Exercising the Colonel

Above, one of David Low’s Colonel Blimp cartoons from the lead up to the Second World War. You can see and read more of the Colonel in this blog’s most popular post by far, from a few years back.

I would love to look back at Low’s satires of muddled thinking and be able to say how out of date they seem, but that’s far from being the case. David Low’s Blimp character was primarily a satire on right-wing little Englander pro-appeasement attitudes, but Low also took aim at similar views on the Left via his Pmilb character: Blimp backwards. Today’s Pmilbs and Blimps continue to muddle ideas of radical left and reactionary right, of liberalism and of bigotry.

A couple of prime examples from the past pages of this blog are Simon Jenkins, a modern-day little Englander who has found a comfortable berth at the supposedly liberal Guardian, and Judith Butler, a leading academic in feminist and gender theory who contrived to describe Hamas and Hezbollah, two violent, sectarian, antisemitic and misogyninist organisations, as “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.”

Several more examples have been on parade in recent days, with a series of supposedly Left commentators eager not to distance their own beliefs from those of religiously bigoted anti-democratic fanatical murderers, but rather to point to how close in agreement they are, and to claim justification of motive (though not of course of action) for bloody public murder on a London street.

Take Rachel Shabi’s comments on the Woolwich murder, beginning with this tweet:

Just told Sky news #Woolwich a collective problem, we should not single out Muslims; need to look into Brit foreign policy element
— rachel shabi(@rachshabi) May 24, 2013

There is nothing that controversial here in my eyes. Radicalisation is a problem for the whole of society to deal with. To charge one group with responsibility for solving it in isolation would seem likely to be counterproductive. And UK foreign policy? What about it? That aspect could be taken in a number of directions.

But then she clarified that her preferred response to the murder was “eliminating bad foreign policy as a recruitment device”.

.@nicholasblincoe it's not that madness can be cured. more about eliminating bad foreign policy as a recruitment device
— rachel shabi(@rachshabi) May 24, 2013

So here Rachel Shabi sees UK foreign policy as bad and believes that as murderers of today and potential murderers of tomorrow agree with her, that policy should change. However when pressed by Rob Marchant on the question “Should foreign policy change as a result of these attacks,” she tries to split hairs:

@rob_marchant @tomsp @tomharrismp UK foreign policy in Mid East should change cos it is hypocritical, counterproductive NOT cos of attacks
— rachel shabi(@rachshabi) May 25, 2013

Rachel Shabi insists that “understanding is not justifying,” but though she doesn’t justify the act she does justify the motive, making clear that she sees anger over UK foreign policy, the only motive to which she gives any consideration, as “justifiable anger,” and again “justified anger”.

Incredibly, having concluded that this anger over actions like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan leads to radicalisation and acts of terror, she then does her little bit to encourage such anger with a wholly one-sided representation of today’s news story on prisoners held by the British Army in Afghanistan:

This is how UK 'liberates' #Afghanistan: with unlawful detentions in secret prison ind.pn/112ek85
— rachel shabi(@rachshabi) May 29, 2013

It’s an interesting story, though not so simple as Rachel Shabi would have you believe.

If I found that any of my views were shared by such cutthroats I think I might want to consider whether I was somehow in error, but Rachel Shabi is not alone in finding affirmation in such an alignment. There are more happy to declare their, at least partial, agreement with the murderers...

Ian Leslie points to the stupidity of ex-mayor Ken Livingstone blaming the attack on the invasion of Iraq.

Our friend in Canada, Terry Glavin, adds Michael Moore and Glenn Greenwald (in the Guardian) to his list of moral illiterates weighing in on Woolwich. He writes:

Do note that it isn’t some imam in some dingy mosque carrying on like that, although now and then there will be one of those, too. Note as well that the overwhelming majority of Afghans, and the overwhelming majority of Afghan-Canadians, supported NATO’s intervention, and most of these people are, as it happens, Muslims.

Note well that these idiocies about blowback and retaliation do not generally come from the mosques at all. It’s the sort of rubbish that comes from out of the mouths of moral illiterates.

It should stop.

Norman Geras finds Greenwald’s failure of logic replicated in a Guardian article by Terry Eagleton, and lays out the mechanism to display its faults.

Jonathan Freedland doesn’t forget the Stop The War Coalition, who naturally take their own alignment with the declared motives of murderers as absolute vindication.

Nick Cohen, like Terry Glavin above, takes the time to point out some people most likely not in agreement with the murderers, namely victims of Islamist violence, mostly Muslim, not just in Afghanistan but also Pakistan, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia. The list is far from exhaustive.

Bizarrely Rachel Shabi refers to Nick Cohen’s article as “a cluster bomb of muscular liberal lunacy.” Whatever about lunacy, I think her metaphor of an indiscriminate weapon of mass slaughter to describe the article is perhaps an example of what they refer to in the mental health business as projection. (A more complex analysis here by blogger Unrepentant Jacobin.)

Funnier still is that after Livingstone, Moore, Greenwald, Eagleton and the Stop The War Coalition have all had their say, Rachel Shabi writes 950 words on how debate is being stifled, closed, sealed shut even. And all of her words are published by the Guardian.

Fleeing by land and by sea

Fleeing Guilin by the North Station, print by Cai Dizhi, 1945.

