It's lonely out here . . . .

My favourite English-language 'big media' columnist reconsiders his pro-war position here and here (a few weeks old).

Strange how such a measured, sophisticated Blairite (or Labor-Right) perspective is currently (in Britain, and for that matter the English-speaking Commonwealth more generally) so unpopular. Hard-headed do-goodism has become for now an intellectual curiosum.

PS: For his take on the Madrid bombings read here.

The Second American Civil War?

The LA talk host Dennis Prager has amassed a fairly large following. People are attracted to his method of argument: clear, direct, unmarred by qualifiers. Not too many other popular hosts could write a sentence like this:

But what does "Judeo-Christian" mean? We need to know. Along with the belief in liberty -- as opposed to, for example, the European belief in equality, the Muslim belief in theocracy, and the Eastern belief in social conformity -- Judeo-Christian values are what distinguish America from all other countries.

There's a rapid summation of world culture for you. Those who think Huntington generalizes might want to read that again: theocracy vs. social conformity vs. equality vs. liberty and Judeo-Christian values. Fault lines. Prager, incidentally, is obsessed with them. Listen to his radio show for two consecutive days, and you will no doubt hear him pontificate on the "Second American Civil War", a cultural conflict that pits the defenders of Judeo-Christian Civilization against an array of forces, extreme to moderate, from al Qaeda to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Nobody can doubt that America is split on cultural and political grounds today. But Dennis takes things a step further when he claims that this country is engaged in non-violent warfare (for now I'll ignore the fact that he plays battle music each morning prior to his show...)

Prager's greatest danger is that of conflation. He's already come perilously close to likening Islamic terrorists to defenders of gay marriage, close enough to incite a harsh rebuke from Andrew Sullivan. Prager responded first by denying any wrongdoing, then by asserting that the two groups are nevertheless aligned against the same enemy:

So, for the record, I consider the great majority of supporters of same-sex marriage to be thoroughly decent people, and the great majority of supporters of Islamic terror to be loathsome.

But the fact that most supporters of same-sex marriage are thoroughly decent people with loving intentions, as opposed to supporters of Islamic terror who are filled with hate and love death, in no way denies my premise that both are waging war against Judeo-Christian civilization. And that was the subject of my article.

Any further insinuation that I morally equate the people who support same-sex marriage with those who engage in or support Muslim terror is either deliberate distortion or an indication of an inability to think critically.

He's right, of course, that two groups can be aligned against the same enemy while being wholly different from one another -- one thinks of Henry Kissinger leading the anti-war movement against neoconservatives (well, I do anyway). He's also right that anyone who doesn't observe this distinction suffers from mental incapacitation; I for one no longer count the number of "with us or against us" leftists who accused me of stark Republicanism for favoring the Iraq war.

I don't mean to turn this into a co-thinker love fest, as it certainly is not. Prager's worldview has always made me uneasy, and here is why:

Blurred Lines: Wars involve motley crews and Hitler-Stalin pacts, groups taking sides around a core divisive issue. The divide in America today has no such central fault line. Mr. Prager simply fabricated one, that being the destruction or victory of Judeo-Christian civilization. That elusive term, by the way, means secular government mixed with a religious population. And it wholly distorts the nature of the debate occurring today. Most leading proponents of the Iraq war could care less about whether it's illegal to inscribe the ten commandments on a public tree. What matters to them are the issues of liberalism vs. nihilism, regime change vs. sovereignty, humanitarianism vs. imperialism -- the conflicts that define our best policy for the Middle East. The same goes for the other side. Truly, Islamists do despise Judeo-Christian civilization, but they despise secularism and liberalism with equal vehemence. Gay marriage, among other secular innovations, would not bode well in a theocratic nightmare state of bin Laden's design. And while we're on gay marriage, its proponents are certainly not all aligned against religious values -- Prager himself admits this (yet claims that their Biblical interpretations are deluded.) In short, Islamists and defenders of gay marriage are not fighting against the same enemy any more than they are fighting against one another.

Non-Participation: The cultural conflagration brought to mind by the notion of a civil war leaves little room for apathy. Political activism is up since the dead-beat 90s, but take a leisurely stroll through the non-political blogs (or, if you are one of those curious souls who explores the non-virtual world, speak to human beings), and you won't find much intensity of viewpoint in the average citizen. It's a common fallacy for people on talk radio or even in the blogosphere to assume everyone is as politically active as they are -- far from it. This is no war; and if it is, half the nation is unaware.

Chosen by God: This is a thorny topic -- Prager's belief in the "chosen-ness" of Americans and Jews. Central to his idea of Judeo-Christian civilization is the belief that America has been chosen to do good in the world. He believes there is a war being fought that will determine whether America will maintain this glorified stature or -- conversely -- deteriorate into a pseudo-European relic. Needless to say, it is very difficult to prove that America has never harbored evil intentions abroad.

Really, if America has been chosen for anything, it is has been chosen as the world's most revolutionary ideological battleground. Prager's civil war rhetoric disparages the very notion that criticism and conflict are the healthiest aspects of this society. Our conflict is not so uncompromising as war, and calling it such flatly ignores its virtues. Our conflict is to be embraced as a means of progress. While Prager would by no means support quashing all dissent, his belief in the spiritual uniqueness of Jews and Americans undermines the value of a good debate. Reading him, one is left with the impression that he would like it if America lost its cultural dynamism and acquiesced to the sage advice of its chosen ones. I find the idea appalling. Unfeterred ideology is as dangerous as any civil war, no matter how imagined.

Finally, I haven't done justice to one of Prager's other pieces, which more clearly defines his notion of civil war and fleshes it out beyond the battle for Judeo-Christian civilization. I'll comment on that some other time. I do think critiquing Prager is important in the same way critiquing Chomsky is important. Both are highly representative of large swaths of opinion that are too often blissfully ignored or caricatured by those with softer stances.

Barry White sings Game Theory

I have noted previously (scroll down) how few (any?) first tier economists blog (something that is likely true for other disciplines, though I can't confirm that except in law, poli sci and philosophy). One gets the impression while browsing through that part of the economic blogosphere written by senior or tenured faculty (not counting therefore wannabe juniors like us, and of course excluding this sole exception from that summary judgment) that it is a medium that appears highly attractive to a type of economist comfortable giving the impression of having been frozen in the prosadelic 70s.

This stratum of the economic blogosphere was rather excited (see for example here and here) about a certain graduate student's recent work in schoolboy humor. I gave my tuppence worth on his 'orgasm' paper here.

This year he went on the junior economic academic job market. This economist/blogger (same post as previously - scroll down) even went so far as to encourage economics departments to hire him. This therefore was a good chance to see whether first tier economists would second the applause of the economic blogosphere, since as we all know, that market is especially ruthless in its judgments.

