"We made Saddam"? — Actually, no

David Rothkopf is one of the more intelligent, interesting, and illuminating bloggers writing regularly for Foreign Policy. So it's a pity that in a recent piece he recycled a standard cliché that is widely taken for granted but happens to be incorrect. It might be worth the trouble of reminding everyone that it is, in fact, incorrect. So here's a friendly admonition I e-mailed to David Rothkopf.

--Jeff Weintraub

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Dear David Rothkopf,

In your entertaining, thought-provoking, and partly on-target blog post about America's worst allies: friends we could've lived without, you begin the section on Saddam Hussein by asserting: "We made Saddam."

Actually, we didn't. This notion belongs in the category described by your more recent post on Things I know to be true that aren't.

But you're not the only one. This is a widely believed myth, but a myth. The Iraqi Ba'athist regime was always more a client of the Soviet Union and France than of the US--and, until Saddam's back was to the wall after 1981-1982, it was a generally anti-American regime as well. AFTER Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran had backfired, when it looked as though Khomeini's Iran might capture Basra and topple the Iraqi regime, the US did increasingly "tilt" toward Iraq, in ways that included shamefully letting Saddam Hussein get away with massive use of poison gas and other war crimes. But so did just about every other significant power, as well as the entire Arab world (minus Syria, for its own special reasons), most European countries, etc., etc. The Iranian regime had terrified everyone up the point where they were willing to do almost anything prop up the Iraqi Ba'athist regime as the lesser evil.

However, even during the period when the US was actively supporting Saddam Hussein (roughly 1982-1991), it was still true that his arms came overwhelmingly from the Soviet Union (& the rest of the Soviet bloc), France, China, etc.--and only a tiny proportion from the US. He also received massive financial support from the Arab oil states (some of whom, e.g. Kuwait, wanted to be repaid afterward, with unfortunate results). And so on. Anyway, by that time Saddam Hussein was already in power, so it would be hard to say that US support after 1982 (however thoughtless and misguided) is what "made" Saddam in the first place.

Again, I recognize it's widely believed that Saddam Hussein was one of "our" dictators, but this belief happens to be incorrect. For more details, in case you're interested, see:

Who armed Saddam? - Some reality checks

Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub

"Resistance" within moral limits (Norman Geras)

Norman Geras wearily but cogently reiterates a very basic, very important, very obvious distinction that too many people seem to forget, obscure, ignore, or have trouble understanding.

--Jeff Weintraub
====================
normblog - Norman Geras
February 9, 2009
Resistance within moral limits

In a piece in the New York Times Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Yacoubian Building, writes about the admiration of many Egyptians for Barack Obama and their subsequent disappointment because of his failure to criticize Israel over Gaza. Al Aswany appeals in passing to the requirements of human rights and international law. He also writes:

We ... wanted Mr. Obama, who studied law and political science at the greatest American universities, to recognize what we see as a simple, essential truth: the right of people in an occupied territory to resist military occupation.

The trouble is that this is presented by him in the way it often is by critics of Israel - that is, passing over or fudging the point that the right of resistance does not include a right to commit war crimes or crimes against humanity, as Hamas patently does. Even those resisting tyranny or occupation are prohibited from the deliberate targeting of civilians. On war crimes, I have given the relevant sources in Part 3 here. For crimes against humanity, the Rome Statute of the ICC makes it clear that this prohibition applies not only to fully-fledged state actors but also to organizations and movements. At Article 7.2 (a) it reads:

"Attack directed against any civilian population" means a course of conduct involving the multiple commission of acts referred to in paragraph 1 against any civilian population, pursuant to or in furtherance of a State or organizational policy to commit such attack. [My italics - NG.]

Obama's lost opportunity? - A different perspective on the economics and politics of the crisis

The message below is part of an exchange with a reader who wrote to disagree with my observation on Friday that the Congressional Republicans had decided "to pursue a strategy of straightforward obstructionism and cynical political demagogy." (I stand by that.)

More fundamentally, while I am convinced by the arguments of Paul Krugman and a raft of other economists (along with the hovering spirit of John Maynard Keynes) that there's an urgent need for government action to inject a big jolt of demand into the economy, my correspondent is less convinced. He argues that it would be a mistake to pass such a big, important, and expensive set of measures hastily and in a panic. Instead, it's more important to take enough time "to do this carefully and right."

In principle, and for normal circumstances, it's hard not to sympathize (strongly) with that last sentiment. In terms of how we should apply that principle in assessing this concrete situation, though, we disagree on a number of points. (Which is perhaps not surprising, since--among other things--he's a Republican and I'm not.)

But we certainly don't disagree on everything. For example, beyond the specific issues involved in the fight over the "economic stimulus package," my correspondent argues that it would be valuable and important to try to move our whole style of political discourse, policy consideration, and legislation toward a more open, honest, and substantive process of "serious deliberative democracy." Broadly speaking, and in the long run, I would definitely sign on to that. (Obviously, a politics of serious deliberation and concern for the public interest would not involve an end to conflict, disagreement, or party divisions--that's a thoroughly misleading utopian fantasy.) He also argues that, in this respect, Obama had an important opportunity and blew it. On that, I'm not convinced.

But you can judge for yourself. Whether or not one fully agrees with all his contentions, my correspondent makes a serious case in a thoughtful and cogent way, and I think a number of points in the message below are perceptive and usefully thought-provoking. He gave me permission to guest-post it here. (I won't try to reproduce our whole exchange, but I think this message can stand alone.)

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================

You're right that the Congressional Republicans did not, to put it mildly, distinguish themselves in the past 8 years -- or, actually, the past 14 years. (The handling of Monica Lewinsky turned out to be, as distracting the President, and indeed the whole government, could be predicted to be a national security catastrophe).

You're probably right about the high speed rail. I say probably because the USA is a vast country with lots of infrastructure projects -- real infrastructure, not as one moron said, "arts infrastructure," that need to be done. But executing intelligently requires priorities, priorities require analysis, and analysis in politics requires reasoning transparently and clearly articulated. I would have been very impressed if Obama had said on January 21 (or now) that infrastructure spending is a top priority, and explained why (he would not have found any serious disagreement, I think). Then he could have explained why he was prioritizing certain types of projects over others -- and which specific projects in each type would get funded and why. My personal choice would have been airports -- as the airports in Singapore and Hong Kong (and the transportation to them) are so vastly superior to anything in the USA. But my personal choice doesn't matter, and it is ill-informed (as I have not considered all the possible infrastructure projects and prioritized them according to some rational criteria -- it's just what I personally have noticed).

Then he should have said that the era of big government is back (like it or not -- he won, as did his Party, and they have that mandate) -- but spending is going to be allocated intelligently, methodically and rationally. And here's how, and here's what I think the result looks like. Having seemingly every liberal wish thrown in and funded indiscriminately immediately, calling it stimulus or reinvestment or whatever and castigating all opponents as dithering obstructionists who would hurl us into economic catastrophe is the precise opposite of that. Obama had the opportunity to expand government -- and to do so in a new (much more rational and transparent) way ... and he did the precise opposite. Even if it's a first step, and I think we simply cannot afford -- we can't borrow or tax enough -- for that to be true, he could have made it clear that he was going to govern in a very different way ... and he didn't. I think he was very sincere about wanting to bring Republicans into the tent with him -- but inviting a bunch of them to watch the Super Bowl and taking out spending on sex education from a "stimulus bill" doesn't even come close to qualify. So that -- I don't understand.

I think the fundamental lesson unlearned is that economic policy cannot be made in a long weekend -- that immediate solutions will backfire, and in a very expensive and sustained way. This was reflected in his defense of Geithner. The American tax system depends upon, essentially, voluntary compliance. Defending Geithner after so many examples of his voluntary and seemingly systematic noncompliance was another reflection of the lesson unlearned -- no one man is so important that we can't wait for another to be found (particularly when the best man for the job, Larry Summers, can step right in!)

X

What happened to the "economic stimulus" package in the Senate

Otto von Bismarck once remarked that law-making is like sausage-making: If you want to face the results with equanimity, it's best not to look too closely at the process by which they get turned out. Why does this famous aphorism occur to me just now?

Over the past several weeks, through the fog of empty political sloganeering and economically clueless political punditry, we've all been watching the so-called "economic stimulus package" make its way through Congress.

Actually, the Obama administration's name for it was the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, and indeed it would be more accurate and informative to call it the "economic stimulus and public investment package." I'm not quite sure how the "reinvestment" part got squeezed out of the public discussion. But that's probably OK, because the most urgent need is for quick emergency action to pump resources into the economy in order to avert an accelerating downward spiral into a major depression. So economic "stimulus" is indeed the first priority right now, and while some of the measures included in this humongous package double as useful public investments, a lot of further long-term public investments will no doubt have to come later.