From the book art blog, A Journey Round My Skull.

Navio de emigrantes (Ship of Emigrants), painting by Lasar Segall, 1939.

From the art blog Weimar.

La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars), a film by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1982.

We watched this film last night, and the mirroring of what’s happening now in Libya was almost too painful to bear.

The dictator’s loss of power is now a certainty, so every killing by his forces in these days is a murder to no end, but still it goes on.

Make note of who still supports him, and by this know them well.

_

PRI’s The World produced a series of reports on migration last year centering on the story of one Somalian man fleeing war. Read and listen here, and learn how Gaddafi's thugs went about preventing migrants from reaching the EU.

Failing to understand Somalia

Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal says Matthew Yglesias is criticising the Bush administration for the wrong reasons on Somalia, and goes on to give better reasons, all here.

Are Pirates the Problem, or the Solution?

At Information Dissemination:

There are very few people dying from piracy. The areas that are being governed by the pirate companies are functioning and less violent than areas where piracy does not exist, indeed pirate cities are thriving. The pirates are not only commercial in nature, but they are enemies of the Islamic extremists that represent the enemy of the United States. It sounds crazy to say, but the pirates are essentially the secular, liberal capitalists of Somalia, and the United States would prefer to deal WITH not AGAINST those types of people. Know your history, the Europeans preferred dealing with the Brashaws of the Barbary states than the alternative, the Islamic militant armies. We are essentially allowing the pirates to build themselves as regional Brashaws of Somalia with the ransom money from piracy, while the Islamists who remain violent are struggling for funding.

More here.

Related, Neo-neocon on the unforseen consequences of the US withdrawal from Somalia under Clinton, of which more in this 2002 New Yorker article by Lawrence Wright, The Man Behind Bin Laden:

In 1993, bin Laden dispatched Mohamed Atef to Somalia to look for ways of attacking the American military forces that were participating in an international famine-relief effort. Bin Laden gloried in the fact that his men had trained the Somali militiamen who shot down two American helicopters in the ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident, in October of that year, prompting President Clinton to withdraw all American soldiers from the country. “Based on the reports we received from our brothers in Somalia,” bin Laden said, “we learned that they saw the weakness, frailty, and cowardice of U.S. troops. Only eighteen U.S. troops were killed. Nonetheless, they fled in the heart of darkness.” 

Earlier post on Somalia and pirates here.

The above illustration is a sketch for my current Dutch book project.

Somali pirates hijack front page

Yesterday, the International Herald Tribune, probably the most sober daily available at my corner shop, gave most of its front page over to the pirates and their booty. But if you’re worried about murderous threats in those waters then people smugglers seem worse. Another hazard on a lawless coast is illegal dumping.

What the pirates do underline once again is that problems in failed states don’t stay within failed states. It may be possible to contain a hostile government in control of its own territory, but it’s impossible to contain a failed state.

Detailed pirate coverage can be found at EagleSpeak.

Illustration: sketch for the book in progress.

Weighing Obama versus McCain

Marko Attila Hoare sums it up.

Daniel Stark closes with a quote from the Wall Street Journal.

Most of my earlier posts on the US election:

Segregation, parts one and two.

Norm: Guns prejudice and religion.

The progressive candidate?

Obama’s Iraq problem, parts one, two, three.

“Let’s squeeze them”, parts one and two.

No change.

1999: McCain on Kosovo.

A couple of people have said that Obama will be more like Clinton than Carter. This I do not find reassuring. 

Who wants another president who will hesitate for years over a massacre like Bosnia, with more care for domestic opinion polls than for doing what is right?

Who wants another Somalia? A scramble to withdraw in the face of public unhappiness, a disaster which strengthened Al Qaeda and left that country in a disastrous state from which there is still no sign of recovery.

Who wants another Rwanda?

But Samantha Power was one of his advisers, so surely he will act against such atrocities? Sorry, no, I get no reassurance from an academic who can describe victims of ethnic cleansing as exercising a choice.

The issue of Iraq has faded from consciousness as violence falls, and while Obama has never withdrawn his ‘withdrawal in 16 months’ policy, it has been allowed to be forgotten for now, along with his vociferous opposition to the surge.

Here though is a reminder of what the consequences would have been of following Obama’s policies over the last two years, from David Kilcullen:

The question of whether we were right to invade Iraq is a fascinating debate for historians and politicians, and a valid issue for the American people to consider in an election year. As it happens, I think it was a mistake. But that is not my key concern. The issue for practitioners in the field is not to second-guess a decision from six years ago, but to get on with the job at hand which, I believe, is what both Americans and Iraqis expect of us. In that respect, the new strategy and tactics implemented in 2007, and which relied for their effectiveness on the extra troop numbers of the Surge, ARE succeeding and need to be supported. In 2006, a normal night in Baghdad involved 120 to 150 dead Iraqi civilians, and each month we lost dozens of Americans killed or maimed. This year, a bad night involves one or two dead civilians, U.S. losses are dramatically down, and security is restored. Therefore, even on the most conservative estimate, in the eighteen months of the surge to date we have saved 12 to 16 thousand Iraqis and hundreds of American lives.

Who would have preferred Obama’s path?

Of course you can always hope, like Hitchens, that Obama is learning. But my hopes for Obama are more than equalled by my fears.