. Folks used to eat lunch there, and play chess at folding card tables. It’s now home to Porta-Potties and the mobile offices of Tully Construction. Ground Zero, once so immense at 16 acres, has gotten smaller, and more discrete—if a six-story hole in the ground can be called discrete. The piles of smoking wreckage have been trucked away, and the loaders and diggers are slowly propelling the site back through time to 1970, when all that existed of the World Trade Center was the vast, empty foundation.
Read more...
March 26, 2002
Just now, I watched them
Just now, I watched them bring someone out of Ground Zero. From 39 stories up, and 300 yards away, the workers are small figures an eighth of an inch tall. It’s raining here, so they’re very visible in their yellow rain slickers. I had stopped by a window to look out at the site, and noticed an ambulance parked at the top of the elevated roadway they’ve built from the bottom of the foundation up to the northwest edge of the Pit. Dozens of small, yellow-suited figures milled around slowly, and then gradually aligned themselves, person by person, along the edges of the roadway. The supporting structure beneath the edges of the roadway is hung with construction-orange tarpaulins, which when combined with the yellow rain gear created an incongruously cheery profusion of bright colors.
After fifteen minutes or so, two people—one in yellow, one in black—walked slowly onto the portion of the roadway that I could see. A few minutes later, a tight group of six or seven yellow-suited workers followed, bearing their burden between them. I had thought that I might be able to make out the flag, but I never saw the anticipated splash of red, white, and blue. Finally, after a pause at the top of the roadway while—presumably—the tiny figure in black offered prayer, the group of workers gathered around the rear of the ambulance, which then slowly went on its way.
I realized, as I stood there quietly watching the small procession, that during the past two weeks a peculiar form of grief has been heavy on my heart. It has to do with coming here to work, a few days a week, and being near that place. It has to do with the state of the world, and the constant burgeoning presence of bloody sacrifice. It has do to with the realization that much of the world doesn’t understand tolerance, or virtue, or humanity the way that my culture strives to. All of that was imbued with a subtle sense of history, that communal product we all manufacture in some form or another. I felt that I was standing there alongside those tiny yellow figures, and for just a moment, the immensity of their task and of the work that they have already done struck me hard, bruising my spirit.
These are still mournful times. A friend of mine, who was also near Ground Zero on September 11, expressed much the same sentiment. Here in New York, we move through each day trying to forget what has happened, and trying not to imagine what may come. It’s an effort that can only be maintained for so long, before the reality of the past and the potential of the future conspire to bring us grief and anxiety.
We’ve come so far. But we have so very, very far to go.
March 27, 2002
Even though I'm not willing
Even though I'm not willing to trek with him to the land of the Eternal Straight European, Pat Buchanan occasionally sums a position up succintly:
"While Israel is indeed our ally in the war on terror, its annexations of Arab land, its dispossession of the Palestinian people, and its denial of their right to a homeland and state of their own on land their fathers farmed for a thousand years are a principal cause of this war and a primary reason why America's reputation has been ravaged in the Arab world."
This is written in the context of a refutation of moralist William Bennett's stalwart defense of Israel, which is based upon the idea that, because America and Israel are "both democracies," our fates our "intertwined."
For a long time, I was of the opinion that Israel, with its avowed purpose as an ethnic state, and its legal privileges and rights given expressly to Jews alone, didn't quite deserve the name "democracy." In the course of defending America's own ethical evolution, however, I belatedly realized that (of course!) America, too, had a stage of growth in which a portion of its citizens weren't accorded full benefit and protection of the law and the rights laid out in the documents of our founding. With great effort and struggle, we moved on, and we continue to struggle with the moral legacy of our less-than-illustrious past. We had the luxury of doing so on a vast continent, with few agressors along our borders. We were lucky.
Israel is not so lucky. There is dynamic and impassioned debate within that country about every aspect of its existence: its Orthodoxy, its secularism, its wars, its peace...everything. We here on our large and comfortable continent hear little of this debate, which is unfortunate. It has often been remarked, in fact, that were it not for the constant pressure of outside aggression, the nascent state would have dissolved into the chaos of civil war long ago.
Imagine, then, if America had been beset on all sides by violent aggressors in the mid 19th century. How likely is it that our great universalist reforms would have come to pass when they did?