Question: Do you get flown out by this economics department as part of the first or second round of the junior economic job market? [Ed: Fly-outs are not the same as offers. - Offered and accepted!]

Thinking for ourselves

Those of us who have been continually trying to puncture the international law/"illegality" ideas-bubble might take some consolation in this.

Aside: It was pleasing to see what little 'legs' that trope still had left in it during the recent brief post-Yassin assasination (combat killing?) media efflorescence. [Ed: Because it wasn't illegal? - That wasn't a hindrance previously.]

Geneology: This is an intellectual bubble that began with what we might call the (early) Blair government's insistence on a type of 'international law-correctness' (and hasn't he come to regret that!), and took off seemingly uncontrollably after the Pinochet affair in London and the resulting House of Lords decision.

Bonus Prejudice: Could it be that the left - assuming it is finally overcoming its seemingly recent penchant for substituting conclusions from doctrinal international law for hard independent-minded thinking - has come to realize that parroting the word "illegal" in international affairs is not quite the argument-stopper they were hoping it would be. [Ed: What will Robert Manne write about now? - For our Australian readers: Die Manne-Frage warrants a whole post of its own.]

PS: It cuts both ways! Question: Why do we need politicians if all decisions are pre-determined?

Through the Looking Glass

Here's a good source for a question for a moral philosophy undergrad exam.

[Ed: You have to have had much education to appreciate 'antinomies' in this situation . . . . . - At least some line is drawn.]

Tired Tabloid

What a shock yesterday to open the SMH for the first time in years and read in the flesh on the op-ed page an article by Alan Ramsey. I counted seven vulgarities in one column, including 'poo' and 'crap'. Was he always that biased, bitter, lazy and unprofessional (and I didnt notice - or care - before)? Or has he just lately 'gone to seed' (during my absence)?

Question I: Would such a man still have a job on a major broadsheet in any other Western nation of comparable population size?

Memo to the editor: What is the value-added of an article like that?

Pound for pound (to use boxing jargon), compared to the Australian and Age (it's all relative), SMH columnists appear to be preachy, vulgar, unashamedly biased and unresearched (the exceptions appear to be those columnists they share with the Age). What a sad thing it currently is.

Question II: Are there any (sub) editors left on that paper, or has it gone the way of Australian literary publishing (Text excluded of course)?

Interregnum

You'll have to bare with us: Daniel is in transition, beginning a Federal Reserve Fellowship in DC; Raj is entering full cram mode ('swat mode'?) for his first year 'comprehensives' at Columbia (we all remember those); and I'm also in transition, having recently begun a three month visiting position in the Economics Department at ANU in Canberra, Australia, the sleepy little capital where I began my legal career about eight years ago - have already seen one kangaroo, two cockatoos and five cockroaches.

I am houseminding for a Princeton-trained ANU academic couple currently visiting New England - he in philosophy, she in French Literature. Never have I seen so many Foucault volumes on one shelf: rest assured, they're hers and not his . . . . In the bright sunshine of Canberra it would be difficult, regardless of one's scholarly beginnings, not to veer towards something, shall we say, crisper, more analytic, with perhaps a greater appreciation of the worth of empiricist thinking gradually becoming evident in one's writings . . . . .

Short run overshooting, long run stability?

Inject some small-pox into a child and one might see a brief period of sickness. The intention of course is to produce long-term immunity.

Devalue the dollar and one might see a brief period of inflation (if a one-off rise in prices can be called 'inflation', a rate concept). The intention of course is to reduce long-run speculative pressure on the currency, promoting economic stability.

Electro-shock a flat-lined patient and and the cardiograph shows a temporary large increase in heartbeat amplitude. The intention of course is to produce a long-run heartbeat of normal, smaller amplitude.

How tedious to have to read, from politicians and the big-media commentariat, the predictable blather about whether this will increase or decrease 'the cycle of violence'. In the short run almost surely. That fact would have been taken into account in the ex ante decision. But in the longer run . . . . . . Discussion should be about whether there is a permanent increase or decrease in long-run trend as a result of this act (or policy). That is not an easy discussion.

PS: Whether the invasion of Iraq led to a rise or decrease in terrorism can be analysed the same way.

PPS: One hopes that with respect to these issues at least the dust will remain unblown off that hoary cliche about us all being dead in the long run anyway. We'll all be dead in the short run too if we are never willing to take any risks or bare some short run sacrifices.

PPPS: In this case, those who bare the direct costs of the decision approve it. Who are others - whose talk is cheap (in the economically technical sense of the phrase) - to tell them what risks they can and cannot take in their own behalf.

PPPPS: Yes, we thank Dornbusch for this insight about transition dynamics.

Intellectual onanism as a signaling game

As if the uncompromising scientific reductionism of 'neuroeconomics' were not enough (at least, for what it's worth, they are trying to be sincerely scientific), economists have to put up with this little exercise is smart-assedness.

Referee Report: Theoretically there is nothing new, as an application is it toy-Becker, and the applicational motivation hangs from the model by the thinnest of threads.

Inside the mind of the third year doctoral student: Golly, let me see what faux-shocking application I can run some Fudenberg & Tirole exercise on. And throw in some mixed strategies for a bit of 'heft'? Perché no . . . .

Postscript: And once you've finished trying to work out the connection between the subject-matter of neuroscience and the traditional economic focus on market behavior/interaction, you're ready to move on to 'Law and Neuroeconomics' . . . . . . [Ed: Where would we be without those student-run, non-refereed law journals? ]

Also Sprach Zarathustra

The current issue of Foreign Policy has received prominence because of Huntington's article on immigrant Mexicans and the alleged viscosity of their assimilation in US mainstream culture.

More interesting for economists is the little tête-à-tête in the epistolary front section of that magazine where Professor Stiglitz is taken to task for, shall we say, failing to represent, in his popular pieces, economic academic consensus in a sufficiently accurate manner. This is the first time I've seen this allegation in print (I have long harboured it myself), though a friend in Melbourne recently told me that in 2000 the late MIT macroeconomist Rudi Dornbusch wrote a letter to TNR saying roughly the same thing (see here and here). There may be other examples.

Professor Stiglitz claims that those great economists like Friedman who in the past also acquired public prominence through their popular writings refracted economic truth to a greater extent than he does (assuming arguendo that all popularisations involve some pedagogically necessary dishonesty). Whereas they based their public philosophies on academic research into the efficiency of decentralised markets, Professor Stiglitz claims - having been put to the question - that his public positions can be backed by his contributions to two decades of research by leading economists into 'Information Economics' and the perspective of ineradicable second best efficiency which it ushered in. Markets are not efficient, continually repeats the good professor while decrying one pro-market idea after another, leaving unspoken for the benefit of general readers what every well-trained economist knows, that not being 'first best' does not constitute a sound economic argument against markets in theory or in practice. At the very least, much more is needed to make the case.

