I must not think bad thoughts
Blogging the rise of American Empire.

me

Thursday, June 12, 2003

The what-country-are-you quiz:

Switzerland
Switzerland -
A neutral power for as long as most can remember,
it has avoided war for several centuries.
However, it is still considered highly advanced
and a global power.


Positives:

Judicial.

Neutrality.

World-Renouned.

Powerful without Force.

Makes Excellent Watches, Etc.


Negatives:

Target of Ridicule.

Constant Struggle to Avoid Conflict.

Target of Criminal Bank Accounts.



Which Country of the World are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Posted by: Nathanael / 7:33 PM : (0) comments

Monday, June 09, 2003

The Buff Blogger (aka Geek Lethal), asked me to comment on an article concerning the problems of Muslims and antisemitism in France. Here are some preliminary thoughts:


  • I have to reiterate that Americans distance from France is making the
    problems seem more extreme. Guy Milliere's opinion interested me not so much
    for its veracity, but because it resembles what social conservatives like
    Buchanan have said for years about immigrant problems: that need to
    assimilate, schools are teaching them to love America (they are teaching
    America hating instead,) that France is in a downward spiral. Above all,
    these debate have to be seen in partisan perspectives. The subtext of
    Milliere's opinion is that France has lost the ability to act alone. This is
    true. But it has consciously pursued a policy of favoring collective action
    in the context of multilateral international organizations. There are many
    Frenchmen like Milliere who see the symbiosis of France and EU as the
    destruction of the nation, and they are ringing loud alarms.

  • I must disagree with Milliere on the creation of the Council of Muslim
    Faith. This group can potentially create a French variant of Islam--one that
    is in tune with the political culture of France. Similar measures were taken
    in order to assimilate Jews (these were the Consistoires, created under the
    Revolution, and which still operate today.) They reform and standardize
    religious practices and beliefs and attune them to the interests of the state.

  • The French have turned a blind eye to antisemitism. Until recently. The
    current issue of Vanity Fair has a long expose about antisemitism, how the
    government turns a blind eye to it and counts it as ordinary violence. But I
    would say that, while I was in Strasbourg, that I say positive signs that the
    population was pushing the government to deal with antisemitism. (Of course,
    there are powerful agents in the US who would similarly deny the existence of
    hate crimes.)

  • The responsibility of a nation to its former colonies is one if the most
    difficult parts of international policy. There are too many dangers, too
    many pitfalls. The Blair-Mugabe confrontation (Zimbabwe being a former
    settler colony of Britain) is driving a wedge between the industrial and the
    non-industrial world. France's relationship with North African colonies is
    potentially explosive. However, the interference of former colonial masters
    can have benefits. France has tried to quell problems in West and Central
    Africa (although I would offer critiques of how this has been done.) The US
    has generally washed its hands of the affairs of former colonies unless they
    involve specific strategic interests (see Liberia as place where the US has
    done very little.)

  • The biggest problems that the French will face has to do with how Muslims
    integrate into the contemporary society with its problems. I think that
    Kamins has many insights and I wish that he would have written more. Like in
    many societies, the immigrants are brought in to take up the menial work
    (even Bush wants to increase immigration.) This dichotomy is more present in
    France that in other countries. People like Milliere are ultimately not
    interested in this ethnic underclass: they want the people to come, work as
    servants, and go away.

  • The US has been blessed by the way that some ethnic groups perceive the
    country. To Hispanics, the southwest is "El Norte", a place where the
    American and the Mexican worlds overlap.

Posted by: Nathanael / 3:54 PM : (0) comments

Sunday, June 08, 2003

Rethinking Intelligence

Throughout the week it has been insinuated that the Bush Administration either exaggerated or invented the Iraqi WMD threat. The administration has countered that they acted on the best intelligence information, which told them that Hussein, indeed, was reconstituting his weapons capabilities. The most informed opinions, spokesmen have said, believed completely that Hussein posed an immediate threat. On top of this they added that even Chirac, Putin, and Schroeder believed that a WMD program existed in Iraq (of course, these three felt that the threat was insufficient to justify war and they recognized that the intelligence was insufficient, requiring further examination by weapons inspectors; it is also unclear whether these three get their intelligence independently of the US.)

The argument about the nature of intelligence is one that must be taken seriously. Intelligence failures are possible. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 would appear to be a failure by various intelligence agencies to put together information and to construct a useable defense. If there were failures, the result would have been that the US went to war on shaky grounds, and that the administration (as well as the Blair government in the UK) sold the public on a war supported by shaky, if not fallacious, information. If such is the case, the credibility of US intelligence would be crippled. Why should the American public trust anything that the CIA, FBI, or Dept of Homeland Defense would say? It would point to the fact that nothing would have changed since Sept. 11.

I hope that Bush is not using the intelligence issue to pass the buck. He would damage the credibility of people in those organizations. He presented this information as absolute truth, with COMPLETE MORAL CERTITUDE, and rammed it down the throats of the public. Here are some of the statements that Bush et al made before the war:


  • "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." Cheney, August 2002

  • "If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world." Fleischer, December 2002

  • "We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have." Bush, February 2002

  • "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."Bush, March 2003

  • "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." Rumsfeld, March 2003



Some of these statements may yet prove true. However, they express little doubt in the value of the intelligence. For the speaker, THIS IS TRUTH. And the issue of whether WMD had been deployed for use in combat should make the case even more flimsy because these weapons would have been widely distributed and difficult to recall--easily confiscated as the war proceeded.

Posted by: Nathanael / 3:00 PM : (0) comments