When we observe the Middle East, we are looking at history on the hoof. A great failing of the American psyche is our impatience with the pace of history, perhaps best exemplified by Bill Clinton's last-ditch Middle Eastern diplomatic efforts in the final months of his presidency. As a nation we have grown so much, so fast, that we reel from the speed of the changes, and think that our social, cultural, and political vertigo is the normal state of being in the world. This affects our outlook on the rest of the world. We demand that Israel reach the point of universal respect for all peoples, immediately. We demand that the Palestinians learn lessons of democracy that took Europe centuries to learn, and which we here in America are still studying. We forget that, at the beginning of this century, the Middle Eastern "nations" weren't even lines on a map.
So no, Mr. Will, Arafat most likely isn't going to preside over a "placid little democracy." And Israel really doesn't have the time or the space to deal with the niceties of universalism that we are privileged to be able to deal with here in America. The reason that the conflict seems so intractable, senseless, and endless is because it is the American way to expect the proper changes to be implemented immediately and, once that is done, we strive to believe that the problem is solved. Then, we're surprised and outraged when--for example--a coalition of African Americans sues a bunch of corporations and demands reparations for a practice that ended almost a century and a half ago.
It would be nice if, rather than demand that everyone simply "get it," we could focus our efforts--and our use of force--on creating conditions that would make such "getting" possible. But that's vague and impractical at best. Too many people are dying.
So--as usual--I am left simply shaking my head at all of the angry screaming monkeys, flinging their feces at one another as they fight over their scrap of jungle.
One way or another, history will provide the solution. It is highly unlikely that it will be a pleasant one.
Remember when the Arab world
Remember when the Arab world wanted us to stop bombing for a month, out of respect for their sacred holy days of Ramadan?
Here's why we didn't.
More war wiggling. Apparently, we're
More war wiggling. Apparently, we're moving a whole mess of military equipment from our base in Saudi Arabia to the ever-so-slightly-more-America-friendly country of Qatar.
Let's see...is Qatar on VP Cheney's list of "Arabic Countries I Visited"? Why, yes! Yes it is. Of course, the AP says the equipment moves began several weeks ago, but my Chomsky-sense is tingling! I suspect vast imperial conspiracies afoot! We're saying one thing, and doing another! Look out! It's an atrocity on the wing! Oppression in the offing! The public is being propagandized!
Good god, my ideology is aching.
March 28, 2002
I sent this off to
I sent this off to frontpagemag.com in response to Jamie Glazov's "Andrea Yates Part II. A Reminder of the Need for Execution." Glazov's work is a continual disappointment.
"Dr. Glazov's arguments are incoherent.
Dr. Glazov’s seemingly interchangeable use of the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘moral’ indicate that he has little or no idea of what the terms mean. ‘Ethics’ refers to the discipline of studying that which is good and bad and what constitutes moral obligation. ‘Moral’ refers to the principles that actually determine what is good or bad. The presence or absence of the death penalty has nothing to do with the presence or absence of the ongoing ethical study of our human cruelty to each other. The existence of the moral principles that underlie such study are similarly unaffected. To claim that this is not so is naïve at best.
Dr. Glazov may also want to examine the meaning of the word ‘categorically.’ It means ‘absolute, unqualified.’ The fact that Dr. Glazov can demand an unqualified condemnation of the taking of human life as part of an argument for the necessity of taking human life does not reflect very well on his thought process.
Dr. Glazov’s characterization of the ‘fear of the innocent’s condemnation’ argument is, quite simply, logically and morally wrong. To casually claim that the imperfect nature of the state system intended to dole out death as a punishment has ‘absolutely no bearing’ on whether the death penalty ought to be implemented gives the lie to Dr. Glazov’s moral claim that he believes in the preciousness of human life. His claim that arguments against the death penalty imply that life imprisonment ought to be abolished because it is also unfair to sentence an innocent person to such punishment is similarly illogical and sloppy. A sentence of life in prison bears with it the possibility of revisiting the trial and conviction. A sentence of death, once carried out, is irrevocable. The two punishments do not exist on a continuum. One is categorically different from the other (and I use ‘categorically’ here in the way that it is supposed to be used).
Finally, Dr. Glazov seems to have forgotten that Andrea Yates committed her crimes in a state that enthusiastically embraces the death penalty. That didn’t seem to affect her decision to kill all of her children.
The final question Dr. Glazov asks is important, but his answers contribute nothing of substance to the debate."