There are some - almost always in the humanities - who think that theoretical economics has a conservative political leaning hard-wired into it: Stigler famously wrote an essay to that effect. From such a perspective those who wish not just to interpret but to change the world might be willing to forgive a little bending of the iron logic of theory when trying to make a popular point. The counter position was stated by Mill, that no man was ever a conservative, that economics made him so. Except in the very general sense that economic science is founded on 'methodological individualism' and so ex hypothesi rules out more holistic approaches (and that need not delay us), it seems to me a failure of intellectual will and vision to propose that rational, logical thinking about market phenomena prevents rather than aids the desire to accomplish good in the world. Far better, like Marx, to betake oneself to the library and put in some hard yards.

One says nothing of the office of the academic, vocationally considered, when descending the mountaintop in order to preach to the masses, to observe closely the distinction between expert gnosis and citizen opinion.

The Australian Taliban

A friend of mine, soon to finish an LLM in North America, will thereafter spend some time working in NY aiding lawyers seeking the release/trial of David Hicks, captured on the field of battle in Afghanistan and now held in detention for nearly two years at Guantanamo Bay. I watched the SBS documentary on Thursday regarding Hicks, which in spite of the warnings of this article I found interesting and reasonably balanced (except for the loaded title). The initiative this young man showed would have been awesome if directed towards the establishment of a small business or some other worthwhile enterprise. As it was, the documentary made it clear (contra this piece) that he was a a fanatic capable of and trained for murder, and puffed full of the arragance of both religious zealotry and youth. It was not clear to me that this English and self-taught Arabic speaking youth, clearly a possessor of valuable information, would tell his story quickly.

Question: Is two years 'too long' when trying to gain intelligence from someone and not physical torture but rather only 'mental wearing down' is permitted? [Ed: And obtaining that intelligence can save thousands of lives.]

Observation I: Interesting were his virulent anti-semitism and the fact that originally, before the US invasion of Afghanistan, he was about to be shipped to Kashmir.

Observation II: What has any of this to do with lawyers and trials anyway? What is it about the uncontrollable ego of lawyers that they want to insert themselves where they have no business? We are at war, and in times of war important peacetime safe guards like habeas corpus can be and do get jettisoned (as President Lincoln famously/notoriously did in the Civil War), and this is constitutionally permissible.

Table Talk Update: Over dinner with another friend of mine here in Canberra, an ANU legal academic and specialist in HR law, I asked this question. She conceded the point that if we are at war then the lawyers should be kept out and that's that. But she said that we weren't. No scope for further discussion there of course. She also offered the line, familiar from anti-capital punishment discourse, that doing this diminishes us and puts us at the same level as the Jihadis. I am sympathetic to this trope concerning capital punishment but when transferred to this context find it to be, with respect, precious.

Conclusion: I am a lawyer and so perhaps should be concerned about 'due process', but on the matter of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, like liberal UCLA Public Policy Professor Mark Kleiman, I just can't get excited. Indeed, I am suspicious of those who, when they finally and for the first time turn their attention to the enemy, focus rather on the 600 already captured than on the thousands still out there trying to kill us. If you want to do 'human rights' work, why not do something like this instead. [Ed: And of course there's always school-house painting in the Salvadorean countryside.]

PS: The notion that a military trial will not be 'fair' is risible. [Does anyone really give a damn that hearsay is waived, for example?] Given that he was a trained killer and soldier of God, would you want lay judges, with no military feel or understanding, trying this man?

PPS: The ideological corruption of 'human rights law' is something I have posted on before and hope to again soon. But the bottom line is: Natural Law went out and 60s New Left anti-rationality/anti-americanism came in. The convergence of viewpoint of some of the anti-war left, some Western 'human rights' lawyers, and the Jihadist millenarian Weltanschauung is, from the perspective of intellectual history, not entirely a coincidence.

Final PS (Promise): As for those who claim that we need some mechanism to determine that each of the Guantanamo Bay inmates deserve to be there (an argument I am not wholly unsympathetic to, if conducted by the military judicial system) - we are only talking 600 or so people, and they were all found on the battle field in one way or another, thus establishing - an admittedly rebuttable - prima facie case for their internment. At least that number has been killed in various Jihadist attacks in the last two months alone (in Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Madrid, etc). With a war on, preferring perspective over preciousness is not morally indefensible.

Fort Sumter and the Spanish

What President-elect Zapatero said immediately before he uttered his much-transmitted line (mentioned in the previous entry) in his interview with Onda Cero Radio this week was more interesting:

Ha habido una ruptura del consenso en política exterior. Las decisiones que tomó el anterior Gobierno en relación a Iraq fueron unilaterales, de espaldas a la ciudadanía. No se respetó la opinión de los ciudadanos, y esto no puede ser.

There is no doubt that there was a rush to go to war. Whether doubters (especially the governments of France and Germany) would have come around with time is a counter-factual we will never know, though on balance it is strongly arguable to suggest that they wouldn't have. But even in those countries where the governments wanted to go to war, the people did not (though that changed once the battle was joined - the usual rally around the flag phenomenon - at least temporarily). The fact that Western politics continues to be convulsed by the war before the war (rather than the war itself) is testimony to the dangers of elected leaders getting too far ahead of public opinion on an issue as important as going to war, y esto no puede ser.

When Lincoln arrived at the Whitehouse after a long train route the secession was already underway. It was clear to any realist what was coming, and if you anticipate certain war, then first-mover advantages start to play an important factor in strategic thinking (often leading to a self-fulfilling timing race - see the German Schlieffen Plan in WWI). Lincoln fought against the advice of his generals and Secretary of War Scott to move quickly against a mobilizing South. He knew how important it was in a democracy to have the people with him, and so let the South commit the first aggression at Fort Sumter - an event which galvanized the North and led to what scholars later called the birth of (North) American nationalism. Of course, such passivity may also have contributed to the length of the war; alternatively, a war with some quick North-initiated victories followed by set-backs, if begun without the people fully behind it, might have led to a Democratic/Copperhead electoral victory, appeasement, and the partitioning of the US. In short, who knows what the counter-factuals are: and given such uncertainty, it's best to stick with the need for democratic legitimacy. The example of FDR itching to go to war against the Nazis but having to wait for the enemy to move first is also instructive.

This is a long-run war, a clash of fundamentally incompatible ideologies of the kind that marked the 20th century, the century of 'total wars' (hot and cold) as Hobsbawm called them (the US Civil War being the dress rehearsal), in which the whole state is mobilized, civilians become legitimate targets and complete surrender or elimination of the enemy the only war aim. From that grand-narrative historical perspective, President Bush could have waited a month or six. He didn't, and that is now water under the bridge, but the consequences of his failure to take this issue of legitimacy sufficiently seriously continues to play itself out.

