Wisdom of the Capybara

Most people are probably sick of hearing about Iraq at this point, but I think that it is with good cause that it is such an important issue in American politics today. But I would also argue that it is one of the oddest and most schizophrenic issues out there.

In this piece, I will evaluate a bunch of the rhetoric floating around out there, but to begin, I will argue that there are only two positions on the United States in Iraq that are intellectually defensible.

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#1 – The Realist Position: Get Out Now

The realist position is morally nihilistic (should appeal to Skeptical Mind and Casham), and argues that the United States should basically look out for its own interest. In short, the United States is losing money and US lives by staying in Iraq, and should therefore withdraw immediately.

There is a realist argument that we should stay in Iraq as well, but in my opinion, it isn’t very defensible. It argues that if we leave now, Iraq will be come an Al Qaeda breeding ground, and the terrorists will follow us home.

I am skeptical that the terrorists will follow us home if we leave Iraq. A) that is not as easy as it sounds and B) they have a lot of other targets that are much more proximate and easy to hit like secular Arab rulers and Israel. Moreover, why make it easy for them to hit us by staying there? Much better to continue counter terrorist operations, but from a much more nimble and flexible position.

In short, if one takes a realist standpoint, I think it is clear that we should leave Iraq (or at least cease any policing and nation-building functions of our troops).

#2 – The Moralist Position: Finish What We Started

This stance is commonly known as the “pottery barn” rule: you break it, you buy it. This stance may (or may not) acknowledge that invading Iraq was a bad idea and that America is paying for it. However, the moralist side argues that that whether it was a good idea or not is irrelevant to what the US should do now; actually, the fact that it was wrong to begin with makes it even more imperative that we should stay because now America has a responsibility to the Iraqi people.
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As I said, I think both of these positions are at least intellectually coherent, and I think that the reality is that most people’s views fall somewhere in between realist considerations and moral ones. What I still can’t figure out, however, is the protests. My suspicion is that the thousands of demonstrators protesting in DC do not see themselves as old school realists looking out for American interests. Rather, they very much see themselves as making a moral argument.

Now, let’s take a look at some of their arguments to determine if any of them make sense.
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“Things can’t get any worse” / “The US presence is actually making things worse”

I listed this argument first because I think it is empirically questionable rather than inherently illogical. Some people are entirely convinced that the US presence is making the situation worse and that fewer Iraqis will die if we leave. If we were to assume that is indeed what would happen after a US pullout, then there would certainly be a viable moral argument for leaving.

However, I don’t think that is what most serious analysts envision following a US withdrawal. I think that very quickly we would not be using “civil war” as a dirty word to describe the situation in Iraq, but rather “genocide.” For instance, check out this Brookings analysis of how the US might deal with the humanitarian crisis of an “Iraq burning” following a pullout.

Proponents of this position point to the fact that international Al Qaeda volunteers are entering Iraq because of the US presence there. Hence, if we leave there will be less violence. The reason I think this logic is flawed is because it ignores the much more fundamental split between Shia and Sunni, about which much has been written. Not only is the US presence the only thing preventing ethnic cleansing between these two groups, the void left by a US withdrawal would allow a larger ideological conflict between states like Saudi Arabia and Iran to play out on Iraqi soil.

The second notion (“it can’t get any worse”) I think is less defensible. Sure it can. For Iraqis, it can get a lot worse. If you are an insurgent and suddenly no longer have to worry about any US troops, you can kill more people. Doesn’t really seem like that complicated an equation.

“I was against invading Iraq from the beginning”

This is probably the worst reason for being in favor of withdrawal, so I will spend little time on it. Whether or not someone was for or against the war has nothing to do with whether or not we should stay or leave now. In fact, messing up the Middle East increases our obligation to fix it.

“We should not waste any more American lives on this unjust war”

This is probably one of the most common out there on the left. Anti-war rallies rely upon testimonies from deceased soldiers’ families like Cindy Sheehan. Such testimony and arguments are valid, but only for a realist. The implication of this sort of argument is that Iraqi lives are worth less than American ones, generally not the position advocated by the left. Or, to be fair, this argument could also be made as a corollary to the questionable argument that the US presence is making the situation worse.