After the White House and Congressional Republicans had gone through some preliminary rituals of bipartisan consultation, the House Republicans decided on a strategy of monolithic opposition, and on January 28 the stimulus package passed the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote (like the start-up of the Clinton economic plan back in 1993). Then it moved to the Senate, whose rules give the minority more capacity to obstruct legislation. In order to overcome the threat of a Republican filibuster, it would be necessary to detach at least two Republican Senators from the GOP rejectionist front.

=> This is where the real sausage-making comes in. A small caucus of "moderate" Republicans (the last remnants of a vanishing breed) and conservative Democrats got together to work out a mutually acceptable deal. On Friday a compromise was announced that would get the support of--sure enough--precisely two Republican Senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

With what result? Josh Marshall of TPM got concisely to the heart of the matter:

So Senate Republicans invoked the threat of a filibuster. And the 'centrist' group has leveraged that threat to add more tax cuts that won't accomplish anything and cut out a lot of spending that would.

Of course, neither Josh Marshall nor I is a professional economist. Brad DeLong, who is, lists the cuts in detail and offers a similar diagnosis:

The stimulus package is too small--and it looks like almost all of the cuts are from reasonable uses of government funds that are substantially labor intensive and thus are the right kind of thing to be in the stimulus package.

Paul Krugman (below) explains more fully why this is so--and, in particular, how the Senate "centrists" managed to zero in on and remove precisely some of the expenditures that would have been most obviously useful. But at least they didn't opt for total obstructionism. And there's plenty of blame to go around. Krugman also blames Obama for having conceded too much in advance, in the vain hope of getting bipartisan cooperation.

=> But nothing in life is perfect. There's every reason to think that the economy needs a big jolt to keep it from sputtering to a halt, and needs that jolt as soon as possible. It's probably also politically important for the Obama administration to get some sort of stimulus bill passed quickly--which now looks likely.

Stan Collender, who agrees with Krugman on the economic flaws of the existing legislative sausage, offers a more optimistic take on its political significance--he figures that Obama will be able to come back for more later. (Yes, the idea that a bill adding up to more than 800 billion dollars isn't enough does sound a bit mind-boggling, but given the economic emergency we face, that seems more than plausible.) Time will tell.

Hoping for the best,
Jeff Weintraub

=========================
New York Times
February 8, 2009
The Destructive Center
By Paul Krugman

What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.

Even if the original Obama plan — around $800 billion in stimulus, with a substantial fraction of that total given over to ineffective tax cuts — had been enacted, it wouldn’t have been enough to fill the looming hole in the U.S. economy, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will amount to $2.9 trillion over the next three years.

Yet the centrists did their best to make the plan weaker and worse.

One of the best features of the original plan was aid to cash-strapped state governments, which would have provided a quick boost to the economy while preserving essential services. But the centrists insisted on a $40 billion cut in that spending.

The original plan also included badly needed spending on school construction; $16 billion of that spending was cut. It included aid to the unemployed, especially help in maintaining health care — cut. Food stamps — cut. All in all, more than $80 billion was cut from the plan, with the great bulk of those cuts falling on precisely the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump.

On the other hand, the centrists were apparently just fine with one of the worst provisions in the Senate bill, a tax credit for home buyers. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research calls this the “flip your house to your brother” provision: it will cost a lot of money while doing nothing to help the economy.

All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.

But how did this happen? I blame President Obama’s belief that he can transcend the partisan divide — a belief that warped his economic strategy.

After all, many people expected Mr. Obama to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy’s dire straits and his own electoral mandate.

Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. Not long ago administration strategists were talking about getting 80 or more votes in the Senate.

Mr. Obama’s postpartisan yearnings may also explain why he didn’t do something crucially important: speak forcefully about how government spending can help support the economy. Instead, he let conservatives define the debate, waiting until late last week before finally saying what needed to be said — that increasing spending is the whole point of the plan.

And Mr. Obama got nothing in return for his bipartisan outreach. Not one Republican voted for the House version of the stimulus plan, which was, by the way, better focused than the original administration proposal.

In the Senate, Republicans inveighed against “pork” — although the wasteful spending they claimed to have identified (much of it was fully justified) was a trivial share of the bill’s total. And they decried the bill’s cost — even as 36 out of 41 Republican senators voted to replace the Obama plan with $3 trillion, that’s right, $3 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years.

So Mr. Obama was reduced to bargaining for the votes of those centrists. And the centrists, predictably, extracted a pound of flesh — not, as far as anyone can tell, based on any coherent economic argument, but simply to demonstrate their centrist mojo. They probably would have demanded that $100 billion or so be cut from anything Mr. Obama proposed; by coming in with such a low initial bid, the president guaranteed that the final deal would be much too small.

Such are the perils of negotiating with yourself.

Now, House and Senate negotiators have to reconcile their versions of the stimulus, and it’s possible that the final bill will undo the centrists’ worst. And Mr. Obama may be able to come back for a second round. But this was his best chance to get decisive action, and it fell short.

So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren’t good.

For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. “Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,” he declared on Saturday, and “the scale and scope of this plan is right.”

No, they didn’t, and no, it isn’t.

"Economists Agree Time Is of the Essence for Stimulus" (Washington Post)

Not all of them agree, of course, but an increasing preponderance do, and the ones that don't are probably wrong. A (somewhat sprawling) roundup in the Washington Post sums up the emerging consensus on the scale and urgency of the accelerating economic emergency. The main thrust:

While economists remain divided on the role of government generally, an overwhelming number from both parties are saying that a government stimulus package -- even a flawed one -- is urgently needed to help prevent a steeper slide in the economy.

Many economists say the precise size and shape of the package developing in Congress matter less than the timing, and that any delay is damaging.

"Most of the things in the package, the big dollar amounts, are things that are pretty quick stimulus and need to be done," said Alice Rivlin, who was former president Bill Clinton's budget director and who criticized aspects of the proposed stimulus in congressional testimony two weeks ago. "Is it a perfect package? Of course not. But we're past that. Let's just do it."

Economists who initially rejected the need for fiscal stimulus have warmed to the idea, too. Several months ago, Alan Viard, a Bush administration economist now at the American Enterprise Institute, thought the right size for a government spending bill was "probably zero." He favored reliance on the Federal Reserve to slash interest rates and existing unemployment benefits to bolster the jobless.

That was probably before the Federal Reserve cut its interest rate almost to zero, without much visible effect. That particular economic lever is clearly broken right now.

Now Viard shares the view that a stimulus package is needed, although he would prefer one limited primarily to tax cuts and direct benefits for victims of the recession, such as increased unemployment benefits.

"Things have gotten so bad so quickly," Viard said. "We have now lost 3.6 million jobs, a stunning loss. But what's more horrifying is that half that loss has occurred in the last three months. This is a severe recession. There's no doubt about it." [....]

Though the article is not as clearly written as it might be, it does bring out the fact that not all economists agree on the need for urgent action:

N. Gregory Mankiw, a Harvard University economics professor who was chairman of former president George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, supports cuts in payroll taxes partially offset by gradual increases in gasoline taxes. He says more time should be taken to craft spending programs that would not be wasteful.

In general, there is a lot to be said for careful deliberation, and for passing legislation after open and serious debate. That would mark a dramatic and valuable change from the standard modus operandi of the Bush Congress of 2001-2006, which specialized in slapping together big, complicated, poorly designed, substantively irresponsible, and often disastrous measures pretty much in secret, springing them on Congress to be rammed through quickly without serious consideration (or even time to fully read them) ... and then blatantly misusing the House/Senate "reconciliation" process to rewrite the legislation in ways that got around Senate procedures.

But one can't always be leisurely when emergency measures are necessary, so the question is whether this is such an emergency. That is, is quick action required to stop the accelerating downward spiral of the economy before it's possible to take the time for planning for the medium and long term? The answer appears to be yes.

Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University and former chief economist at the World Bank, said that the stimulus package was "probably too little, especially given that it is badly designed [and] we haven't yet fixed the mortgage problem so the financial sector is likely to continue bleeding."

Stiglitz said that most households would save rather than spend the money from tax cuts and that the business tax cuts were not closely enough linked to new investments. He said that while plans for infrastructure spending were flawed, it was "unlikely to be wasted as badly as the private financial market has wasted resources in last five years." [....]

In Hawaii on Friday, San Francisco Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen added her voice to the supporters of quick action on a stimulus measure.

"In ordinary circumstances, there are good reasons why monetary, rather than fiscal, policy should be used to stabilize the economy," she said, citing lags in adopting and implementing government spending programs. "The result is that fiscal stimulus sometimes kicks in only after the need has passed. However, the current situation is extraordinary, making the case for fiscal action very strong."