"La ocupación está siendo un fiasco."

This assessment of the post-war reconstruction appears not to be shared by those in a better position to know: the Iraqi people. [In the language of Information Economics, they're the only ones with the private signal, so we should be paying attention to them - quite apart, of course, from our natural democratic inclincation to want to do so . . . . . . ]

BBC v Campbell/El Pais v Acebes

I have been offline for a week and when I reconnect I discover that one of the main memes 'explaining' the Spanish election result (still being peddled in the English-language press a week later) is that the conservative incumbents tried to 'spin the atrocity' by blaming ETA, and enough Spanish voters decided at the last minute to 'punish' them for that.

I find this bizarrre. At the time it made sense to suspect ETA first. In the language of decision-theory, that should have been the government's 'prior'. Indeed many in the blogosphere (see for example here and here) were adamant that instapundit-style 'jumping to conclusions' regarding an Islamist connection was inappropriate (why I wonder - because our prior was also that Islamist terror helps incumbents?). Within 24 hours of the atrocity I was able to read in the online Spanish press sufficient reportage indicating that (in a fast-moving situation) the Spanish government was keeping all leads open (what else would they say?) and that the van with the tape had already been found and extensively reported long before it had made it into the English-language press.

I don't believe either party tried to 'spin' this. There is a decency in democratic politicians which most journalists, either cynically born or trained, will never understand: like professional sportsmen or barristers in a courtrooom, they are used to intense but managed competition - they might compete fiercely (or appear to do so) but never forget honor when it really matters. Rare in the history of Western democracies have been the Nixons for whom that has not been true - and yet journalists act as though every politician is a wannabe Nixon, and only the courage of journalists stands between the people and the corruption of their (elected) leaders.

The better explanation is that some of the liberal press in Spain 'spun' the atrocity by assuming the Azner government was lying, because to a certain mind-set the pro-war leaders in Western countries are now permanently marked as liers. Cynical projection. The same phenomenon led to the Hutton inquiry in Britain.

Update: The Azner government defends itself here - immediate intelligence reports post-bombing were saying ETA. From one of the five intelligence reports released today: "se considera casi seguro que ETA es la
autora de estos atentados." The government has been protesting vociferously against this Guardian-style impugning of their motivations and honor.

PS: Is it not interesting how in the face of virulent left cynicism over the past year governments are having to abandon decades or even centuries of protocol regarding the release of intelligence reports - one used to have to wait 30 years for these kinds of things. [Ed: If only they were more ambiguously worded! - If they continue to be immediately published, then I'm sure they will be from now on. Ed: Damned if you follow them, damned if you don't. ]

Zawahiri

The impending capture (hopefully) of Ayman al Zawahiri is stunning news. For perspective on Zawahiri read Lawrence Wright, who wrote a thorough profile of the terrorist two years ago.

As with many Muslim extremists, Zawahiri was raised in a well-to-do suburb, influenced by Sayyid Qutb, then radicalized -- via torture -- by the draconian Egyptian police. Zawahiri's obsession was in toppling the Egyptian government, for which purpose he established the terror group Islamic Jihad. In 1998 Zawahiri changed focus. He came to the nuanced conclusion that "America is now controlled by the Jews, completely, as are its news, its elections, its economy, and its politics." And so he added America to Islamic Jihad's list of acceptable targets.

The real reason for the change of focus had little to do with epiphany but much to do with economcs. In response to Zawahiri's anti-American shift (for once I can uncontroversially use the term anti-American), bin Laden upped Islamic Jihad's budget by $200,000. The venal and desperate Zawahiri came to accept al Qaeda's worldview, best encapsulated in the bin-Ladenism "the shadow of a stick cannot be straightened as long as the stick is crooked" -- the stick being the United States of Judaism..er America, of course. A destructive relationship was born, that will with any luck be terminated by this time tomorrow.

Law of the Excluded Middle

The bookstore owner at Melbourne Airport made a clumsy shelf arrangement. He placed this book right next to this one.

Question: Which is it - Clinton's or Bush's recession? [Ed: Ever heard of the business cycle? - That's right, neither. Ed: You can run - but you can't hide - from those recessions!]

PS: Semioticians will be able to advise me on what the difference between the two covers of Professor Krugman's book signifies regarding public courtesy in the States vis-a-viz Britain. [Ed: Aren't you a bit late to this blog-meme? - I've only now seen it with my own eyes. Ed: Like all great Art, viscerally effective! - Yep, a genuine masterpiece.]

Victory, Defeat, Neither?

Oliver Kamm has an incisive take on the events in Spain. He first demurs from accepting Andrew Sullivan's judgment that the outcome was a "fantastic result for Islamic terrorism":

[Sullivan's] judgement is wrong, but it’s certainly not silly. The reason it’s wrong is that the worldview of an apocalyptic nihilist pursuing the destruction of western civilisation shows no evidence of being swayed by calculations of electoral outcomes. It would be surprising if it did. Al-Qaeda and its offshoots do not urge a different set of policies on western leaders and do not issue a set of negotiable demands. Their message is directed not to us (“adopt different policies!”) but to their followers (“kill the infidels!”). There is nothing opaque in this... If policies carried out by western governments can be predicted to provoke the murder of our citizens, then there is a seductive and utterly wrongheaded argument that those policies ought to be calibrated so as to minimise such provocation.

Then he makes an important distinction about whose victory it really was on March 14th:

But, as I say, [Sullivan's] judgement about the character of the Spanish election result is not a silly one. While the policies adopted by western governments make no difference to our declared enemies, they do make a difference to us. The victory of the Socialists is not a victory for bin Laden: it is a victory for isolationism. This is evident immediately from the new prime minister’s determination to withdraw Spanish troops from what he terms the “disaster” of Iraq.

The Spanish people’s ability to choose a government is a precious and recent right, and I see no reason to belittle it by refraining from engaging in vigorous criticism of their choice: the new prime minister has on initial evidence no conception of internationalist principle or humanitarian duty. The “disaster” of Iraq was that country’s ordeal under Baathist despotism; it is not possible to hold to a progressive view of politics and wish either that that country’s liberation by British and American forces had never taken place, or that western nations should now abandon a country assailed by their own mortal enemies.

Read the rest of it. I'm not convinced of the former half of Kamm's argument. Especially after this CNN report, it seems reasonable that al Qaeda did perceive the election results as a victory. Despite the fact that al Qaeda cannot be appeased, the group does have logical objectives, of which "winning" Iraq and isolating the US are primary. Many on the soft-left continue to insist that the war in Iraq is irrelevant to fighting terrorism. The soldiers of al Qaeda -- by disrupting reconstruction -- appear to disagree. Perhaps they realize that a thriving democracy in the heart of the Middle East stops cold any quest for a fascist theocratic nightmare-state.