I wonder if those advocating this position would stick to it in other contexts. I.e., for someone holding this view, America has no business in Sudan, was right not to intervene in Rwanda, and should go right on ahead ignoring human rights issues to keep oil prices low for American consumers. However, my suspicion is that those demonstrating for an Iraq withdrawal would disagree vehemently with all of the above.

“Iraq needs a political solution, not a military one”

If this argument is made intelligently, then there is a grain of truth to it. (One could also make a fair argument that security is a prerequisite for a political solution). However, it is unfair to make this argument without getting into specifics. What kind of a political solution? Which brings me to the next point…

“We need to provide incentives and benchmarks to persuade the Iraqi government to solve its own problems”

I want to tear my hair out every time I hear this gem. Okay, so let me get this straight, the problem is that the Iraqi government doesn’t want to succeed? If they fail, there is a good chance that, if they don’t scram fast, leaders like Maliki will die should the shit really hit the fan. I don’t know how you make someone want success more whose country is on the brink of all out civil war.

Moreover, what kind of incentive is the ultimatum of withdrawal going to provide the government? Is Maliki really going to crack down on the Shia militias if he thinks the US might be gone tomorrow, because guess what, Iran isn’t going anywhere.

“We need to engage Iran and Syria, you know, be more multilateral”

Like the “political solution” argument, I think this could be a fair argument, but for lack of specificity ends up being a cop-out.

I agree we should engage Iran, but what should we offer them? They aren’t just going to give us something for nothing because our diplomats wore nice cologne. In order to be credible, advocates of this position need to a) specify what we should offer (i.e. are we willing to trade a nuclear-armed Iran for a stable Iraq?) and b) make a case that it actually has a chance of making a significant dent in the quagmire that is now Iraq.

“We did it for the oil / the US is an imperial power”

This is nothing more than trash talk in regard to this particular question. So what if we did it for the oil? That doesn’t change the issue at hand.

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There might well be a) some fair realist arguments for staying and b) some defensible moralist arguments for leaving that I missed here or treated unfairly. If so, I would be interested in hearing them.

My explanation for the insane disconnect between action and ideology surrounding this issue is the following:

Liberals are rightly very upset about a conflict that is increasingly looking like a monumental mistake. To support a troop surge or, even just not withdrawing, to them would be supporting the devil incarnate: George W. Bush. The unpalatability of taking the same stance as the president even if for a very different reason explains the irrationality of so many of their arguments.

To be fair, I am not arguing that liberal ideas about the Iraq War are inherently or even on average more irrational than conservative ones; clearly, the neo-con arguments for invasion were questionable at best.

I couldn’t make heads or tails of Glover’s interview. So I reinterviewed him.

DANNY GLOVER: So it’s their story.

Tequila Socrates: Who’s story exactly?
DANNY GLOVER: It’s them

Tequila Socrates: WHO?! The characters in your movie?

DANNY GLOVER: — they’re saying, in a most brilliant way…

Tequila Socarates: You’re a frustrating man. Who!? Also, shouldn’t you let the viewers decide what is brilliant and what is not brilliant? You’re setting our expectations way too high, but go on… keep right on talking like you didn’t even hear me…..

DANNY GLOVER: — they’re saying, in a most brilliant way how globalization has impacted their life.

Tequila Socrates: Huh. Tell me more. The characters in your movie are saying…

DANNY GLOVER: …how the IMF and the World Bank and structural adjustments and conditionalities have impacted their life, and the…

Tequila Socrates: Now hold on a second, what do you mean by structural adjustments and conditionalities… those are big words and I am not sure you are using them correctly.

DANNY GLOVER: …structural violence that it’s caused in their life.

Tequila Socrates: That’s great. Now, say something completely random, please.

DANNY GLOVER: This courtyard has people who are unemployed.

Tequila Socrates: And again.

DANNY GLOVER: Women who dye fabrics.

Tequila Socrates: Perfect, now if you could describe something for me…

DANNY GLOVER: Which is?

Tequila Socrates: Fabric dying.