Yellen said, "There is -- and there should be -- vigorous debate about the form it should take and about the likely effectiveness of particular fiscal strategies. However, it is critical that decisions on these matters be made on a timely basis so that the economy's downward spiral is not allowed to deepen."

And so on. You get the picture.

=> But even if timely and effective first aid (however imperfect) manages to stabilize the patient's condition, the real challenges are just beginning.

With the deal cut late Friday in the Senate, both chambers of Congress have settled on stimulus packages with about $820 billion of tax cuts and spending increases. [....] The hodgepodge of tax cuts and spending programs won't solve the country's basic problem of rot at the heart of the banking system and excessive borrowing by large numbers of people and corporations, economists say, but it might blunt some of the effects by putting cash in the hands of hard-pressed individuals and state budget planners. [....]

Despite Obama's plea, this week promises more haggling over the package. The Senate is expected to pass its version Tuesday, but then leaders must reconcile sharp differences with the House on a number of issues. [....] "If this is a harbinger of the future, God save us," said Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. "Here we are shoveling out the goodies and we can't agree on that. What happens when you have to shift the car in reverse, or deal with something like health reform or energy policy."

Stay tuned. Meanwhile, the rest of this article is HERE.

--Jeff Weintraub

P.S. The article also notes that "Most economists agree that the Senate alterations in the plan would undermine stimulus aims." For some explanation, see What happened to the "economic stimulus" package in the Senate.

Democracy takes root in Iraq? (BBC)

Believe it or not, I was the one who added the question mark to the BBC's headline above. The report itself, by BBC correspondent James Muir, is strikingly optimistic (especially for the BBC):

History may look back on the provincial elections held on the last day of January this year and see them as the point at which it could be said that Iraq had turned a corner and was heading towards a stable, democratic future.

It may, or it may not. My feelings are considerably more cautious and ambivalent, for a lot of reasons. But Muir is right to put his judgment in the context of recent history:

Considering the situation just two years ago, when the country seemed firmly bent on plunging ever deeper into a nightmare of sectarian carnage and fragmentation, they were an astonishing achievement bearing many messages and huge implications.

On the security level alone, the polling passed off more peacefully than even the most optimistic had dared hope. [....]

That could reflect the fact that, unlike the previous round of provincial and then parliamentary elections in 2005, this one involved full-hearted participation by the Sunni community. [....]

Furthermore:

the polling produced major changes on both the Shia and Sunni sides of the political equation - changes that the factions themselves have largely accepted, even when they are the losers.

For the Iraqi people, it has been a real eye-opener. They learned, for the first time, that they could hold those they elected to account, and change them if they failed to meet expectations. [....]

The elections showed that the past four years have resulted in a politicisation of Iraqi politics, which had become a highly sectarian affair after the 2005 elections. [....]

That is a natural development.

When the US-led coalition overthrew Saddam Hussein and destroyed his all-pervasive ruling Baath Party, there were few political parties with any roots for people to turn to, so they fell back on sect, tribe, and clan. Now, real politics is taking over, in a complex and constantly-developing process that is likely to continue fermenting and mutating indefinitely. [....]

Perhaps. Frankly, I doubt that ethnic and sectarian divisions are going to move to the margins of Iraqi politics any time soon, though it is true that these elections may produce cross-ethnic and cross-sectarian local coalitions i some areas.

Muir's account has a few errors, and some of his conclusions might be taken with a grain of salt. Well, let's not beat around the bush: The picture he paints here is definitely too rosy--not so much because of the facts he reports, which seem mostly correct, but because of problems he leaves out or skims over (though he does allude to some of these in his last paragraphs).

But overall this is a good presentation of a case for (guarded) optimism, and it's worth reading in that light. There will be plenty of time for caveats, complications, second thoughts, and disillusionments.

Iraq's achievement has been at a terrible cost - uncounted scores of thousands killed, massive destruction, several million displaced from their homes, and much more. Nor is it yet secure. [....]

But the provincial elections have produced the most hopeful signs so far that a process of national rebirth may have begun in Iraq, unique in the region.

Well, let's hope so.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
BBC News, Baghdad
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Democracy takes root in Iraq
By Jim Muir

History may look back on the provincial elections held on the last day of January this year and see them as the point at which it could be said that Iraq had turned a corner and was heading towards a stable, democratic future.

Considering the situation just two years ago, when the country seemed firmly bent on plunging ever deeper into a nightmare of sectarian carnage and fragmentation, they were an astonishing achievement bearing many messages and huge implications.

On the security level alone, the polling passed off more peacefully than even the most optimistic had dared hope.

Voting took place in 14 of the country's 18 provinces, including all those that were the scenes of the worst violence of the past nearly six years. Only the three largely peaceful Kurdish provinces and disputed Kirkuk did not take part.

Yet the polling passed off with virtually no security incidents of any significance.

There was a huge security operation by Iraqi forces, but that was hardly a deterrent in itself, since those very forces themselves have very often been the targets of insurgent attacks.

There were no such attacks, failed, foiled or successful, on the day.

That could reflect the fact that, unlike the previous round of provincial and then parliamentary elections in 2005, this one involved full-hearted participation by the Sunni community.

Its disgruntlement and alienation had earlier inspired electoral boycotts and provided the sea in which the insurgents swam.

The security success of this election operation had clear implications for the prospects for further troop reductions by US and other coalition forces - though US commanders continue to warn that the situation may still not be irreversible, and that over-rapid draw-downs could be destabilising.

'Really happy'

With some 14,400 candidates competing for just 440 seats around the country, there were fears that violence might erupt when the results were announced, given the large number of losers, all with access to guns.

But those fears have also proven unfounded, so far.

The results announced on 5 February were provisional only in the sense that they are subject to complaints and appeals. Nobody expects the overall picture to be radically changed by that process.

There were grumbles by factions which had done poorly, but no trouble, and little serious questioning of the propriety of the polling.

That is not just a security achievement, but a huge step forward in Iraq's political development and the emergence of a real democratic culture.

For the polling produced major changes on both the Shia and Sunni sides of the political equation - changes that the factions themselves have largely accepted, even when they are the losers.

For the Iraqi people, it has been a real eye-opener.

They learned, for the first time, that they could hold those they elected to account, and change them if they failed to meet expectations.

"People are really happy," said one Baghdad resident after the election was over.

"They think this is how elections should be. The message is that those who are elected and don't deliver, will be removed, peacefully."

Fierce competition

The transformations that these elections brought will be reflected in the general elections at the end of the year, since all the major national forces were participating in the provincial polls.

On the Sunni side, they included, above all, full Sunni reintegration into the political process, entailing big changes in the relevant provinces.

In Iraq's third city, Mosul, that meant that Kurdish factions which won control of the provincial council in 2005 by default because of the Sunni boycott, had to give way to the Sunni majority - a process that seems to be passing off gracefully.

There was fierce competition between rival Sunni factions in the former insurgent hotbed to the west of Baghdad, al-Anbar province.

Tribal leaders, instrumental in throwing out al-Qaeda and allied insurgent groups, had threatened mayhem if they did not win at the polls.

But in the end, they accepted coming in narrowly behind another Sunni faction with which they have agreed to form a coalition.

On the Shia side - and Shias make up 60% of the population - there were also huge changes, with big national implications.

First and foremost, the faction backed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the State of Law Coalition, came out far ahead of the competition in both Baghdad and the country's second city Basra.

It also came first, by smaller margins, in all but one of the mainly Shia provinces south of Baghdad.

But Mr Maliki's faction, like all other winners, will have to form coalitions with other groups in order to run provincial councils, since none of them won more than 50% of the votes.

National themes

His coalition's victory, and its campaign, clearly reflected the themes that have struck a chord among the Iraqi public.

Above all, he was being rewarded for his "Imposing the Law" campaign last year, in which the Iraqi army, with American help, moved not only against Sunni insurgents, but more significantly, against Shia militias in Baghdad, Basra and elsewhere.

[JW: When the Maliki government and the Americans launched this campaign against the Sadrist militias and criminal gangs in Basra back in March 2008, the bulk of the conventional wisdom rapidly concluded that the whole thing had been a "predictable fiasco" which had left Maliki humiliated, achieved nothing, increased support for the Sadrists, and so on. There were actually some plausible grounds for believing this at the very beginning, since Maliki clearly jumped the gun in Basra, without sufficient coordination with the US military, and they had to come in and save his bacon. But in retrospect these judgments turn out to have been entirely off-base, and even the people who offered them with such confidence a year ago have quietly forgotten what they said then.]

Though its roots are in Mr Maliki's Daawa party - a Shia religious faction - the State of Law Coalition campaigned on nationalist themes - the rule of law, and the primacy of the state.

Factions which continued to project a religious image, such as Abdul Aziz Hakim's Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC), fared poorly.

