Fragmenta Philosophica

Gray's Anastomosis

Jonathan Derbyshire recently posted a very interesting interview with noted English philosopher John Gray, which led me to pull Gray's Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions off of the shelf. The collection of brief essays, published over the past several years in the New Statesman, makes for quick and easy reading. The brevity of most of the pieces doesn't entail any shallowness, however; he manages to exhibit a wealth of ideas in a short space.

Gray cuts an interesting figure on multiple levels, and some of his views resonate powerfully with my own preoccupations. Along with the late Robert Nozick, he is one of the prominent libertarian "apostates" to have emerged over the last decade or so. The discomfiture aroused by someone who abjures a faith to which we are attached can make for a bitter pill. But a repellant flavor is hardly an argument against a medicine - especially when the possible malady to treat (or pre-empt) is one's own philosophical sclerosis.

The worldview which suffuses Heresies is pretty gloomy - and the understanding laid out in detail in Gray's Straw Dogs is darker still. In the latter, there's a real question, it seems to me, of coherence. The occasional nature of Heresies doesn't usually dig deep enough into capital-M metaphysical terrain to require one to join or oppose Gray on bedrock questions of volition, human identity and its continuousness with the animal kingdom, etc. Hence it makes for a more readable work.

Nevertheless there's plenty of room for controversy in Heresies, many premises of which "go to the foundations." I haven't read enough of Gray to say this with confidence, but intuitively I'd describe him as a deeply pessimistic old-style conservative, forged by modernity - that is, an "Augustinian atheist."

What are the recurring, fundamental ideas of Heresies?

* There is no "progress" in history. Rather, history exhibits recurrent patterns, is cyclical.
* The modern conception of science betokens the only aspect of life in which progress is meaningful: scientific knowledge alone is cumulative.
* There is no moral progress, in the sense of a general, steady stream of improvement; persons, peoples, and polities improve and then degenerate. There is a deep wisdom in the notion of "Original Sin."
* Hence man, the perenially unregenerate animal, now grows increasingly powerful: most technological opportunities for good open vast possibilities for destruction. In other words, science is a means to an end - and science is merely harnassed to extant ends.
* There is a religious impulse or instinct the denial of which is just as harmful - and for precisely the same reasons - as the repression of sexual feelings. In both cases, instinctoid needs reappear in distorted and destructive guise. In the case of denied religious yearnings, the cult of progress and the "scientising" of science form a modern sham religion; one falsely imagines that deep meanings and purposes are disclosed. The new myths - and myths they are - lack the grandeur, and deep insight into man's lot, which the old ones had.

The following characterizations and views comprise some of Gray's commentary on current events, in Heresies:

* Globalization in no way entails good neighbors; it only means ineffectual fences.
* Marxists and Neo-Liberals are similarly deluded in believing that there is a privileged social system or arrangement which, if realized, would/will usher in a perduring era of peace and prosperity. Rather, there is every reason to expect that, after the interregnum of the '90's, we are now "back to history": we can look forward to familiar resource-wars, which will inevitably accompany accelerating global industrialization.
* Neo-conservatives are the "New Jacobins."
* Americans differ from Europeans not in the sense that the former are keenly alive to evil in the world, and the latter are not; but rather the former speak and act as if evil can finally be defeated, and the latter resign themselves to evil's ubiquity and permanence. This explains the optimistic or "idealistic" strain in American rhetoric and policy, vs. European realism or even resignation.
* The long-term effect of the invasion of Iraq will actually be a strengthening of state sovereignty (on the time-tested pattern of old), across the board - not the cosmopolitan "Liberal Imperium" which some herald as the wave of the future.
* The American hegemon, for all its flaws, is the only viable force of relative benignity and power on offer to effect global quasi-governance. Hence it is misguided to welcome a weakening of American power.
* Nevertheless, the invasion of Iraq was ill-conceived, quite possibly illegal, and "criminally stupid."

Read Jonathan's interview for more.

Raison d'État

I recall reading this article in the run-up to the invasion, when it was originally published at NRO. A re-read has me chuckling nearly as much now as it did then.

The scene is November 2002, in the heady days following the passage of UN resolution 1441, when - as is de rigueur with UN resolutions - the ambiguity of  the document's language allowed for the players to spin its significance as suited their purposes. Our man on the scene, Amir Taheri, takes the measure  of things from the Champs-Elysées:

'Is there a way to solve the Iraqi problem without war?

'Jacques Chirac believes there is: the French way ...

'The view in Paris is that the French way has triumphed in the United Nations' Security Council and the threat of war against Saddam Hussein has receded.

'How will the French way work?

'All starts with a bit of semantic jugglery to delight the deconstructionists.