DANNY GLOVER: A dying art in Africa.

Tequila Socrates: Is it your opinion that the death of the art of fabric dying is one of the causes of structural violence?

DANNY GLOVER: anyway….

Tequila Socrates: Right, that was a difficult question. Answer it the way an uninformed liberal might.

DANNY GLOVER: Well, the propaganda machine works so well, you know.

Tequila Socrates: Wow. That was like being in a room with Michael Moore, what a special moment. Now, seriously, enough with this crap about propaganda machines, tell me your thoughts on network news.

DANNY GLOVER: I mean, certainly network news doesn’t inform you about what really happens, about decisions that even affect their own lives.

Tequila Socrates: Who do you mean by their. You mean the network news reporters? I don’t really want to hear about their lives on network news. It would be like hearing about your life or my life… kind of boring, don’t you think?

DANNY GLOVER: Imagine if we even look at our own lives here, in reference to what is happening in areas in this country where people are in slums and in inner cities.

Tequila Socrates: Oh, yeah, I think I kind of see what you’re saying. At least if we look at our own lives and our own perspectives about what is happening to people in slums and in inner cities, we won’t be conveying false information. Boring, but at least not inaccurate.

DANNY GLOVER: [Exactly,] [w]e don’t know what’s really happening in those areas themselves.

Tequila Socrates: So they don’t know what’s happening in our areas, we don’t know what’s happening in their areas. Now, my next question is going to be a hard one. Please try to answer even if grammar escapes you and you find yourself unable to make a complete sentence… how do we get together to change bad things…. it seems impossible.

DANNY GLOVER: But it’s always the case that when people in these countries, because they’re mobilized, because they have history, there’s some sort of context in looking at themselves.

Tequila Socrates: Wow. That just didn’t make any sense. You really let the grammar go on that one, didn’t you! Say it again in a different way.

DANNY GLOVER: They have their own culture.

Tequila Socrates: And so… why is that important?

DANNY GLOVER: And so… what runs through their culture is a sense of who they really are.

Tequila Socrates: Wow, you’re actually starting to sound intelligent. Lets go back to the how it was at the beginning of the conversation. Say something hopelessly vague.

DANNY GLOVER: And there are political movements that are happening, you know.

Tequila Socrates: That was great! Mistakes were probably made. You know, eloquence isn’t everything. You’re saying good things, I think. You just aren’t eloquent. Still, I think you have a talent. Uhhhh… make fun of the dialogue in Star Wars, now. Oh…..I know, let’s make it sound like Star Wars meets George W. Bush. Um… pretend you are Dubya at a press conference right after the first death star gets blown up by the rebels… what would you say? Go!

DANNY GLOVER: And I think the objective of the empire at this particular point in time is to have a small relief, and that small relief dictates, so basically puts the pressure on those people, the many people that are under it.

Tequila Socrates: You should be an actor!! Hey wait, aren’t you? Didn’t you play the captain of Deep Space Nine?

DANNY GLOVER: [No.]

Tequila Socrates: Huh. Oh well, but seriously though, think about becoming an actor. I think you are good at it.

I think this revised interview brings out the two good points that Glover made. First, it is important for stories about Malians to be told by Malians. That is not to say that stories about Malians and foreigners shouldn’t be told by foreigners, but in some form, direct experience is important to any good story that relates to reality. Second, no matter what you read, no matter what you watch, no matter where you go, you will never understand a place until you live there.

My problem with most culturalists, and a problem I struggle with myself, is that their (our) brains are so messy. We make ourselves sound stupid by speaking on subjects we don’t know anything about. For example, in my opinion (formed from what Danny said during his real interview and how he said it), Danny doesn’t really understand politics. Danny doesn’t really understand empire. Danny doesn’t really understand propaganda. Danny doesn’t really understand structural adjustments. Danny doesn’t really understand conditionalities. I don’t make this judgment based on my own understanding of those things, but rather based on the fact that merely thinking about them reduces Danny to a babbler. Danny might understand the IMF and the World Bank from a particular perspective, I’ll grant him that. Danny does seem to understand culture in that what he says about culture is persuasive and makes sense.