SIIC had been regarded as the biggest Shia faction. It is also deemed close to Iran - where it was born and bred in exile - and advocates Shia autonomy in the south along the lines of that enjoyed by the Kurds in the north, something that does not seem to enjoy much electoral support.

The faction backed by the militant Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr also failed to excel, but, like the SIIC, did well enough to stay in the political game and join the process of coalition-forming that is now under way in the regions.

On both the Shia and Sunni sides, there was a clear shift away from the Islamic religious parties which dominated Iraqi politics after the 2005 elections.

[JW: Actually, Maliki's party, Dawa, is also one of those religious parties. It's one of the two major Shiite religious parties--as Muir himself pointed out a few paragraphs ago. The fact that Maliki's campaign propaganda may stressed law-&-order themes doesn't change that fundamental reality. A surprising amount of post-election commentary has implied otherwise, but I find that peculiar.]

The emphasis has been on capability, performance, honesty, and national commitment rather than religious credentials.

In the Shia south, election posters showed candidates wearing suits and ties, not robes and turbans.

"Even the religious parties have had to become secular," was how one Baghdad voter put it.

As though to underline that view, one of the first post-election alliances under serious discussion is between the SIIC and the most clearly-defined secular coalition, the Iraqi List of former Prime Minister Ayyad Allawi, hitherto the least likely of bedfellows.

Terrible cost

The elections showed that the past four years have resulted in a politicisation of Iraqi politics, which had become a highly sectarian affair after the 2005 elections.

Now, the big religious-based coalitions which have dominated both Shia and Sunni politics and the current parliament have fragmented over national political issues, and new coalitions are being formed or explored which cross sectarian lines.

That is a natural development.

When the US-led coalition overthrew Saddam Hussein and destroyed his all-pervasive ruling Baath Party, there were few political parties with any roots for people to turn to, so they fell back on sect, tribe, and clan.

Now, real politics is taking over, in a complex and constantly-developing process that is likely to continue fermenting and mutating indefinitely.

And it has shown itself to be a strongly Iraqi process.

Despite the presence of more than 140,000 US troops and undoubted Iranian influence, none of the factions emerging from the polls could fairly be described as mere stooges of either Washington or Tehran.

One Western diplomat said the elections had shown Iraq emerging as the only truly functioning democracy in the Arab world.

Lebanon also has free elections, but its form of democracy is relative, with sectarianism built into the system and deals between political bosses often leaving little real competition or room for change.

Iraq's achievement has been at a terrible cost - uncounted scores of thousands killed, massive destruction, several million displaced from their homes, and much more.

Nor is it yet secure. Shortly before the election results were announced, a bomb killed at least 15 people in a restaurant at Khanaqin, north-east of Baghdad - a reminder that insurgents and others with a vested interest in violence are still out there, waiting to pounce if the current process falters.

There are many other challenges.

Nation-building legislation, especially the oil and gas law, is still held up by political bickering.

With oil prices plummeting, a budget crisis looms, which could affect the government's ability to maintain subsidies and high levels of public employment, and to absorb thousands of Sunni auxiliaries who turned against al-Qaeda (the "Sons of Iraq") into the security forces or find them jobs.

Nor is it certain that the Iraqi police and army are ready to stand alone and take the strain when the US forces withdraw.

But the provincial elections have produced the most hopeful signs so far that a process of national rebirth may have begun in Iraq, unique in the region.

Economy in "a downward spiral" ... "with no end in sight" (AP)

As the political maneuvering goes in Washington DC (which is a polite way to describe the Congressional Republicans' decision to pursue a strategy of straightforward obstructionism and cynical political demagogy, while the Democrats seem a bit flummoxed about how to respond to either the economic or the political situation), here is a reminder of what's happening out in the rest of the country.

The Labor Department just released the latest unemployment figures, and the trend the reveal is a bit scary. As the Associated Press report (below) sums it up:

Recession-battered employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974, and catapulted the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. The grim figures were further proof that the nation's job climate is deteriorating at an alarming clip with no end in sight. [....]

The latest net total of job losses was far worse than the 524,000 that economists expected. Job reductions in November and December also were deeper than previously reported.

With cost-cutting employers in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate bolted to 7.6 percent in January, the highest since September 1992. The increase in the jobless rate from 7.2 percent in December also was worse than the 7.5 percent rate economists expected.

All told, the economy has lost a staggering 3.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. About half of this decline occurred in the past three months.

In other words, the decline has been accelerating. We can expect things to keep getting a lot worse before they get better.

With no place to go, the number of unemployed workers climbed to 11.6 million.

Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed has increased by 4.1 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.7 percentage points. [JW: And we should remember that the official unemployment rate probably underestimates actual unemployment.]

Job hunters also are facing longer searches for work. [....]

An avalanche of layoffs is slamming the nation from a wide swath of employers. [....]

Americans cut back sharply on spending at the end of last year, thrusting the economy into its worst backslide in a quarter-century. The tailspin could well accelerate in the current January-March quarter to a rate of 5 percent or more as the recession drags on into a second year, and consumers and businesses burrow deeper.

Vanishing jobs and evaporating wealth from tanking home values, 401(k)s and other investments have forced consumers to retrench, which has required companies to pull back. It's a vicious cycle where the economy's problems feed on each other, perpetuating a downward spiral.

Many economists predict the current quarter — in terms of lost economic growth — will be the worst of the recession.

Well, that's the optimistic prognosis. We'll see.

With fallout from the housing, credit and financial crises — the worst since the 1930s — ripping through the economy, analysts predict up to 3 million jobs will vanish this year — even if Congress quickly approves the stimulus measure, which has ballooned to more than $900 billion in the Senate.

Alarmist? Probably not.

But I must confess I don't feel confident that anyone is in a position to predict for sure how big an economic collapse we (and the rest of the world) are headed for.

I guess we would all like to believe that our understanding of how to deal with economic crises, and the effectiveness of the relevant national and international institutions, have improved enough since the 1930s that there's no realistic prospect of another cataclysm on the scale of the Great Depression. Let's hope that is, in fact, the case. On the other hand (and I may be wrong) I suspect that no one can assert that with complete certainty. These are uncharted waters.

So we'd better hope for the best ... and, in the meantime, let's hope that the US government manages to take serious and effective action to begin to deal with the crisis.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Associated Press
February 06, 2009
Employers slash 598,000 jobs in Jan., most since `74; unemployment rate bolts to 7.6 percent
By Jeannine Aversa

Recession-battered employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974, and catapulted the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. The grim figures were further proof that the nation's job climate is deteriorating at an alarming clip with no end in sight.

The Labor Department's report, released Friday, showed the terrible toll the drawn-out recession is having on workers and companies. It also puts even more pressure on President Barack Obama to revive the economy.

The latest net total of job losses was far worse than the 524,000 that economists expected. Job reductions in November and December also were deeper than previously reported.

With cost-cutting employers in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate bolted to 7.6 percent in January, the highest since September 1992. The increase in the jobless rate from 7.2 percent in December also was worse than the 7.5 percent rate economists expected.

All told, the economy has lost a staggering 3.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. About half of this decline occurred in the past three months.

Factories slashed 207,000 jobs in January, the largest one-month drop since October 1982, partly reflecting heavy losses at plants making autos and related parts. Construction companies got rid of 111,000 jobs. Professional and business services chopped 121,000 positions. Retailers eliminated 45,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality axed 28,000 slots.

Those reductions swamped employment gains in education and health services, as well as in the government.

Just in the 12 months ending January, an astonishing 3.5 million jobs have vanished, the most on record going back to 1939, although the total number of jobs has grown significantly since then.

Employers are slashing payrolls and turning to other ways to cut costs — including trimming workers' hours, freezing wages or cutting pay — to cope with shrinking appetites from customers in the U.S. and overseas, who are struggling with their own economic troubles.

The average work week in January stayed at 33.3 hours, matching the record low set in December.

With no place to go, the number of unemployed workers climbed to 11.6 million.

Over the past 12 months, the number of unemployed has increased by 4.1 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.7 percentage points.

Job hunters also are facing longer searches for work.

The average time it took for an unemployed person to find any job — full or part time — rose to 19.8 weeks in January, compared with 17.5 weeks a year ago, underscoring the increasing difficulty the out-of-work are having in finding a new job.

Workers with jobs saw modest wage gains.

Average hourly earnings rose to $18.46 in January, up 0.3 percent from the previous month. Over the year, wages have risen 3.9 percent.

An avalanche of layoffs is slamming the nation from a wide swath of employers.

Caterpillar Inc., Pfizer Inc., Microsoft Corp., Estee Lauder Cos., Time Warner Cable Inc., and Sprint Nextel Corp. are among the companies slicing payrolls. Manufacturers — especially car makers — construction companies and retailers have been particularly hard hit by the recession. Talbots Inc., Liz Claiborne Inc., Macy's Inc. and Home Depot Inc. are all cutting jobs. So are Detroit's General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co.