Appeasement! The Death of Europe!

No, there's enough of that on the web already, and it's a bit premature. What we do know after Aznar's democratic ousting in Spain is the following:

1) 90% of Spain still does oppose the Iraq war, despite the fact that it has now turned from an uncertain invasion into a benevolent reconstruction effort.

2) Large numbers of the left still believe Iraq was irrelevant to fighting terrorism, citing the Bush administration's failure to apprehend Zarqawi as proof that the war has been positively destructive to combating terror. Those that use this failure to obliquely attack the justice of the war in Iraq are avoiding the issue. Capturing Zarqawi and persuing regime change were never mutually exclusive objectives. Bush thought they were when he chose not to take Zarqawi down. Now the left also thinks they were mutually exclusive: hence they can use the Zarqawi foul-up to attack the legitimacy of the entire war. This is a failure of the imagination. The best of both worlds was attainable, and the best of both worlds would have been the execution of Zarqawi, and the execution of regime change.

3) Spain's electorate not only believes the Iraq war was irrelevant to fighting terror, but also the Iraq reconstruction. They have therefore renounced what I thought was a widely held liberal belief: that supporting the forces of democracy in the heart of the Middle East would leave the roots of terror gasping for oxygen.

4) While al Qaeda didn't have close ties with Iraq prior to the war, they do now. Call it a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the forces of clerical barbarism have jumped aboard a sinking ship that is Ba'athist Iraq. And when that ship sinks so will its depraved crew. Were I a Spanish citizen, many evenings would have been spent pondering that very fact.

5) I don't think it's appeasement -- Spain is furious at al Qaeda -- but I do think it's shortsighted. The Spanish electorate just does not see the relevance of Iraq in combating al Qaeda, and they've let al Qaeda score a victory because of it.

Murderous Methodology

The cowardly and sickening Madrid bombings are distinctive. No credible terrorist group has accepted blame, and the ensuing speculation has run amok. First there was consensus: it's the ETA. Then dissent: let's not rule out the Muslim extremists. Followed by fusion: perhaps it's some sadistic mixture of the two? And now, resignation: does it really matter who squeezed the detonator? The last viewpoint, which I first saw expressed by John Quiggin at Crooked Timber, is not as nihilistic as it may appear at first glance. Quiggin's controversial comment was the following:

All groups and individuals that embrace terrorism as a method share the guilt of, and responsibility for, these crimes. Both in practical and symbolic terms, terrorist acts by one group provide assistance and support to all those who follow in their footsteps. The observation of apparent links between groups that seemingly have nothing in common in political terms (the IRA and FARC, for example) illustrates the point.

By my interpretation, the comment hints at Paul Berman's analysis in Terror and Liberalism. The nameless attacks in Madrid are a call to acknowledge the fact that terrorist groups, though divided by ends, are united by methodology. And through this unison they are united too against world order and Civilization. A victory of the ETA is a victory for al Qaeda, just as a victory for Thailand in eradicating Bird Flu would be a victory for Cambodia.

The above is no humble assertion and dissenting views are explored below.

Question (1): Are all terrorist groups really opposed to Civilization? Al Qaeda is -- their barbaric pronouncements remind us every so often -- but what of groups like the ETA whose objectives are relatively bounded and straightforward?

Answer (1): United by methodology. Terrorist groups have, by definition, renounced formal political discourse as a means of attaining their ends. For whatever reason, they've turned their backs on the world system and embraced violent tactics that achieve nothing more than a pornographic shock effect. The random termination of citizens is not simply a statement of disillusionment with the status quo. It is an affront on every ideal laid forth by Civilization. And in this shared scorn for world order terrorist groups are united.

Question (2): Are you not blaming some people for other people's crimes?

Answer (2): This is where viewing terrorist cells as one billowing, loosely guided movement again comes into play. Certainly, the group perpetrating the crime is most responsible, but each group that advocates the same heinous methodology shares in the blame. The argument is similar, but stronger, than the assertion that all German citizens were to blame for the crimes of Nazism. They did not all murder Jews and gypsies, but they lent tacit support to the underlying ideology. In our case, terrorist groups promote terrorist ideology not at all tacitly -- they practice it. Part of accepting this logic is accepting the fact that the War on Terror is an ideological war.

Question (3): Does world order even exist? Isn't the US both the bulwark of world "order" and the world's foremost terrorist state? Do you not know of Operation Condor in Latin America? And what of East Timor? Or US intervention in [insert any of 40-50 countries here]? Isn't torture indirectly practiced by the US through expediting prisoners to Syria? Aren't Palestinian terrorists victims of a sordid occupation?

Answer (3): Greetings, humble Chomskyite. Your question is a magnificent one, but not because you're riddling my logic with the holes of "pop dissent." Certainly I cannot refute each of your observations above, nor would I want to -- US actions abroad have been flagrant in the past, though not categorically. What is categorical is this: the United States and Civilization in general has improved over the last fifty years. Focusing on the United States alone, we've gone from B-52s to precision-guided weaponry, from Japanese internment to the defense of Mosques, from the activism of Rosa Parks to the counsel of Condoleeza Rice. We still send some prisoners to Syria; Israel still occupies the West Bank; and John Ashcroft remains in power. But to see only darkness is to ignore the fact that much has improved, which alone is incontrovertible evidence that our world order can indeed make stunning reversals without recourse to terror. Those that ignore these lessons of the past in favor of grotesque barbarism spit on all recent progress. Their explosives ignore the most distinctive feature of modern Civilization: its mutability.

Question (4): Aren't some terrorists justified in their actions?

Answer (4): I hope my answer to question three suffices as an answer to this question as well.

Antigens

Islamism As Lethal Intellectual Viral Mutation I: Am currently in Singapore and read in the Straits Times today that the head of PAS, neighboring Malaysia's Muslim opposition party, wants a constitutional amendment mandating that only muslims can be Prime Minister of that country. The battle for the muslim majority vote is fierce in that country, with the ruling party running scared - one reason why they called only a week-long campaign season. As crazy as the politically shrewd Mahathir seemed to some in the West, in his own country he was a rock of liberalism and moderation. [As Professor Krugman pointed out some while back in a NYT article for which he was unfairly criticized.]

Question: What is it with religious fundamentalists and constitutional tampering?

Islamism As Lethal Intellectual Viral Mutation II: And Singapore's southern neighbour is soon to release JI 'spiritual leader' Ba'asyir. Tom Ridge, who two days ago visited Singapore, is not amused.