Marchy,

Over on Culture, Politics, Economics, and Love, you talked a bit about the poverty/prosperity issue. I think that is an economic idea and I just don’t really understand economics. It seems to me that you are wrong on that account, but I don’t know how so I won’t call you out on it, though I think someone should.

I think you are at least on the right track in your description of why politics and economics need each other.

But, I think you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of culture. If you dare, tell me what you mean when you use the word culture.

Marchy, Cappy, Banana, and I used to have great drunken arguments in college. When it comes right down to it, we all share the same desire in life. We want what is good for the world. Marchy believes that the world’s problems can be solved through politics, Cappy and Banana believe that the worlds problems can be solved through economics. I believed the world’s problems could be solved through culture. We were all pretty intractible about the righteousness of our positions during college. It escalated one night when Marchy managed to make his point too well, and Cappy called him evil and Banana made me try to convert to Islam.

Near the end of college, I became aware that there are three ways in which people interact, Culture, Politics, and Economics. Since college has been over, I have been single and this has led me to realize that there is a fourth way in which people interact. Namely, through love. There was someone in college who used to argue with us in the name of love, but she isn’t on this blog.

Recently, I have come to see the importance of cooperation between economists and culturalists. Marchy hasn’t really been posting enough in weeks past, but in his last few posts, and in my memory of the night he was evil incarnate, (admittedly a memory hazed by a prodigious amount of alcohol and my attempted conversion to Islam), I am beginning to see that he might have a point. That is not to say that he has made it, yet, but I think he has got it.

If I had to outline how these four ways of interacting… um… interact, then I would say that love is the most human of the four followed closely by culture. The difference between culture and love is that love can take place only between two entities whereas culture can incorporate many people. Cultures have difficulty interacting with each other. In the same way that love requires culture when there are too many cooks in the kitchen, so too does culture require politics. Finally, there is that last problem, namely starvation. We, as human beings, are dependent on natural resources and natural resources have become scarce in our prosperity.

Marchy would probably disagree with me on this (you’ll have to let me know Marchy), but I don’t think we should give up prosperity because not everyone has it in equal amount. Prosperity is a good thing, but it is not the only good thing. Poverty, the opposite of prosperity, is a bad thing and we need to get rid of that. In my ideal view of the world, everybody will achieve subsistence, some people will achieve prosperity, and some people will achieve other goods.

One thing I don’t like about the American-driven development industry is that it is mindlessly teleological; by this, I mean that it aims to achieve world-wide prosperity without considering all the other good things in life. Development is great, but it IS teleological and the ends at which it aims should be determined by native cultures rather than American culture. I would like to see the American development industry refocus its own aims on domestic American poverty. On the international scene, I would like to see more aid work. Aid is not teleological in that it doesn’t focus on an empirically specific aim. To use the vocabulary of an outdoor trip leader, aid is process-oriented, development is goal-oriented. Aid attempts to facilitate development and in more ways than just philanthropy. My concept of aid as it has obtained in the status quo is that it is mainly based on philanthropy. Banana, is that true? Philanthropy seems to be a clunky inefficient and ineffective way of providing aid. Cappy, is that true? In the end, I have no idea how aid should be effectively given, as indicated above, that is a question for Banana and Cappy. I also have no idea how we should determine which country’s development industry to give aid to and which not to, that is a question for Marchy.

I think that love should rely on culture and that culture should rely on politics and that politics should rely on economics. I also think that economists should take their cue from politics, and from culture, and from love. I additionally think that politicians should take their cue from culture and from love. Finally, I think that culturalists should take their cue from love.

Basically, what I am saying is that it all comes down to love. Unfortunately, I am a culturalist. I love without understanding love and so I can’t speak in the name of love. Who will speak in the name of love?

I write this post by way of bringing some of the participants of this blog up to speed on one of the main themes of my college career and a theme that is influencing a great deal of the conversation on this blog. We need some new voices in this debate. After that night when Cappy called Marchy evil, and Banana made me try to convert to Islam, we ceased debating all this stuff when we were together and our cessation continued until this blog started. Now we are back at it, help us avoid a repeat of that night.