[10:48PM. The letter's not up yet. I didn't much care for ex-editor Richard Poe's polemical and scattershot argumentation, but he did manage the FrontPage forums well. -IW]
Thanks to the Journal Inquirer,
I desperately want to agree
I desperately want to agree wholeheartedly with Bob Herbert, who writes today:
"The terrorists will not achieve their ends by blowing up innocents. And we will not be able to bomb the terrorists into submission. Atrocities like yesterday's hideous bombing in Israel cannot be allowed to occur with impunity. But it is time for all of us to begin searching for alternatives, to take those first tentative steps toward insuring that a world inhabited by billions of people remains reasonably hospitable to life."
If, while we search for alternatives, Seattle gets nuked and Chicago's subways are flooded with Sarin, many people are going to be very skeptical about continuing the alternative approach.
Searching for alternatives is a process of reason, and you have to be reasonable to do it. We're dealing with people who have already decided that there is no alternative. To be sure, we must work with those in positions of power in the countries that produce these terrorists. But the terrorists themselves--and, to a large extent, those in positions of power--have worldviews, mental languages, and logics that are non-Western and alien to much that we consider reasonable and true. We cannot simply export our notions of rationality and the priorities established by our particular brand of moral thought and expect them to flourish.
The problem is that the 'search' to which Herbert refers has already begun, and is an ongoing process. It began thousands of years ago, when we first decided that it would be good to gather people together in the cooperative effort called 'civilization.' Cultures the world over have been trying to figure out how to make it work ever since.
In 147 BC, the Romans killed 90% of the inhabitants of Carthage, sold the survivors into slavery, razed the city and salted its fields. They rendered the very earth unsuitable for life. Today, we have the capability to destroy the entire region that produces terrorists. We could turn its deserts into glass, its cities into ash, kill nearly every person within it and malform the DNA of any survivors for generations to come. That would be the vengeance of Rome.
The alternative we have chosen is to develop weapons so precise that they can destroy a military target in the midst of a city and leave the buildings around it largely unharmed.
It's still violent. But it is progress.
Herbert is right. Clearly, we cannot continue this way forever. But the process is not one that can be rushed. I very much doubt that we will see the next step in the evolution of human culture in our lifetimes. We will see much death, and great destruction.
March 29, 2002
Huh. Either there was a
Huh. Either there was a technical glitch or FrontPage's new forum moderator doesn't like it when his (or her) columnists get smacked around. They've posted a "Yes! Right on!" comment with today's date on it. So I sent my note again. Ah, the indulgence!
Sigh. Now I'm actually starting to miss Poe.
[12:16AM Or: they just hate me and think I'm an idiot. Always a possibility. -IW]
John Podhoretz rises up in
John Podhoretz rises up in outrage in today's New York Post, as well he should. Once again, their peculiar and bloodthirsty flair for dramatic and symbolic carnage has won the Palestinians' cause some more time in the press.
Some numbers:
According to the Israeli Defense Forces, since September 29 of 2000, the Israelis have lost 257 civilians (+ this week's 20) and 108 military personnel, for a total of 385 dead. There have been 2379 civilians and 975 military personnel injured, for a total of 3354.
According to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, since September 29 of 2000 there have been 1,257 Palestinian deaths and 18,553 Palestinian injuries. I didn’t find current data on the civilian/military casualty split.
But that’s irrelevant, really, because in the end, we still have a large pile of corpses to deal with, many innocent, some guilty, all senseless. How senseless? Let’s look at what Judah Leib (Leon) Pinsker, a Russian proto-Zionist, wrote in 1882.
In his "Auto-Emancipation, An Appeal to His People by a Russian Jew", Pinsker writes:
“If we would have a secure home, give up our endless life of wandering and rise to the dignity of a nation in our own eyes and in the eyes of the world, we must, above all, not dream of restoring ancient Judaea. We must not attach ourselves to the place where our political life was once violently interrupted and destroyed. The goal of our present endeavors must be not the "Holy Land," but a land of our own. We need nothing but a large tract of land for our poor brothers, which shall remain our property and from which no foreign power can expel us.”
Isn’t Mr. Pinsker sensible? He knew that, however symbolically important Jerusalem and the ancient lands of Israel were to his people, the area was crowded with incompatible histories, rife with turmoil, and soaked in blood.
Only after forming a Jewish directorate and carefully weighing all of their options should the Jewish people
“…acquire a tract of land sufficient for the settlement, in the course of time, of several million Jews. This tract might form a small territory in North America, or a sovereign Pashalik in Asiatic Turkey recognized by the Porte and the other Powers as neutral.”