Americans cut back sharply on spending at the end of last year, thrusting the economy into its worst backslide in a quarter-century. The tailspin could well accelerate in the current January-March quarter to a rate of 5 percent or more as the recession drags on into a second year, and consumers and businesses burrow deeper.

Vanishing jobs and evaporating wealth from tanking home values, 401(k)s and other investments have forced consumers to retrench, which has required companies to pull back. It's a vicious cycle where the economy's problems feed on each other, perpetuating a downward spiral.

Many economists predict the current quarter — in terms of lost economic growth — will be the worst of the recession.

With fallout from the housing, credit and financial crises — the worst since the 1930s — ripping through the economy, analysts predict up to 3 million jobs will vanish this year — even if Congress quickly approves the stimulus measure, which has ballooned to more than $900 billion in the Senate.

Obama has been making repeated pleas to Congress to swiftly enact a package of increased government spending, including big public works projects and tax cuts, to revive the economy and create jobs. Obama says his plan will save or create more than 3 million jobs in the next two years.

The economy's problems have proven stubborn. Despite record low interest rates ordered by the Federal Reserve and a raft of radical programs, including a $700 billion financial bailout, consumers and businesses face high hurdles to borrow money. Foreclosures are skyrocketing, home prices are sinking and Wall Street remains on edge.

More economic nonsense from the Republicans

This is getting exasperating. There is room for serious and honest disagreements about the best policies to address the current US economic crisis. And whether or not one agrees with them, there have been serious and plausible criticisms, from various ideological directions, of the so-called "economic stimulus package" making its way through Congress (including very plausible criticisms that it's too timid given the scale of the crisis, and that it has already been watered down excessively in an apparently vain attempt to obtain bipartisan support).

However, none of that affects some basic facts about political conflict being waged over this legislation. The Congressional Republicans have clearly decided to embark on a strategy of straightforward obstructionism (most monolithically in the House, but to almost monolithically in the Senate as well). And the actual arguments that Republicans have been making to support their position haven't been serious or honest at all, but instead have overwhelmingly combined shameless demagoguery and blatant economic illiteracy.

To a certain extent, they seem to have been getting away with this in the public-relations war over the stimulus package--which ought to provoke depressing reflections about the superficiality and gullibility of American political journalists (so what else is new?) and about the level of public discourse in this country more generally. But getting away with dishonesty and outright nonsense doesn't make it any less dishonest and nonsensical.

The classic expression of this know-nothing party line was the statement by recently elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele that "Not in the history of mankind has the government ever created a job." I have heard Republicans and other right-wingers say similar things in the past. But this claim is not just misleading, or questionable, or overstated, or obviously wrong. It's simply idiotic.

OK, let's leave aside government jobs, which might strike the average person as a major exception. Maybe, if we want to be excessively generous, what Steele meant to say was that government action can never help to create non-government ("private sector") jobs in the market economy. But that claim is ridiculous, too. As Josh Marshall (among others) pointed out:

This is such transparent nonsense it's hard to know where to start; but I guess it builds on the DeMint nonsense. Has Steele ever heard of government road building? Defense spending? NASA? We don't even need to get into the many ways that government spending on many things has spin-off effects in terms of heightened economic productivity either because of technological innovation or transportation efficiencies, or whatever. How we doing on the spending on research and initial deployment that created the Internet?

Dan Gross tried to spell out the obvious in a bit more detail:

Contrary to Steele's assertion, in the history of mankind, the government has in fact created many, many jobs (including the one he held for a few years: lieutenant governor of Maryland). Today, government accounts for 22.5 million of the nation's 135.5 million payroll jobs, or 16.6 percent. Those numbers include people who work for the federal, state, and local governments—doctors and nurses in public hospitals and teachers at elementary schools and public universities. Government also has created—and continues to create—all sorts of private-sector jobs, for defense contractors, the aerospace industry, medical-device makers, real estate companies, and construction firms. [Etc.]

No, not all government spending or other government actions promote economic growth or are otherwise beneficial. Some of them may be unwise, wasteful, or economically unhelpful. But in the real world, public investments--in transportation and communications infrastructure, in education, and in funding research, to mention only some of the most obvious and undeniable examples--often play a crucial role in enabling and promoting economic growth, helping to create lots of jobs in the process. And that's just for starters.

We happen to be in the midst of a serious economic crisis. And when the central message of one of our two major political parties consists of blatant nonsense and disinformation--whether this is based primarily on sincere economic illiteracy, political cynicism, or some combination of the two--that is not helpful.

Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub

Ian Lustick & Gershon Shafir - "Nudging towards Peace"

About a month ago, during the fighting in Gaza, I guest-posted a piece about it ("War Without End?") by my friend Gershon Shafir, an Israeli historical and political sociologist who has been both a distinguished and influential scholar and a long-time active peacenik (of what is sometimes called the "tough dove" variety).

Below is a new guest-posted piece, co-authored by Shafir and by another important scholar/pundit on these matters, the University of Pennsylvania political scientist Ian Lustick.

=> Without commenting on their argument in detail, let me just say that I agree with its overall thrust and with what I take to be its key points--in particular:

» that the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" seems to stuck at a dead end, but should not be written off as hopeless;
» that reviving it will require, among other things, linking it constructively to the larger framework of an overall Arab-Israeli peace process (in fact, I would say that talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in isolation from the larger Arab-Israeli conflict is almost always misleading, and often pointless);
» that a good way to jump-start such a process would be to build on the possibilities offered by the 2002 Saudi-sponsored Arab League Peace Initiative (which definitely has its limitations, and which some Arab governments voted for only because they felt sure it was an empty gesture that would lead nowhere--but which represented the first serious comprehensive peace proposal from the Arab side since 1948, and which ought to be actively embraced by Israel as an opportunity to pursue);
» that although doing this seriously would require some significant initiatives and policy shifts from the Israeli side, the historical record suggests that a majority of the Israeli electorate could be convinced to support them under the right conditions;
» and that it would be useful for the US government to try to nudge ("not directly pressure") Israeli politics in this direction, in part by sending a message to Israeli public opinion before the upcoming Israeli elections.

All of this still leaves the difficult and delicate question of precisely how a "nudge" of this sort can be applied with the necessary "tact, subtlety, and effectiveness," so that it's genuinely helpful and constructive rather than overdone and counter-productive. The last paragraph of Lustick & Shafir's piece leaves me unconvinced that they've found an entirely satisfactory answer to that question. But I offer that as a first impression--and, anyway, their piece does a service by putting some of the right questions on the table. I advise reading the piece below and coming to your own conclusions.

Shalom,
Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Nudging towards Peace
Guest-posted by Ian S. Lustick & Gershon Shafir
[Also posted HERE]

Ian S. Lustick is the Bess W. Heyman Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania and Gershon Shafir is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego.

In the early 1990s, the United States carefully nudged Israel toward appreciating the long-term costs of continued occupation and settlement of the West Bank. It did so before the Israeli elections. New elections will take place in about a week in Israel. What would be an equally effective American approach to prod forward the moribund peace process?

At the beginning of 1992, Yitzhak Shamir, the Israeli Prime Minister from the Likud, made it plain that he would divert the growing wave of Soviet Jewish immigration to the West Bank. He intended to finance the project with a $10 billion American loan guarantee. But President George H. W. Bush threatened to veto any loan guarantees that did not include a freeze on all new settlements. The hard-line Shamir demurred and expressed his willingness to forgo the guarantees, but the American move had its effect nonetheless. One result of American policy was the shift of a few tens of thousands of votes in the 1992 Israeli elections in favor of "changing Israel’s priorities," thereby contributing decisively to the victory of Yitzhak Rabin. Under his premiership, Israel engaged in secret talks with the PLO, and on September 13, 1993 signed the Oslo accord with the PLO in President Clinton’s eighth month in office.

The Oslo process ultimately failed, for multiple reasons of omission and commission on all sides. But that is not surprising. It was the first time core issues of the conflict were put on the table. The real lesson of Oslo, and of the tantalizingly successful negotiations at Taba that followed on the failure at Camp David, is that another try is not just the only possible path to peace, but actually might have a chance to succeed. It is therefore worth considering closely just how little the U.S. had to do to trigger robust Israeli moves toward peace and yet how crucial its actions were.

Of great significance is that the Bush administration did not directly pressure Israel. Oslo was not a process imposed on Israelis. Of equal significance is the proof offered by this episode of just how closely Israelis attend to U.S. words and deeds.

The dramatic reversal of Israeli government policy on the key issue of settlements and negotiations with the PLO also shows that Israel’s commitment to settlements and continued rule of the West Bank is relatively weak. Deep down Israelis know their governments have been over-reaching in efforts to absorb the Palestinian territories. But it is only when the smothering blanket of assured U.S. support on every issue is removed, that Israeli democracy has a chance to display its fundamental wisdom.