I also write this post in order to use some of these fancy ways of writing I spent so much time studying and now rarely get to use. Let it be here noted that I have no idea what “emperically specific” means. I mean something by it, but I am not quite certain what exactly that meaning might be. However, let it be further noted that if anyone should perchance to call me out on it, I will become filled with the singular intention of calling you an orientalist.

Since I know a couple of you are contributing from Japan, I thought it would be interesting to get your take on the United States slapping Japan’s wrist for the use of “comfort women” during WWII:

It has been historically documented in Japan and elsewhere that before and during World War II, the Japanese government established many military brothels. While the government initially tried to hire prostitutes from within Japan, they soon decided more women were needed.

With this goal in mind, women from China, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines and especially Korea were often tricked or forced into becoming sex slaves. Most estimates put the number of comfort women as high as 200,000, 80 percent of whom are thought to be Koreans, making this “one of the largest cases of human trafficking in the 20th century,” according to the resolution.

Curzon at the Coming Anarchy has a post with his opinion, which seems to make a lot of sense to me:

I personally think it’s batshit crazy for another country to criticize another country’s history for no other apparent reason than to 1.) appeal to domestic interest groups, and 2.) pat themselves on the back for being so self-righteous, especially when, such as in this case, the result will be nothing other than piss off Washington’s only remaining major geopolitical ally, and reward a country (ROK) whose people loathe America.

He also points out that perhaps the US should hesitate before giving other countries shit for institutionalized slave-rape.

But anyways, I figure several of you are probably more informed on this than me…

When Danny Glover isn’t fighting predators, he is fighting that capitalist bastion of oppression: the World Bank.

Dot dot dot. Wait a second. Isn’t the World Bank an international development institution designed to help the world’s poor? Not according to Glover:

DANNY GLOVER: So it’s their story. It’s them — they’re saying, in a most brilliant way, how globalization has impacted their life, how the IMF and the World Bank and structural adjustments and conditionalities have impacted their life, and the structural violence that it’s caused in their life. This courtyard has people who are unemployed, women who dye fabrics, which is a dying art in Africa, anyway.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Danny, I wanted to ask you, in a lot of my reporting in different third world countries, one of the things that’s always amazed me is the level of consciousness in some of the poorest countries about the enormous impact of these international financial organizations, compared to the total obliviousness of people in this country of the power and the role of these organizations.

DANNY GLOVER: Well, the propaganda machine works so well, you know. I mean, certainly network news doesn’t inform you about what really happens, about decisions that even affect their own lives. Imagine if we even look at our own lives here, in reference to what is happening in areas in this country where people are in slums and in inner cities. We don’t know what’s really happening in those areas themselves. But it’s always the case that when people in these countries, because they’re mobilized, because they have history, there’s some sort of context in looking at themselves. They have their own culture. And so, what runs through their culture is a sense of who they really are. And there are political movements that are happening, you know. And I think the objective of the empire at this particular point in time is to have a small relief, and that small relief dictates, so basically puts the pressure on those people, the many people that are under it.

Okay, I guess on some level I can understand why people turn up in costumed droves to protest the WTO – there are losers in globalization. But the World Bank is not the WTO. The World Bank implements programs to study poverty and combat it. And yet we have Hollywood “experts” like Glover vilifying the very people in the West who actually do give a shit, for whom poverty is not something that is out of sight out of mind.

Bamako (the title of the movie and capital of Mali) and the self-righteous idiocy of Glover brings a couple thoughts to mind (full disclosure: I have only read summaries of this movie, not actually seen it myself):

- If Bananaconda was pissed about Hollywood vilifying the pharmaceutical industry, I wonder how she feels about this even starker contrast between reality and the media.

- If I worked for the World Bank, this would be a great argument for Tequila Socrates’ opinion that we should not engage in any sort of international development at all. They don’t like our aid? Fine, we can put that money to good use domestically.

On a more serious note, I don’t want to suggest that there is no room for criticism of the World Bank. Quite the contrary. Not only should there be debate, but there is in fact a vociferous dialogue criticizing structural adjustment policies, etc. But they are arguments made intelligently by intelligent people (generally, at least), often times within the World Bank or other development institutions.