Islamism As Lethal Intellectual Viral Mutation III: And they're killing non-muslim Thais in the two muslim-dominated southern provinces of Thailand, an otherwise predominantly Buddhist and peaceful country.

Huntington?: The great tragedy of modern Islam is that the purist form of the Sunni strain (Wahhabism - Islamic Calvinism on steroids) infected the traditionally more moderate S. E. Asian strain and not vice-versa.

Bits and Bobs

En Huelga II: After nearly five months the striking supermarket workers in LA County have returned to their jobs, cause lost. I feared as much in early January. Subgame perfection, anyone? This is Wal-Mart's victory ultimately. Time to re-read the third part of Ehrenreich's 'Road to Wigan Pier' Redux in which she describes her work experience in a non-unionized Wal-Mart in Minnesota. A sad day for US labor.

Northern Spain's 'Troubles': The bombings in Madrid seem definitely to be ETA and not Jihadis upset with Azner's strong support of Bush's Iraq policy. However, some doubt that, though without any serious Spanish evidentiary backup.

Law & Order: I see in the Bangkok Post that Thailand's PM wants Thai bars and nightclubs to close by 1 am. Three regions are exempted from this new moral stricture (Patpong of course) but, not legendary backpacker haven Khaosan Road. I guess there are a few thousand 19 year old Swedes who will have to lose their virginity some other way . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Update: Oh-oh, Instapundit may well have guessed right about Madrid. See here and here: 'new lines of investigation opening up . . . ' And not just the letter sent to the London Arabic newspaper (whose validity is hard to verify), but a found tape in a van filled with explosives found in the town of Alcalá de Henares (Cervantes' birthplace) from which the trains departed, a tape with Koranic verses in Arabic. Stay tuned.

Bilateral Pitfalls

Australian Prime Ministers and their delusions that foreign affairs wins elections:

1995: Paul Keating and Suharto [scroll to page 27]

2004: John Howard and Bush.

History Lesson: Both lose elections within a year of their (self) hailed bilateral deal. [Ed: A little premature, no?]

PS: Both thought undemocratic secrecy in both negotiating and signing was a good idea . . . .

Liberation? Don't be Naive

I understand the worry the international community has over Iraq. It worries that the U.S. and its allies will by sheer force of their military might, do whatever they want, unilaterally and without recourse to any rule-based code or doctrine. But our worry is that if the U.N.--because of a political disagreement in its Councils--is paralyzed, then a threat we believe is real will go unchallenged.

This dilemma is at the heart of many people's anguished indecision over the wisdom of our action in Iraq. It explains the confusion of normal politics that has part of the right liberating a people from oppression and a part of the left disdaining the action that led to it. It is partly why the conspiracy theories or claims of deceit have such purchase. How much simpler to debate those than to analyze and resolve the conundrum of our world's present state.

The words are Tony Blair's, in a speech delivered yesterday morning. The rest of the speech (great reading) fleshes out his justification for the war as we near its anniversary, leaving behind a year during which conspiracy theories proliferated even more than WMD. It's difficult to explain the growing popularity of conspiratorial thought. In the quote above Blair provides one solid reason. Below are two more.

1) American Politicians. Tony Blair's speech is far more eloquent and earnest than anything to be had from a US politician. It is not only a shame, it is absolutely pathetic that vast sections of Bush's "war base" were mobilized not by the stony rhetoric of the president or Congress, but by independent journalists who've been writing and re-writing -- for the past two years -- the exact arguments we find in Blair's speech today. Most Americans expect to be convinced by their government before supporting a war; and if their government fails in this duty what can they do but regard their president as simple-minded or conspiratorial? The fact is that Blair's position, and the position to go to war in Iraq, was anything but simple and anything but conspiratorial. I'm not going to disinter that debate, but Blair's speech makes the point plainly.

2) Misguided Orwellianism. Orwell has been relentlessly tossed about the field by both right and left over the past year, and is no doubt aching in the head because of it. Listen to Arundhati Roy and she describes Bush's State of the Union as "Orwellian." Listen to Chris Hitchens and he excoriates the left for not seeing the facts before their nose -- for not breaking with their fiction and acknowledging the state of the world today. Indeed, the hard left has become essentially immune to the words "liberation," "fascism," even "precision-guided weapons." Any such word uttered by Bush is disregarded without a moment's thought -- Orwell would have sloughed them off too, they say. Perhaps, but certainly he would have thought about it first; certainly he would have acknowledged that yes, Iraqi people are being liberated from Hussein, precision-guided weapons are more humane than indiscriminate B-52 slaughterhouses. No independent thinker would accept a blanket rejection or acceptance of the words of government; he or she would attack the conundrum presented in Blair's speech before veering off-road into conspiracy land. Unfortunately, the hard left today does the exact opposite. They search for the most sinister motive, and once it is found they assume its truth. Base motives are given more weight than pure motives, simply because they are base. This practice is less than Orwellian, and less than impressive.

Janus?

This Australian international law academic spoke here at UCLA Law School yesterday. Australian readers might remember her as the organizer of this (to many) shocking pre-war letter, published in all the major national newspapers, claiming that if President Bush went ahead with the war, he would be a war criminal (scroll down to the last paragraph). I commented on the reductio ad absurdum inherent in this way of using international law here.

Arabic Language Version: In the current issue of the Sydney Law Review recently this article appears whose main thesis is how the Howard government, as well as the Australian court system, is systematically in fear of, and insufficiently respectful towards, international law.

English Language Version: In her talk yesterday her main thesis was that international lawyers needed to become more humble, to realize that their discipline, their way of thinking, was largely irrelevant, especially in times of great international crises, and that international law scholarship would benefit from the added input of political science, economics, philosophy and so on.

Question: Is there an Arafat syndrome at work here, of speaking one language to the local audience and another to the international one?

Bonus Prejudice: This type of politically driven international law 'scholarship' creates the cultural/intellectual environment in which the current brouhaha underway in the UK can be taken seriously by many. Perhaps if we just all close our eyes, we'll wake up and realize we've all become adults again.

PS: Now that I remember, the conservative government in Australia accused the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Richard Butler, of doing the same thing in his anti-Howard pre-war comments. Now I've seen it with my own eyes - cue to saddened head shake . . . . . . . . .

PPS: Loose language in scholarship combined with moral-high-ground zealotry also leads to this type of problem. [Ed: Note the excerpted quotes from the book: a somewhat adolescent use of adjectives, now coming back to haunt him, woudn't you say? - As Steiner once wrote, the more morally outrageous the content, the more deadpan should be the prose style. Ed: What, and deprive human rights lawyers of their cherished bien-pensant warm inner glow? - Professionalism is tough! ]

Correttezza politica? e altre cose culturali

Funny follow-up to the opera I went to last week. Angeleno Mickey Kaus has the details (scroll down, or see here). (Swed is a great classical music critic: he and Allen Rich balance the delightful Jim Svejda's dislike of modern music.)