To be sure, after the signing of the Oslo accord, U.S. vigilance faltered and Rabin allowed the resumption of settlements in the West Bank, a fatal thorn in the side of the Oslo accord. As the recent war in Gaza demonstrated, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is entering a new and dangerous phase, in which neither side imagines violence as an unpleasant but necessary route to peace, but only as a desperate and furious reaction to the perceived evil of the other. If this pattern is to end, and only an end to this pattern can save both the Jewish state and the Palestinians, the Obama administration will have to act with at least the tact, subtlety, and effectiveness of the Bush-Baker team.

One advantage the Obama-Clinton-Mitchell team have, that Bush and Baker did not, is the Arab League Peace Plan. In return for full Israeli withdrawal and a "just solution" to the Palestinian refugee problem it offers to "establish normal relations with Israel in the context of [a] comprehensive peace" and "consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended." In the past year Arab leaders have urged a revival of the plan and Israeli cabinet members have spoken of it approvingly. Both Hamas and Fatah have considered adopting a version of it.

The terms of the accord will need to be negotiated, but the involvement of the moderate Arab states in resolving the conflict would add the regional dimension that has been missing since the Madrid talks in the early 1990's. If an accord is reached on this basis, it would be difficult for Hamas to resume rocketing Israel and it would find itself, within the context of a Palestinian plebiscite, under great pressure to find a way to sign up to the agreement and adopt the profile of a "loyal Islamic opposition" in a real and thriving Palestinian state.

To enable this vision to be achieved, unprecedented steps by Israel on settlements, prisoners, and uses of violence will be needed--not to build confidence, as the optimistic formulation once put it, but simply to drain cynicism. Past experience shows that Israeli settlements can either expand or shrink; they never remain frozen. Consequently, one important measure would have to be the removal of all "illegal" settlements, a promise repeatedly given and invariably violated by Israeli governments. A key Israeli step will be the freeing of Marwan Barghuti. Barghuti, a leader of Fatah's young guard, justifies resistance to occupation but condemns attacks on Israeli civilians, thus clearly distinguishing himself from Hamas. He is the fresh and popular face Fatah is lacking. His release would also demonstrate an Israeli future willingness to reconsider the fate of Palestinian prisoners, a particularly painful dimension of the conflict. Once the reality of this opportunity is established, Palestinian public pressure on Hamas and other extremists to end rocket attacks on Israel will become as strong as they can ever be. Then, finally, and perhaps for the last possible time, a serious and comprehensive effort to scale the mountain of peace can be well and truly launched.

To open this opportunity, President Obama needs to nudge the Israeli electorate. He should make U.S. support in the Security Council contingent on Israeli government negotiations based on the Arab League Plan for a real two state solution. Alternatively, the next Israeli government will face an international community, joined by the United States, determined to break the siege of Gaza and build a framework of negotiations, including Hamas if it agrees to the terms of the same Arab League Plan.

Two modes of self-deception (captured by David Hume & Upton Sinclair)

Earlier today Mark Kleiman and Jonathan Zasloff quoted two penetrating maxims about common mechanisms of psychological and ideological self-deception, one coming from David Hume and the other from Upton Sinclair.

Hume (quoted by Mark Kleiman):

It is natural for men to persuade themselves that their interest coincides with their inclination.

Upton Sinclair (quoted by Jonathan Zasloff):

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

Both of these maxims are correct, insightful, and illuminating. But they are saying somewhat different things.

Upton Sinclair's maxim is one variant on the relatively familiar observation that our interests, real and perceived, often shape and distort our grasp of reality--in particular, they limit or interfere with our willingness to acknowledge facts that are inconvenient for our material interests and/or those of our paymasters. (Sometimes we do understand them and pretend we don't. But often self-conscious dishonesty, hypocrisy, or deception slides into self-deception.) I would guess that Upton Sinclair understood his maxim as a restatement of at least one aspect, or application, of a broadly Marxian notion of ideological mystification.

Hume is making a different and slightly more subtle point. Very often, when we want to do something because of impulse, inclination, habit, sentiment, wish-fulfillment or some other fairly non-rational or emotional reason, we convince ourselves that what we feel like doing is also in our interests--even when it's not. In this case, it's precisely the interests that are illusory, or at least distorted.

Hume's insight here is brilliant, and I would go so far as to say that his maxim is even more illuminating than Upton Sinclair's, since the mode of self-deception he's highlighting is often harder to recognize than the cui bono variety. It's important to recognize how often people who claim to be acting on the basis of hard-headed, cynical, calculating "realism" are really just being muddleheaded, self-indulgent, moralistic, or infantile--and are fooling themselves into believing otherwise. I suppose this mechanism is one example of what Freud called "rationalization." And one form it takes is what C. Wright Mills captured very nicely with his phrase "crackpot realism."

=> Both David Hume and Upton Sinclair are right, of course. These mechanisms may work in almost opposite directions, but the same people often exhibit both of them at different times--or even simultaneously.

Yours for reality-based discourse (which isn't easy),
Jeff Weintraub

P.S. One of Mark's readers reminded him of a related thought by Benjamin Franklin: "So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."

P.P.S. And here is a very acute response and elaboration from Gerry Mackie, which he has kindly permitted me to quote:

At my age I can testify that there are at least 13 modes of self- deception. [JW: Only 13?]

As for the pursuit of interest, on the political blogs, left and right, the pseudosophisticates always say follow the money, or follow the oil. That is only penetrating the first veil. The second veil is to understand the place of passion, the third honor and shame, the fourth the intrinsically moral, the fifth collective fanaticism, and on.

So much nasty stuff in the world is not due to interest.

Correct--and important to recognize.

Celebrating the Holocaust on Egyptian TV

As Barack Obama advised former Senator George Mitchell, whom he just appointed as a special envoy to help mediate the Arab-Israeli dispute, it's always useful to "start by listening" to what people on different sides of a conflict are saying.

Well, here's one of those voices--not the only one by any means, but one that deserves honest attention.

=> The very useful and informative Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) posted and translated a January 26 TV broadcast by the Egyptian cleric Amin Al-Ansari, who has a show on Al-Rahma TV.

This broadcast was apparently timed to air close to Holocaust Memorial Day. Sheikh Al-Ansari ran extensive Holocaust film footage and used it as a background for commentary and analysis. The Jews deserved it, of course, because they had "oppressed" the Germans and numerous other peoples, started both World Wars, caused the bombing and destruction of German cities in World War II, etc.

The world was dying – country and civilization was being annihilated. This is what the Jews did. The Germans were, of course, strong. When they realized that the Jews were behind all this, they took revenge on them. They were not weak, as the Muslims are today.

In one especially telling passage, Al-Ansari repeatedly emphasizes the "humiliation" of the Jewish victims--in a manner that has to be called somewhat pornographic but that is also, I would say, psychologically illuminating.

These are Jews who are being prepared to be burnt. Look, these are Jews dying of hunger or by gas. Look how they round them up and put them on trucks. Note the humiliation on his face, Allah be praised. [....]

Look what starvation [the Germans] inflicted upon them. Look what humiliation. These are people being buried alive. Does this look like a human being? [....] This child awaits his turn. Watch their humiliation. These are corpses, Allah be praised. The [Jews] are oppressors. They are being deported. [....] A German soldier will come now, and you will see a Jewish woman kissing his hand. Notice what humiliation, fear, and terror have struck her. See how much she is kissing his hand. Watch her humiliation.

This is what we hope will happen, but, Allah willing, at the hand of the Muslims.

Access to the MEMRI website is free, but it requires registration. People who don't like to register on websites can find this item posted by David T at Harry's Place (below).

=> Some highlights from the transcript:

Amin Al-Ansari: Let us examine the civil strife the Jews have caused throughout the world. Of course, we know what problems they caused the Muslims. They have always been like that, but in modern times, they only turned to the Muslims [relatively] late. They went around the world – to the East and West – because they love money, and the West was full of money – in England, France, Germany, and of course, in America, which was still a new country. This was 200 years ago. They focused on these places, and this is why they have spread in America and control the money. They immigrate to any place where there was money.

The Jews spread corruption in the land during World Wars I and II. [....] The corruption spread by the Jews was very great. Very great. It got to the point that the rulers themselves had no solution but to annihilate them. [....]

In a nutshell, the holocausts of the Jews in Germany were because of their own deeds. They were killing Germans, kindling civil strife, inciting the people against their rulers, and corrupting the peoples. [....] Let’s watch the holocaust that the Jews underwent, which were Allah’s way of wreaking vengeance upon them. Let’s watch what the German people, or the German army, did to them. This is, of course, a part of the corruption of Germany by the Jews.