My problem with crap like Bamako is the same one I have with Michael Moore’s movies. It’s not that I necessarily disagree with the content, but the way it is presented. In Bamako we are basically shown images of the poor and disenfranchised in Mali. The audience is so overcome with sympathy and empathy for these characters, that we accept the dubious conclusions of the director with out really thinking about whether they make sense.

Are the poor really worse off in Bamako because of World Bank programs and globalization? What is the counterfactual? But those questions hardly matter when we are looking directly at the awful guise of poverty rather than examining the factors that lead to it.

Glover also seems to hint at a point I cited in an earlier post; namely that there is no real accountability to the poor in development institutions. If their policies fail, it is the poor who bear the burden.

Now, I do think this is a fair point. However, it is one that is easy to make, but not so easy to solve. As it stands, institutions like the World Bank makes loans and implements programs where their experts feel they will get the greatest return for their investment (i.e., countries with good governance, low corruption, etc., at least in theory). Activists like Glover cry foul, and argue that since the poor themselves should have much more say in the process.

This stance is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, the commitment of many governments in the developing world to the betterment of their own people is highly questionable. Do we really want to give money to countries like Zimbabwe and let the local dictator-thug decide how to use it? To do so would be culturally relativistic (a virtue, according to some), but also stupid.

Secondly, at the end of the day, donor countries have no real obligation to lend the money (and by obligation here I mean in point of fact, not morally). Activists like Glover take the money flowing into the developing world for granted, forgetting that the fact that there is any money at all is not by any means inevitable.

In conclusion, Glover’s movie really does have a ridiculous premise. Should the World Bank and IMF answer for certain questionable development strategies? Absolutely, but putting them on trial is overkill. There are so many genuinely malevolent forces in this world that vilifying the very institutions that at least try to combat it just makes Americans more cynical and isolationist. This is why South Park’s creators give those idiot activists in Hollywood such a hard time. The real world is not as simple as Predator vs. Human; Glover should stick to show biz.

Fellow hobbits:

I am not sure if any of you have been following New Line’s B.S., but they have definitively decided not to go with Peter Jackson as director of the Hobbit.

Jackson is locked in a legal battle with New Line over money from The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

New Line co-chairman Bob Shaye told the Sci-Fi Wire that Jackson would never make The Hobbit “during my watch”.

The director responded by telling Variety magazine it was “regrettable” Mr Shaye had made the issue personal.

(Gandalf is pissed that he won’t get to adventure in Middle Earth ever again)

Okay, so Jackson sued New Line a bit, which is sort of stupid, but whatever. When I first heard they were making a Lord of the Rings movie, I was sure it would suck just like practically every other sword and sorcery movie ever made. But Jackson turned it into not to the undoubtedly best movie of its genre, but probably one of the best movies of all time. New Line was going out of business, and he saved them. So fuck Bob Shaye. Jackson can sue them all he wants, as far as I am concerned, but if they take away the Hobbit from me, I will never forgive that stupid company.

Will there still be a Hobbit movie? Of course; New Line wants the money. They are trying to get Sam Raimi (Spider Man), who would be good I guess, but it wouldn’t be the same world. No Ian McKellen. No Jackson. Not a real prequel.

Here is a petition for boycotting New Line’s crappy version of the Hobbit. Forget about Iraq; stand up for something that matters!

Just a random fact I found interesting that may not come as much of a surprise to some of you:

At the beginning of the modern era, per capita incomes in settled societies everywhere were relatively equal. As late as 1800, Asian per capita income was roughly equal to that in Europe and North America as a bloc, with the richest country having no more than twice the per capita income of the poorest. By the end of the 1800s, however, Britain and settler societies like the United States, Australia, Canada, and Argentina had per capita incomes 10 times those in Asia and India. By the end of the 1900s, on a per capita basis, the developed countries as a whole were about 10 times richer than the Third World.

- States versus Markets, 44

I have a dialectic ala Tequila Socrates:

Pacifism as a life philosophy is immoral.

Anyone welcome to engage.

This pretty much sums up my political stance.