He continues in this vein:
“If the experts find in favor of Palestine or Syria, the decision would not be based on the assumption that the country could be transformed in time by labor and industry into a quite productive one. In this event the price of land would rise in proportion. But should they prefer North America, however, we must hasten. If one considers that in the last thirty-eight years the population of the United States of America has risen from seventeen millions to fifty millions, and that the increase in population for the next forty years will probably continue in the same proportion, it is evident that immediate action is necessary, if we do not desire to eliminate for all time the possibility of establishing in the New World a secure refuge for our unhappy brethren.
Every one who has the slightest judgment can see at first glance that the purchase of lands in America would, because of the swift rise of that country, not be a risky, but a lucrative enterprise.”
Imagine! If Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Arthur Ruppin, and the rest of the early Zionist leadership had just listened to Pinsker, the Jewish homeland might be somewhere out in the Midwest, or even in Canada. They would not be beset on all sides by the hordes of Arabs who are struggling to emerge from their medieval shells. They would not be forced to make the choice between humane behavior and self-defense against an inhumane enemy. They might have developed their society in the midst of ours, enjoying if not our love then at least our humanism and universalist aspirations.
And there might not be a vast hole in the heart of downtown New York.
History laughs at us and taunts us with thoughts of what might have been.
They're going to kill Arafat--just
They're going to kill Arafat--just you watch. Sharon hates him, bitterly and personally, and if he thinks he can get away with it, he'll do it.
You heard it here first.
[Well, maybe not first...but I figure if I throw out enough predictions eventually one of them will be right and I can point at it. "See! I have insight. Give me a column in your newspaper."--IW]
March 30, 2002
I haven't really mentioned this,
I haven't really mentioned this, folks, but feel free to use that Contact link over there to the left. I'd have Comments set up for each post, but Blogger doesn't support it and my host (alas!) doesn't have PHP implemented at the moment. I'm working on finding a non ASP/PHP commenting system, like BlogBack or some such thing.
March 31, 2002
Rabbi ben Isaac (1040-1105)--called
Rabbi ben Isaac (1040-1105)--called by the Hebrew acronym of Rashi--is regarded as Judaism's greatest teacher. Almost every edition of the Talmud printed since the sixteenth century contains his glosses. Studying the Torah through the lens of Rashi's commentary upon it has been the average Jewish religious education for generations. Almost one hundred commentaries have been written solely on Rashi's commentaries. His influence upon the Jewish culture is nearly without parallel (save for Maimonides).
Let us look for a moment at Rashi's commentary on Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Rashi writes,
"Strictly speaking, the Torah should have commenced with the verse, 'This month shall be to you the beginning of months' [Exodus 12:2], which is the very first commandment given to [the Jews]. Why, then, did the Torah begin with the account of the creation? In order to illustrate that God the Creator owns the whole world. So, if the peoples of the world shall say to Israel: 'You are robbers in conquering the territory of the seven Canaanite nations,' Israel can answer them: 'All of the earth belongs to God--He created it, so He can give it to whomsoever He will.'"
The Canaanites are incorrectly called the ancestors of the Arab people, but the analogy is widely used. I have referred previously to the medievalism that seems to beset the Arab people, as evidenced by both their actions and their words. How equivalent, then, is the insistence that God Himself parcels out land to a given population? How similar, then, is a claim to ownership of property that is reinforced by Divine mandate?
How very much like the Arabs' is the Jewish claim to the Holy Land.
To claim--as is so often claimed--that the Israeli position is one of democratic modernity is to ignore the subtle cultural influence of teachings such as Rashi's. Even secular Jews such as David ben Gurion held fast to the notion of Israel's ordained place as masters of the Holy Land, mandated if not by God then by the forces of history.
Look at the situation in the Middle East today, and tell me that it is right and proper. See what goes on there, and tell me that it is the will of a just and good god.
There is nothing more at play here than the final death rattle of ancient human beliefs. To believe in the Apocalyptic designs of the heir to the Jewish bull-god is to deny any notion of the value of human life. Such conviction allows for the construction of fantasies of death, wherein the blood of innocents is demanded, and the death of martyrs honored. It allows for the fervent belief in the divine justice of one's own cause, and the studied ignorance of human injustice.
In this regard there is no difference between Jew and Arab. They both struggle against the restrictive weight of thousands of years of human tribalism. Their struggle is the struggle of us all.
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