Amin Al-Ansari gives running commentary against the backdrop of Holocaust footage

The Germans were, of course, strong. When they realized that the Jews were behind all this, they took revenge on them. They were not weak, as the Muslims are today. They had something different in mind. Let’s watch what Germany did to Israel – or rather, to the Jews – so we can understand that there is no remedy for these people, other than imposing fear and terror on them.

There is one language that the Jews understand – the language of force. If you are stronger than them, they are afraid of you. [....] When the Germans revealed the treachery and the war of the Jews against them, and the fact that they were spreading corruption in their country – let us watch how oppressors are killed by the people they oppressed.

[....] These are corpses of dead humans and the shattered bones of Jews. Here we have a crematorium, in which the Jews were burnt. These are Jews who are being prepared to be burnt. Look, these are Jews dying of hunger or by gas. Look how they round them up and put them on trucks. Note the humiliation on his face, Allah be praised. “Abasement and humiliation were brought down upon them, and they became deserving of Allah’s wrath.”

Look what starvation [the Germans] inflicted upon them. Look what humiliation. These are people being buried alive. Does this look like a human being? He is placed in a ditch to be buried alive. This is a pile of bodies. [....] This child awaits his turn. Watch their humiliation. These are corpses, Allah be praised. The [Jews] are oppressors. They are being deported. [....] These are bodies, these are dead people, these are skulls. These are the bodies of the Jews being loaded like animals. [....] A German soldier will come now, and you will see a Jewish woman kissing his hand. Notice what humiliation, fear, and terror have struck her. See how much she is kissing his hand. Watch her humiliation.

This is what we hope will happen, but, Allah willing, at the hand of the Muslims.

And so on. It's worth reading the whole thing.

In statements of this sort that get translated into English, it is more common for such people to deny that the Holocaust ever happened, whereas Sheikh Al-Ansari acknowledges that it did happen--and dwells on it with relish--but explains that the Jews deserved it. However, while these two kinds of claims might appear on the surface to be logically incompatible, in practice one often slides into the other.

=> To pre-empt the usual evasions, red herrings, and attempts to change the subject, let me say that I'm sure not everyone in Egypt (and other Arab and Muslim countries) would agree with Sheik Al-Ansari on these matters. But it would also be misleading and dishonest to pretend that he is a completely isolated and idiosyncratic nut-job, and that the kind of anti-semitic discourse he is peddling here has no wider resonance or plausibility for his audience. (And I hope no one will try to claim that these ravings are just legitimate criticism of "Zionism.")

As Mick Hartley correctly points out:

Many people tend to downplay the anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, or think it's understandable, or that they don't really mean it. Look at this. This is a television broadcast. It went on air just a couple of days ago. And, though it's more usual to see Holocaust denial, it's by no means one of a kind.

--Jeff Weintraub

=========================
David T at Harry's Place
David T, January 28th 2009, 9:14 am
Holocaust Memorial Day on Al-Rahma TV



From MEMRI: Following are excerpts from a show featuring Egyptian cleric Amin Al-Ansari, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on January 26, 2009.
Warning: The show contains extremely disturbing Holocaust footage.

Amin Al-Ansari: Let us examine the civil strife the Jews have caused throughout the world. Of course, we know what problems they caused the Muslims. They have always been like that, but in modern times, they only turned to the Muslims [relatively] late. They went around the world – to the East and West – because they love money, and the West was full of money – in England, France, Germany, and of course, in America, which was still a new country. This was 200 years ago. They focused on these places, and this is why they have spread in America and control the money. They immigrate to any place where there was money.

The Jews spread corruption in the land during World Wars I and II. Let me tell you a very short story, so that you understand their way of thinking. The Jews do not know how to climb from the bottom up. They do not want to meet poor people, and then climb up, in order to reach the rulers of any country. Instead, they go straight to the rulers.

In the 19th century, there was a man called Herzl, who was a scientist and had nothing to do with politics. What did this Theodor Herzl do? He used explosives to invent a weapon. He could have invented anything else – something that would benefit the world – but no, he had to invent explosives, bombs, and missiles. Annihilation underlies their ideology. This Theodor Herzl looked for the most powerful country in the world back then. It was England, which was occupying India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and so on. So he became close to the British prime minister, and said to him: I’ve invented something that could benefit you in your colonialist wars.

Balfour promised them a state for the Jews in the land of Palestine. So the Jews began channeling all their loyalty and support to England. They began traveling all over the world in support of England. What did they do? They waged World War I, and tried to crush all the forces that were fighting England, such as Germany and other countries. They spread corruption in the land – in Czechoslovakia, in Germany, and in the republics of the USSR.

The corruption spread by the Jews was very great. Very great. It got to the point that the rulers themselves had no solution but to annihilate them. This was said even by the rulers of America themselves. You see that America supports Israel, but this is partly because it hates and fears Israel, since the [Jews] are corruptors. Most of the U.S. rulers said to the American people: We’d better give them a place of their own, and keep them and their evil at bay from our European countries. They wanted to places them in a country of their own, far from anything to do with the European peoples.

In a nutshell, the holocausts of the Jews in Germany were because of their own deeds. They were killing Germans, kindling civil strife, inciting the people against their rulers, and corrupting the peoples. “Every time they kindle the fire of war, Allah extinguishes it.” Let me show you what corruption they caused, and what damage they inflicted upon all the countries of the world – upon peoples and governments alike. Let’s watch the holocaust that the Jews underwent, which were Allah’s way of wreaking vengeance upon them. Let’s watch what the German people, or the German army, did to them. This is, of course, a part of the corruption of Germany by the Jews.

Amin Al-Ansari gives running commentary against the backdrop of Holocaust footage

This is the Germany army. It is clear. These are children in the German army. Consecutive wars, which lasted many years, annihilated the people, so the Germans began using children as soldiers.

Look, this is Berlin. The German cities were bombed from all directions, because of the Jews, who were destroying countries… Observe the great similarity between Gaza and the German streets back then, even though Germany is a very large country.

These people like to spread corruption, and when they can’t, they look for those who can, and encourage them to do it. Back in those days, it was England that they encouraged to spread corruption. This is Germany, and this is the destruction it suffered in 1945.

Observe these cities, and think about what exactly is happening. These are the armies that Israel encouraged to corrupt and destroy the German army and country. See the rubble and the dead people on the ground. The world was dying – country and civilization was being annihilated. This is what the Jews did. The Germans were, of course, strong. When they realized that the Jews were behind all this, they took revenge on them. They were not weak, as the Muslims are today. They had something different in mind. Let’s watch what Germany did to Israel – or rather, to the Jews – so we can understand that there is no remedy for these people, other than imposing fear and terror on them.

There is one language that the Jews understand – the language of force. If you are stronger than them, they are afraid of you. That is why Allah said: “They fear you in their hearts more than Allah.” Allah said: “Prepare for them whatever force and steeds of war you can, to strike terror in the hearts of Allah’s enemies and your enemies.” The Jew is afraid of you more than he is afraid of God. When the Germans revealed the treachery and the war of the Jews against them, and the fact that they were spreading corruption in their country – let us watch how oppressors are killed by the people they oppressed.

What we have here are German graves, but let’s watch what the Germans do to the Jews. These are corpses of dead humans and the shattered bones of Jews. Here we have a crematorium, in which the Jews were burnt. These are Jews who are being prepared to be burnt. Look, these are Jews dying of hunger or by gas. Look how they round them up and put them on trucks. Note the humiliation on his face, Allah be praised. “Abasement and humiliation were brought down upon them, and they became deserving of Allah’s wrath.”

Look what starvation [the Germans] inflicted upon them. Look what humiliation. These are people being buried alive. Does this look like a human being? He is placed in a ditch to be buried alive. This is a pile of bodies. Ibn Mas’oud was right… Look, this is a barbed wire, used to crush their bodies. He and five others will be hanged with a single chain. Concentrate on this, my brothers. Watch this. Look, they are tying five heads together. These are bodies. Here they are drilling a hole in his back with a nail. This child awaits his turn. Watch their humiliation. These are corpses, Allah be praised. The [Jews] are oppressors. They are being deported. Ibn Mas’oud was right when he said: “All the oppressors are killed by those they oppress.” These are bodies, these are dead people, these are skulls. These are the bodies of the Jews being loaded like animals. Watch this tractor clearing away the corpses of the Jews, and these are the refugees awaiting their turn to be killed. A German soldier will come now, and you will see a Jewish woman kissing his hand. Notice what humiliation, fear, and terror have struck her. See how much she is kissing his hand. Watch her humiliation.

This is what we hope will happen, but, Allah willing, at the hand of the Muslims.

These are the bodies of the Jews. These are oppressors. Not so long before, they were fighting these soldiers, who are now standing and looking at their corpses.