'The phrase "change of regime" is interpreted to mean "change in the regime."

'The Baathist clique, headed by Saddam, is treated like a theatrical troupe that could play both Macbeth and Hamlet. All that is needed is to change the script and the costumes.

'The French way is based on what is known in Paris as "France's Arab policy" (La politique Arabe de la France).

'Devised by the late General De Gaulle in the early 1960s , this is based on three assumptions.

'The first is that it is natural for Arabs to be ruled by a "strongman."

'The second is that the Arab "strongman" has no particular principles apart from a keen desire to stay alive and in power.

'The third is that, if handled intelligently, the Arab "strongman" could be useful to the West.

'The "strongman" could take decisions that no democratic government, subject to the pressure of elections, would be able to take.'

I don't know whether Taheri has accurately identified and characterized a politique Arabe de la France, though intuitively it seems correct. If so, then one of the favored talking points one hears these days is belied - to wit, it is American foreign policy which has been singularly malign with respect to the Arab World, in emboldening its despots and doing violence to its aspirations.

But anyone who has attained even their novitiate in the relevant history should know that this is not the case: prescinding from the Imperial shenanigans which laid to rest the sick man of Europe subsequent to the "Great War," Balfour-ic declarations, and the rest ... the Soviets and Czechs played a not insignificant role in influencing the outcome of the 1948 war between a nascent Israel and its Arab neighbors; and France was an early ally and patron of the Jewish State. In particular, Soviet-Russian penetration of the Middle East has been especially duplicitous and destructive. And so on.

Admittedly, the previous isn't incompatible with the view that, however bad the actions of other powers,  American maleficence - complemented by the agency of its alleged dogsbody, Great Britain - has been the worst, in terms of having truck with the Arab "strongmen," etc. Of this you may count me a skeptic, but to defend my view would lead me too far afield.

Regardless, it is a strange spectacle to see the likes of President Bush giving a mea maxima culpa with respect to previous American policy in the region, and, so far as I know, to have heard no similar regrets from other Western Powers, and to have witnessed no one calling them to account. For, the paradoxical upshot is that those other, silent powers are inclined to maintain the practices which, ex hypothesi, "explain" the rage of the peoples of the Middle East, the rise of violent Islamism, etc.

If one believes - as I do not, by the way - that dealing with the extant tyrants was indefensibly wicked, and even if one believes that the recent regrets by Bush and Co. count for little more than the hypocritical tribute vice must pay to virtue, it's passing strange that there hasn't been a demand for similar effusions from other heads of state; even insincere pledges can circumscribe an agent's behavior.

Comments

My apologies - the comments preview on the site isn't working (rather, isn't legible). If you comment on any post, you'll have to "preview" your remarks in the text box that you compose them in. Not sure why this is happening, but will investigate ...

London

It's a very dark day, both in terms of the massacre in its own right, and its wider implications.

Though it's a completely unhelpful, helpless, and hackneyed sentiment ... my thoughts and hopes are with the citizens of the UK.

Bivouacked

I'll be exploring the California coast for the next few days - Happy 4th.

Iraq (Again)

It's finally happened: I've been provoked to break my silence over Iraq. This is probably a non-event to everyone but me; I had grown tired of the intractability of the debate, and had been glad to focus my scarce blogging energies elsewhere. But in light of Bush's recent speech, and much ado made about nearly nothing  vis-a-vis the Downing memos, some of the hostile commentary struck me as deserving a response. What follows is an apologia for the invasion. I cannnot claim to answer every criticism and meet every objection - and those seeking More Geometrico will be sorely disappointed - but I believe that the following limns a respectably rigorous case.

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The best rationale of which I am aware for the invasion of Iraq may be stated succinctly as a set of four objectives, the meaning and justifications of which I shall develop below.

• To end, conclusively and decisively, the decade-plus, on-again/off-again war with Saddam Hussein. In so doing:

• To verify well and truly that Saddam had disarmed - and disarm him if he hadn't.

• To prevent an eventual, or disrupt an actual, collaboration between Saddam and Al Qaeda and/or likeminded groups.

• To attempt to establish a beachhead for political moderation and humane institutions in Iraq and, by example, beyond.

I believe that this was the core of the administration's case for invasion - a set of aims which is no mere welter, but rather an articulation of mutually conditioning parts; sc., a system. This systematic character will be shown presently, in reviewing the noteworthy lessons of 9.11.

The rhetoric the administration employed to present its case to the nation (and the world) involved hyperbole and a lack of nuance in various respects. In the grand scheme of imaginable state malfeasance, sins these may be, but rather venial ones; the officers of state exaggerated when ratiocination required no exaggeration. It's an interesting question to contemplate what factors  - social, political, and the like - might have made various overstatements seem or feel exigent. The answers which suggest themselves are at least as unflattering to the citizenry (and the quality of world opinion) as to the leaders.