Also, the LATimes best food snob (scroll down to Bouillabaisse Diplomacy - subscription required) thinks Americans have foresaken Provence for Tuscany. This is news to me, but it's possible I move in the wrong circles. I searched for 'Under the Tuscan Sun' a few Fridays back in some video stores and couldn't find it at all. Had everyone thought the same thing when it appeared onscreen: video movie. Then I realized it was Valentine's weekend. Finally saw it last Saturday, and what a pleasant piece of pulp it is, especially if it's cold or raining outside.

Bonus Observation? Apparently Marseille is like LA according to the visiting chefs?! Well, ast least in its multi-ethnicity! I'll find out in July.

The GMI: Reactions

It's been a spectacle parsing through the responses of various Arab and hard left groups to the Bush administration's Greater Middle East Initiative (full text here).

The initiative, which appears to have been culled from social ethics classes throughout the country, states three goals for the Middle East: the promotion of democracy, the establishment of a knowledge society, and the expansion of economic opportunities. And here's the shocker: to implement these reforms, there is no mention of regime change. Not even pre-emption. Nor nuclear war. In fact, all that's required is a well-moneyed carrot. What kind of Bush doctrine is this?

The initiative is, of course, the long missing piece of the Bush foreign policy. It marks the start of an ideological war that Paul Berman claimed only the left could wage. If the plan goes through, Bush can claim to have formulated a true "dual" foreign policy with threads of both hard and soft Wilsonianism; that is, a policy that proposes unilateral invasions on one hand and multilateral social reforms on the other. Now for the reactions.

The soft left views the GMI with a healthy and justifiable skepticism. After all, Bush's last left-leaning foreign policy objective, AIDS assistance, fell short of expectation. Bush did spend record levels on AIDS, but he promised much more and the cause needed much more. In attempts to fill this vacuum the democratic candidates clamored to double Bush's AIDS spending, inaugurating a race to the top few could complain about. This time around the same is likely to occur. No doubt Kerry will soon unveil his own "Even Greater Middle East Initiative", which in traditional Kerry style will closely follow the Bush line, but not.

The reactions from the soft left, then, are lukewarm. Read through the GMI. It's difficult for anyone left of center to argue with the objectives: it's the most overtly feminist, pro-education, pro-democracy document to emerge from the US government in decades. And it is not empty rhetoric: the text reads like a business plan more than anything, with initiatives covering everything from microfinance to textbook translation. Nothing here is objectionable, right?

Yet critiques written in familiar inks have already emerged. To find them, all we need do is turn to America's trusty radicals. No doubt they've already managed to extract the hidden imperialist agenda behind, say, those proposed women's leadership academies.

The dissent comes in two flavors, both predictable. The first is put best by London's Al Hayat newspaper, where the document was first released, and where much Arab commentary has been written on the topic. Walid Choucair writes:

It is normal for the Arabs to be anxious from Washington's efforts to obtain international, political, and military (through NATO) cover-up, for a democratically entitled plan, the reality of which is an international amalgamation of American hegemony in the region. What if Europeans were also fearful of this initiative?

Quite conspiratorial, but not quite there yet. I doubt Colin Powell's assurances that the initiative is "not for the purpose of the United States imposing anything on anyone" will convince Mr. Choucair. More elaborate is this, from Mohamad Kawwas:

Washington's dossier does not even acknowledge the role of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the lack of democracy and underdevelopment in the Arab world... Despite the positive promised success of the American plan for the region, there are many doubts ... due to the dangerous level of violence in Palestine and Iraq... Washington's intention seems to be to discard the region of its ideological bearings of pan-Arabism, and establish a region tied economically to the U.S. If we consider the situation from an anthropological perspective, what is known as "democratic colonialism", it cannot objectively lead to any success without the consent of the people, and without the adaptability to their sociological and cultural character. This is a matter that Washington does not consider to be basic, as long as its program is established according to its vision without any reference to the people concerned.

Anthropological perspectives allow one to perceive a feminist and liberal document as democratic subjugation. The art of warping truth into oxymoron. I'm glad he enclosed "democratic colonialism" in quotation marks, a tribute to the absurdity of the phrase.

The Israel issue, completely irrelevent to democracy in all countries in the Middle East minus Palestine itself, somehow continues to dissuade people from supporting the document. Double standards should not halt our progress with a scoff and a flip of the switch. I'd prefer to reverse that equation -- let progress shatter our double standards.

Finally, Al-Faqi, another columnist for the same paper, acknowledges the good-will of the move but has his doubts:

We cannot ask the region's peoples to exit from the trouble they are suffering while the Arab-Israeli conflict is still where it was, Sharon is keeping up his practices and the situation in Iraq is unchanged. Both things are important; the reforms, which are an Arab internal claim ..., and a balance in the American regional policy in the Middle East in order to be able to say there is a hope for a better future. The Greater Middle East is a welcomed project but under a U.S. that adopts a different policy and under another Israel. I do not know why on all occasions, Arabs are called to change and make reforms. We have no objection on changes and reforms but what about the other side that is Europe and the other countries that control the region? Israel should change. Washington should change its policy; hence, reform and change would bear their true meanings.

Contradiction: Washington has changed its policy, lest one considers the GMI an extension of Clintonianism. In fact, Washington changes its policy every four years, and would like the Middle East to share its zest for the "doctrine of change of course." Al Faqi welcomes the document then calls for more balance in international relations: what could be more balanced than a US policy that abolishes intransigent regimes on one hand, and rewards reforming regimes on the other? And again what on earth does Israel have to do with all of this, outside of Palestine itself? Am I being optimistic, or are these writers being cynical? Last I checked, cynicism lost its hold on reality somewhere in Iraq.

UPDATE: Last I checked, this had not transpired.

Law as Suicide Note II

From Martin Kettle's sober article:

The common feature here - increasingly striking, it appears - lies in Blair's attitude to law. This may seem a perverse thing to say about a lawyer married to a lawyer, who is also the brother of a lawyer and best friends with so many lawyers. Yet Blair is increasingly ill at ease intellectually and politically with law. The Goldsmith episode illustrates that neatly. But so do many other episodes, not all of them Iraq related. Certainly, there are few subjects other than the law that bring out Blair's populist instincts more readily and on which he can be more contemptuous.

What else is new: Lawyers are neinsagern, whereas politicians are jasagern. The eternal story: Seneca versus Nero, Moore versus Henry VIII, . . .