Watch, my brothers. This is the German army. These are the tractors clearing away the bodies of the Jews, in order to put them in collective pits. These are the images that the Jews are now exploiting in order to make people feel sorry for them.

These holocausts and all that are a thing of the past. But they are renewing it again and again, and have even turned it into a holiday, which will be marked in a few days. They call it the Holocaust Holiday, in which they rekindle what happened to them, for the whole world to see, so that people will feel sorry for them.

They got the whole world on its feet over these holocausts, so that they can continue to extort people politically and financially forever. They like money.

There’s a story I heard about the Jews. One Jew took his son… This father kept looking for new supermarkets that were being opened, because they have freebies – gifts and stuff. Whenever a new supermarket opened, he would take his son to get the freebies. He said to his son: Whatever you find for free – take it. Never mind what it is – take it and put it in your pocket.

They got to a grocery store. The man welcomed them and showed them the merchandise. He showed the child the pistachio nuts, and said: Take some. The child said: No. The man asked him why, and the child said: My dad told me not to take anything from anyone. He was lying. The father was standing next to him, very angry. He was going crazy. Even the father told him to take some, but the child refused, and said: “Only if he hands them to me, I will take them.” The man said: Fine. He took a handful of pistachios, and the child stuffed them into his pockets. After they left, the father asked the son: “What was that all about? I told you not to take?! I told you to take everything they give.” The child said: “Dad, let me explain. I have small hands, and I can only take a little bit. But I let him give it to me with his large hands, and look how much I got.” The father said: “If you weren’t so cunning, I would have thought you might not be really Jewish.”

Al Rahma means “mercy” in Arabic.
-------------------------
UPDATE

Jason B in the comments links to the elegantly named jihadist blog, The Ignored Puzzle Pieces Of Knowledge. They explain that MEMRI has mistranslated a single word in the report:

This Shaykh goes into the holocaust and why the Germans did it. The Jews and Kuffaar want us to believe that the Germans did the holocaust for no apparent reason except for pure racism. The fact of the matter is that the Jews caused major harm and destruction to Germany. Sure, Hitler and his associates will go down in history as racists - and he committed major corruption upon the earth - but there were many events that triggered the ethnic cleansing. Why do the teachers and historians avoid that?

The Kuffaar of MEMRITV made it appear that the Shaykh was supporting the holocaust; that’s not so. He was merely describing the holocaust history with brutal truth and comparing it to today. You can see that these Kuffaar of MEMRI mistranslated the word Subhan’Allah to mean “Praise be to Allah,” when in fact it doesn’t mean that. Instead, the word Alhamdullilah is used for that; but the Shaykh didn’t use that word. Subhan’Allah means “Glory be to Allah” and it is usually said when someone is amazed or astonished or taken aback by a certain event and it doesn’t necessarily imply a praise of that event. So for instance, if I see what’s going on in Gaza for the first time, I will be completely astonished and say Subhan’Allah; obviously, this is not a praise of what’s happening in Gaza, but only an expression that is widely used amongst Muslims. In this case, you can clearly tell the Shaykh was just astonished by the fact that today the Jews are extremely powerful and are massacring the Muslims, but just some odd years ago, they were the most humiliated people on earth.

Therefore, as you can see, MEMRI purposely mistranslated a word - a single word - to make it appear that the Shaykh completely supports the holocaust. This, of course, was done out of their evil intent as you can see thus with their video title: “Egyptian Cleric Justifies the Holocaust.” If you don’t already know, MEMRI happens to be owned by Jews and they strategically translate videos for the purpose of twisting the words of the Muslims; classic case was the ‘Kill Mickey Mouse‘ video. May Allah humiliate the Jews and wipe them off the planet.

For you Jews out there, I don’t support the holocaust, but I do question why people stay silent on why it happened in the first place.

It is no wonder why Adolf Hitler said,

“I could have killed all Jews in the world, but I left some of them so you will know why I was killing them.”

According to the New York Times, this website is run by a “a 21-year-old American named Samir Khan who produces his blog from his parents’ home in North Carolina”.

Born in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Khan was 7 when his family moved to New York City and settled into the Queens neighborhood of Maspeth.

He mirrored his teenage peers, from their slang to their baggy pants, until August 2001 when, at age 15, he said, he attended a weeklong summer camp at a mosque in Queens, which was sponsored by a fundamentalist but nonviolent group now known as the Islamic Organization of North America (IONA).

“They were teaching things about religion and brotherhood that captivated me,” Mr. Khan said. He said he went back to school knowing “what I wanted to do with my life: be a firm Muslim, a strong Muslim, a practicing Muslim.”

He prayed more regularly. He dressed more modestly. He stopped listening to music except for Soldiers of Allah, a Los Angeles hip-hop group, now defunct, whose tunes like “Bring Islam Back” continue to have worldwide appeal among militant youths.

He also befriended members of the Islamic Thinkers Society, a tiny group that promotes radical, nonviolent Islam by leafleting in Times Square and Jackson Heights, Queens.

That’s Al Muhajiroun.

What The Hell Just Happened In Iraq? (Andrew Sullivan)

As a follow-up to the provincial elections in Iraq this past weekend, Andrew Sullivan has pulled together a useful round-up of immediate (American) responses from across the ideological spectrum. They can't all be right, and it will take a while to assess which turn out to be most on-target, but all of the ones he picked are fairly intelligent, more or less plausible, and worth reading. What Andrew Sullivan himself says about the elections and their significance sounds right to me, too.

Hoping for the best,
Jeff Weintraub

=========================
Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish)
February 2, 2009
What The Hell Just Happened In Iraq?

It's very hard not to be cheered by the provincial elections over the weekend. Yes, the Sunni vote still seems somewhat depressed, and this could lead to trouble down the line, especially in Anbar; yes, the entire country was in virtual lockdown just to secure a basic turnout; yes, the voter rolls are still apparently more than a little random; and we've learned by now to interpret events in Iraq without succumbing to total pessimism or triumphalism.

But the mere fact of the elections - that they occurred peacefully in an Arab Muslim country and that they suggest a real mechanism for the expression of popular political will: this is an achievement of which Iraq and the US military can be proud, and which, frankly, I did not dare expect. The news that the Awakening parties did very well in Anbar is very encouraging in the eternal fight against al Qaeda. I'm still trying to figure out the details, but here's some early expert reaction from across the political spectrum.

Juan Cole:

The big news out of the leaks from Iraq's vote counters is that parties seeking a strong central government appear to have won big in the elections for provincial governments. There had been a split last fall. Some parties, such as the Kurdistan Alliance and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, wanted Iraq to have a very weak central government, which would cede a great deal of Federal power to provincial confederacies such as the Kurdistan Regional Government. In contrast, the centralizers in the Da'wa (Islamic Mission Party) and among the Sunni Arabs, want a strong central state. It is the latter that appear to be coming out on top...

[JW: That assessment may pvove to be correct--it's what Juan Cole has been hoping for, but that doesn't necessarily make it just wishful thinking--and, if so, that outcome could indeed by politically significant. We'll have to see.]

Max Boot:

The claims made by so many analysts not long ago that the U.S. war in Iraq was a huge win for Iran are not holding up. Likewise for the claims that an outside power could not possibly create a democracy in the Middle East. While Iraq’s democracy remains fragile and imperfect, it is nevertheless impressive to see its people not only casting votes but apparently selecting fairly centrist, secular candidates who are, by all indications, committed to an alliance with the U.S.

Walid Phares:

These elections will produce a new majority in Iraq, which will be always determined by coalition building. However, one result cannot be reversed anymore; no more return to single party dictatorship. Iraq may break in pieces, but it will never return to a Saddam-like monstrosity; and that is what authoritarians in contiguous countries fear the most.

The seeds of elections are now planted in Mesopotamia. With more than 140 political party and associations, hundreds of newspapers, publications, dozens of radio and TV stations — a mosaic is in existence. It will be hard on the Iranian Mullahs and on Al Qaeda to crush all this diversity across the Shia, Sunni, Kurdish and Christian lines. Once young Iraqis who will be voting for the first time, women who have broken the walls of gender exclusiveness, and minorities emerging from the underground, have tasted and tested this democratic exercise — a resistance to fascism and totalitarianism is born.

Spencer Ackerman:

Beyond the elections themselves loom the question of how the provincial institutions will adapt to new electoral realities. I have no evidence for the following proposition and it's pure supposition, but here goes: electoral pivot points in weak states can create new and competiting institutions rather than the transition of control over existing institutions.

[JW: In terms of what Ackerman seems to be suggesting about the significance of these elections, and of how they allegedly exemplify some larger role of "electoral pivot points," his analysis doesn't really make sense. But his cautionary point about where Iraq might go from here is well taken.]