First, a pervasive fallacy needs to be cleared away. It consists of the view that, granted there is no conclusive evidence to establish an Iraqi hand in 9.11, it is illicit to "link" Iraq to 9.11 in any fashion whatever. To argue thus is to beg some of the most important questions (viz., petitio principii) in the dispute over the significance of the 9.11 attacks; namely, what the overall scaffolding or backdrop for those attacks was, and what actions would be needful in light of the lessons learned. (I will acknowledge, but pass over in this posting, a related, but slightly different criticism: sc., the adminstration never actually claimed, but strongly insinuated through various rhetorical devices, direct Iraqi involvement in 9.11, in order to win acquiescence from the general populace).

What were the outstanding lessons of 9.11? In my view:

1. Western capitals are vulnerable to devastating attack.
2. The great catastrophe to fear, and to avert, would be a similar attack involving WMD..
3. We've got an enormous problem with Dar-Al-Islam in general, the Muslim Middle East specifically, and the Muslim-Arab Middle East in particular. At root, a crisis has come to a head within the Islamic world which, thanks to globalization, is spreading like contagion to remote corners of the globe. The Scylla and Charybdis of modern Middle Eastern Politics - the  ruthless Secular Police State vs. the inept Kingly/Theocratic/Kleptocratic state - have incubated virulent, atavistic movements of reaction, sc., various Islamisms, of which Al Qaeda is the focal point, quintessence, or at least umbrella organization.
4. The previous, in part, represents a "terror dividend" of the Cold War practice of making common cause with the region's despots, in order to check the metastasis of sovietization. With that nearly half-century struggle concluded, there is now more maneuvering room - and urgency - to promote liberalization and reform in the region (Unlike George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and most Leftists, I believe that such realpolitik, while undeniably distasteful, was defensible in principle; i.e., not malum in se).

IN what sense was Iraq, then, "of relevance" to 9.11, in terms of that day's antecedents and entailments?

1. Two out of three of Bin Laden's Causi Belli against the U.S. centered on American Policy towards Iraq: (a) The Sanctions regime, and (b) the garrisoning of American Troops in Saudi ("The Land of the Two Holy Places"). Thus it was reasonable to fear that a burgeoning confluence of interest could/would obtain critical mass between the Islamists and a secular tyrant such as Saddam Hussein, who, at the least, could view the zealots as useful idiots. Furthermore, those policies contributed to the generally aggrieved mindset of many "mainstream" Muslims, causing them to look askance at the US and the West, and feel a kind of passive sympathy for Bin Laden et al; after all, so this thinking would go, the US was harming "Muslims" in Iraq, not simply Iraqis, and was defiling the holy places by the indefinite presence of troops. Hence the "soil of sentiment" was becoming more hospitable for anti-Americanism to take root .
2. The policy of containment itself made American troops easy targets for asymmetrical mayhem - gratifying, emboldening, and encouraging Islamists and other enemies in the region: cp. Khobar Towers and the U.S.S. Cole.
3. Any comprehensive response to 9.11 would be conditioned and constrained by the current state of play between the US and Saddam - it would be nearly impossible to alter the status quo in the Middle East with Saddam (or his successors, sanguinary or spiritual) regnant indefinitely.

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By far the most salient point, downplayed or downright ignored by most critics of the invasion (who often speak as if the current administration virtually invented the conflict with Iraq out of thin air, or highlighted it only for the sake of settling personal grudges or achieving personal aggrandizement), is that the US/UK had been in a de facto state of war with Saddam's Iraq since '91. That was recognized implicitly - albeit unconstructively and uncharitably - by the likes of John Pilger, who previously made much of the fact that the no-fly-zones were allegedly "illegal" (because not the result of a benediction from the UNSC) and provided the scene for the longest sustained bombing campaign in modern times. A cursory review of the timeline with Iraq throughout the nineties reveals a sequence of alternations between relative quiescence and abruptly awakened hostilities.

An "Internationalist" narrative enters the scene at this point, conceding the fact of conflict, but  maintaining that somehow the UNSC had final say over the disposition of the fight. But the UN, let alone the UNSC, is neither a world government nor even a quasi-organic deliberative body; despite its august pretensions, it operates of necessity as realpolitik by committee. And, "Blue Helmets" notwithstanding, it cannot but "delegate" any enforcement work of consequence to the militaries of powerful member states; at which point enmities emerge with a logic and trajectory of their own.