Before the 60s, left-leaning lawyers were inclined, with Marx, to view the law as a bourgeois conspiracy, part of a currupt, self-replicating super-structure. Using the law to solve basic problems of inequity seemed like a cop-out ideologically and methodologically suspect (if you're going to use a blunt instrument, why not revolution?). That all changed after the rise of the New Left (Romantic irrational rather than Enlightenment rational - as Marx was - in its motivations), when law schools in the Western World became dominated with the world view that the law could be 'subverted from within' and universalist human rights law was the solution to the world's problems. If this is problematic in the domestic sphere, how much more so in the international 'state of nature' regarding the issue of state use of force? The problems with the Milosevic trial is already evidence of the potential failure of that creeping (instrumental) bureaucratization of international relations that is the legacy of the universalist human rights approach to the international sphere.

Observation: For three decades in the Western World we have had the spectacle of upper middle-class kids proclaiming how they are going to help the poor and solve the world's problems by means of graduating from their nation's most prestigious law schools. [Ed: And are the world's problems now not all solved? - It's a long-term project.]

Addendum: One of America's greatest Presidents, Ted Roosevelt (a Columbia Law School drop-out) once famously yelled in his Whitehouse, when the Supreme Court was blocking his efforts to help striking coal miners in Philadelphia fight 'ruthless big business', that the Constitution was not a suicide note. [Ed: No neinsager there! ]

Law as Suicide Note I

From yesterday's Guardian (referenced in previous entry):

The Guardian has been told that the advice of Lord Goldsmith on the legality of the war was still ambiguous less than two weeks before the war.

When I worked in the Australian Attorney-General's Department in Canberra as a young lawyer, we would periodically receive requests from our client (aka the government, but specifically the AG) for advice on whatever was the fast-breaking event of the day. Needless to say, as with any other lawyer advising a client, that advice was always focused on the needs and desires of the client. But of course, lawyers are not interior decorators, their advice is potentially examinable by an independent judiciary (there is such a thing as being contrary to law) and so there are times (rare) when a government lawyer (as also a private lawyer) has to say 'no' to a client or to the strong wishes of a client. But it is rarer still for anyone well-trained in law ever to say a blunt no, not when there is 'ambiguity' to fall back on.

As to Lord Goldsmith: In a fast-changing situation with a team of drafters working round the clock, that his advice was still 'ambiguous' two weeks before the invasion is a credit to the professionalism of the lawyers working under him. No wonder one of the silks he relied on for advice is hanging tough.

And then there are those of us who regard this whole brouhaha over 'legality' with the same amused detachment as Gulliver among the Liliputians . . . [Ed: But they tried to kill him? ]

PS: It will surprise no-one experienced in government that the Foreign Office's lawyers took a less skeptical, er, more respectful view of the role of international 'law' regarding the decision to invade.

Super Tuesday

D-Day for Edwards today, as Californians (and others) go to the polls.

I missed John Kerry's foreign policy speech here at UCLA on Friday morning (I would have blogged it otherwise) because I had a hair appointment in Venice prepartory to driving to Orange County for a conference at UC Irvine where I was presenting a paper. Of course I regretted my leaving things to the last minute as always.

On the way down the 405 I had time to think about my attraction to John Edwards as a candidate. From an economist's point of view Edward's recent trade populism in particular is impossible to support - Kerry on the other hand is orthodox on that subject (thanks to our own Daniel!?).

Update: Clintonian 'talent' isn't enough this time round. Talent can be interpreted as slick, and woodenness as gravitas.

My support is based rather on his superb, Clintonian political skills (and, for me, his working boy made good origins). As someone who was once an impressionable young lawyer as well as an ALP apparatchik who door-knocked in blue-collar suburbs in Melbourne, I find myself instinctively drawn, politically and aesthetically, to Edward's comfortable mastery of those skills which lead to excellence in both the courtroom and across the dispatch box. My admiration cannot be based on anything else, since we know so little about him and he is only recently a politician. As one registered Democrat on NPR the other day said about him (with admiration, though she was going to vote for Kerry) "he's a natural." Compared to the 'wooden' Kerry he is Bismark, Napolean and Disraeli rolled into one.

Both Kerry and Edwards are faking it: faking their populism, their concern for the poor, their desire to 'change the way Washington does politics' etc etc. In modern politics it can't be any other way. But Edwards is so good on the stump that he helps you forget, at least for a while, that indeed he is faking it. Good politicians are those whose acting skills are so natural that they cut through the artificiality of modern politics to make themselves seem real and sincere. It is rather strange to prefer the candidate who is better at faking it over another who is less 'talented', but politics is as much about feel-good illusion as Hollywood.

When you go to the fair, who would you rather see: the competent or the incompetent magician.

The War for the War II

But this is really immature.

First: What serious intellect (see the consensus here - you can ignore Christine Chinkin, who has always been a literalist in international law, as for that Bournemouth chap . . . ) takes international law in the strict sense of 'legality' seriously anyway? [Ed: Haven't forests been felled by international law scholars on the "Is International Law Really Law?" question? - *sigh*]

Second: Isn't government legal advice entitled by law to the legal right of legal professional privilege (client-lawyer privilege in the States)? [Ed: But it wasn't advice tendered in the shadow of possible litigation? - Hey, I'm not the one rabitting on about illegality!]

Third: Isn't this right buttressed in the case of intelligence by the doctrine of cabinet confidentiality and the 30 year sealed-up rule?

Question: What is going on in that country? This is like the pedophilia hysteria in the late 80s in the States. Deep breath everyone.

Quote of the week: Doyen of International Law scholars, James Crawford, when asked about the legality of the decision to go to war (same link as above): "It comes down to a political judgment." Noooooooo.

The War for the War I

Britain's inquiry is falling apart because it won't be about second guessing Prime Minister Blair's political decision to take the nation to war.

Australia's inquiry is just announced after a report issued by a parliamentary committee of enquiry suggested such a more comprehensive enquiry would benefit the country in the future, and all the major editorialists seem to agree with the government (see here, here and - amazingly - here) that it should not be about politics.

In other words: Britain continues to look to the past, to continue the war over the war, while Australia looks to the future.

I've said it once, I'll say it again: The decision to go to war was (and is, and always will be) fundamentally a political one which politicians, not technocrats (or journalists), must ultimately make in the loneliness of their responsibility, a decision that must, if democratic legitimacy means anything, ultimately receive its approval or sanction in the political sphere and no other. [Ed: I think they call that 'elections'. ]

British Immaturity Update: A large minority of the Labor government is now acting - and appears apparently comfortable so acting - like some ministers in the last days of the Whitlam government in Australia. [Ed: Perhaps serious responsibility rubs against the temperament of the truly left-idealistic? ]

PS: How refreshing when a senior judge or senior civil servant does not wish to to usurp the functions and responsibilities of politicians. [Ed: Got constitution?]

Update: One of Australia's best 'big media' columnists (it's not a competitive field) makes the point beautifully.