In actual fact the US and UK bore the brunt of the burden, in blood and treasure, both in driving Iraqi troops from Kuwait and containing Saddam for over 12 years, and were the prime agents in fanning what minimal flame remained of the fire occasionally brought to his feet at the UN; but for their efforts (and, specifically of late, the buildup of American military force in 2002) other members of the P5 would not have exerted any pressure whatever to get Saddam to comply with the terms of the ceasefire to which he agreed back in 1991. Hence, the US and UK were the foci of Saddam's animosity and, as such, were the de facto deed-holders to a conflict only nominally between Saddam and the "International Community" - he well understood who his primary tormentors - sc., enemies - were (that the enmity had become particularized in this fashion is clear from the ambivalence of other P5 states to address the conflict of their own initiative; they had no positive stake, and perhaps it would even be to their perceived detriment, to intercede against Iraq - and Saddam deftly exploited the emergent factions).

The upshot of the foregoing is as follows. (1) out of a group of putative state enemies in the Middle East, Saddam's Iraq was sui generis in its relation to the US and UK - and even, if one can speak this way, to "The World"; and (2) as the actual deed-holders to the conflict, the US and UK were well within their moral rights to conclude matters in line with a prudent assessment of their national interests.

In the wake of 9.11, to an observer cognizant of the relevant history, Saddam Hussein therefore cut the following figure : an intractable enemy in an on-again off-again war of longstanding; a foe known to have been appreciative of terrorist handiwork in the past (and no stranger to dispatching his own agents for covert hits); an adversary known both to have used WMD within and without his own borders, and known not ever to have given a transparent accounting of his possessions and capacities vis-a-vis those WMD (and to have suffered attrition rather than do so); a nominally secular ruler receiving an ever greater sympathy from muderous religious zealots in his region, themselves avowed and active enemies of the US; a despot almost singular in recent times in the sadism visited upon his captive populace, creating a social atmosphere in which even Islamism might seem humane by comparison.

These, in ovo, are the considerations as to why it was eminently reasonable to investigate aggressively whether, not simply the context of the longstanding conflict with Iraq, but direct Iraqi intervention itself, was a co-factor in the 9.11 attacks. (And especially in light of the fact that the Clinton administration had used an Iraq-Al Qaeda connection as part of the justification for bombing Al Shifa in Sudan, and had alleged the same collusion in an indictment of Bin Laden issued in the same year).

Likewise, these reasons argued for ending, conclusively and decisively, the amorphous threat(s) entailed by the conflict with Saddam Hussein before they could germinate fully. To approach such a dangerous and unstable context with foresight and initiative (sc., "proactively") there needn't be any perceived "imminent" danger; in fact the traditional criteria of imminence - troops massing on a border, detection of materiel being readied en masse, etc. - do not apply to asymmetrical attacks. Hence anti-war theorists who leaned on such traditional just-war thinking were committing a category mistake. (And they all but ignored the fact that we were already in an effective state of war with Iraq).

In summation, over time the relationship of the US to Iraq entailed an increasingly untenable, and hence more and more risky (because unpredictable) situation - both on its own terms, and especially in light of the exigencies thrown up by 9.11. Scenarios were imaginable in which Iraq played a hand in facilitating future asymmetrical attacks of even greater lethality, and American forces and policy options were encumbered by the lamentable status quo, which was in need of a radical reappraisal and reordering. In short, the wider context of the stalemate with Iraq was itself an existential danger or "threat," as was the narrower - and reasonable - concern about possible Iraqi-sponsored attacks in the future.

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"But we know that Saddam presented no threat whatever," a critic protests. To the extent that we know that (an arguable proposition), we know it thanks to undertaking our own occupation and unfettered weapons-inspection. What counts in evaluating the wisdom of a decision is what is reasonably believed at the time of its undertaking, rather than what is revealed only subsequent to having undertaken it.

"But such-and-such critics said all along that Iraq had no WMD,  etc." Let it be granted; but to make an accurate prediction is not the same as to make an advised prediction; nor does an accurate prediction imply, by stretch, that opposite expectations were ill-founded. Furthermore, focusing only on Iraq's capacity to launch or sponsor attacks obscures the wider backdrop and context of the conflict which placed Iraq, and our relation to it, very much closer to the center of events which led up to 9.11.

IN any event, by undertaking the drastic and ominous step of invading Iraq, the US/UK initiated the beginning of the end of a long-running war - concluding, on their own terms, what Saddam Hussein had begun and through obstinance maintained. Did 9.11 offer, then, a "pretext" - a handy "opportunity for opportunism" - to depose Saddam? Certainly, but a needful one: it ought to have been done in, say, '93. The lessons learned from 9.11 made the task all the more urgent.