British Blogosphere at its best

There are now around 190 British Blogs referring to the story about Mr Usmanov and Craig Murray- this is the full list at the moment, courtesy of Chicken Yoghurt. Lets keep this list growing in solidarity with the blogs taken down.

Curious Hamster, Pickled Politics, Harry’s Place, Tim Worstall, Dizzy, Iain Dale, Ten Percent, Blairwatch, Davide Simonetti, Earthquake Cove, Turbulent Cleric (who suggests dropping a line to the FA about Mr Usmanov), Mike Power, Jailhouse Lawyer, Suesam, Devil’s Kitchen, The Cartoonist, Falco, Casualty Monitor, Forever Expat, Arseblog, Drink-soaked Trots (and another), Pitch Invasion, Wonko’s World, Roll A Monkey, Caroline Hunt, Westminster Wisdom, Chris K, Anorak, Mediawatchwatch, Norfolk Blogger, Chris Paul, Indymedia (with a list of Craig Murray’s articles that are currently unavailable), Obsolete, Tom Watson, Cynical Chatter, Reactionary Snob, Mr Eugenides, Matthew Sinclair, The Select Society, Liberal England, Davblog, Peter Gasston Pitch Perfect, Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe, Lunartalks, Tygerland, The Crossed Pond, Our Kingdom, Big Daddy Merk, Daily Mail Watch, Graeme’s, Random Thoughts, Nosemonkey, Matt Wardman, Politics in the Zeros, Love and Garbage, The Huntsman, Conservative Party Reptile, Ellee Seymour, Sabretache, Not A Sheep, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, The People’s Republic Of Newport, Life, the Universe & Everything, Arsenal Transfer Rumour Mill, The Green Ribbon, Blood & Treasure, The Last Ditch, Areopagitica, Football in Finland, An Englishman’s Castle, Freeborn John, Eursoc, The Back Four, Rebellion Suck!, Ministry of Truth, ModernityBlog, Beau Bo D’Or, Scots and Independent, The Splund, Bill Cameron, Podnosh, Dodgeblogium, Moving Target, Serious Golmal, Goonerholic, The Spine, Zero Point Nine, Lenin’s Tomb, The Durruti Column, The Bristol Blogger, ArseNews, David Lindsay, Quaequam Blog!, On A Quiet Day…, Kathz’s Blog, England Expects, Theo Spark, Duncan Borrowman, Senn’s Blog, Katykins, Jewcy, Kevin Maguire, Stumbling and Mumbling, Famous for 15 megapixels, Ordovicius, Tom Morris, AOL Fanhouse, Doctor Vee, The Curmudgeonly, The Poor Mouth, 1820, Hangbitch, Crooked Timber, ArseNole, Identity Unknown, Liberty Alone, Amused Cynicism, Clairwil, The Lone Voice, Tampon Teabag, Unoriginalname38, Special/Blown It, The Remittance Man, 18 Doughty Street, Laban Tall, Martin Bright, Spy Blog The Exile, poons, Jangliss, Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From?, Imagined Community, A Pint of Unionist Lite, Poldraw, Disillusioned And Bored, Error Gorilla, Indigo Jo, Swiss Metablog, Kate Garnwen Truemors, Asn14, D-Notice, The Judge, Political Penguin, Miserable Old Fart, Jottings, fridgemagnet, Blah Blah Flowers, J. Arthur MacNumpty, Tony Hatfield, Grendel, Charlie Whitaker, Matt Buck, The Waendel Journal, Marginalized Action Dinosaur, SoccerLens, Toblog, John Brissenden East Lower, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Peter Black AM, Boing Boing, BLTP, Gunnerblog, LFB UK, Liberal Revolution, Wombles, Focus on Sodbury…, Follow The Money, Freedom and Whisky, Melting Man, PoliticalHackUK, Simon Says…, Daily EM, From The Barrel of a Gun, The Fourth Place, The Armchair News Blog, Journalist und Optimist, Bristol Indymedia, Dave Weeden, Up North John, Gizmonaut, Spin and Spinners, Marginalia, Arnique, Heather Yaxley, The Whiskey Priest, On The Beat, Paul Canning, Martin Stabe, Mat Bowles, Pigdogfucker, Rachel North (193).

And he also missed Vino! So that makes 194 blogs concerned with Mr Usmanov!

First political memory

The Thunderdragon has tagged me for my first political memory.

My first memory is one of those Kennedy moments that everyone who was alive remembers which is the resignation of Margerat Thatcher. I remember coming home with my mother, from the supermarket I think, as a kid, and we drove in to our front drive way. I can still remember it really vividly and a neighbour came out and said to my Mum 'she's gone'. There wasn't any question of who 'she' was. I don't remember having any particular view on whether the fact that 'she' had gone was good or bad or discussing it with my parents, but I just remember the moment and getting out of the car. Its a very vivid memory but accompanied by almost nothing in the way of context.

Anyway I think this is quite an interesting meme and in service of that, I'm going to tag, Matt, Vino, Mike Rowley, Welshcakes, Ian Appleby, James Higham, Ashok, Lord Nazh and Yascha. So guys what was your first political memory- (Oh and by the way anyone else who wants to take this up- please do, its quite a cool meme and any of the regular commenters, Pappusrif and Edmund this means you for instance who want to leave a memory in the comments please do as well!)

Djuradj, Prince of Montenegro

The Early Modern period of European history is dominated by the rise and fall of Great Powers. Few powers were greater in that era than the mercentile empire of Venice or the power of the Porte, radiating through the Balkans from the fortress of Istanbul. The Venetians and the Turks enjoyed a relationship punctuated by tension and pride. Both heirs to the empire of Constantinople, the second Rome, both empires vied for control and supremacy in the Eastern Meditereanean. And between them there were a group of shifting client states, sometimes independent, sometimes not, whose fortunes rose and fell with factional conflicts in Venice and Istanbul and the boundary between the Republic of Saint Mark and the realm of the Sultan.

Amongst those powers which thrived for a small time was the princely state of Montenegro. Ruled by the house of Crnojevic during the latter 15th Century, Montenegro existed in the shadow of the two great powers and its rulers attempted to secure the backing of Venice to retain an independent base in the Balkans. Their allegiance to Venice was far from sure, several times they demonstrated their independence of their patrons by going to war with the Venetians. By the death of Ivan in 1490, the Crnojevic were facing dangerous times. A Turkish army was on the march through the Balkans, Ivan's son Djuradj went with his Venetian wife to Venice itself to get desperately needed help in 1496. Djuradj ended up though being arrested, he was released in 1498, and present at the seige of Milan in 1499 but then fearing for his freedom he fled to the Turks in 1500 and remained in Turkey till he died. The attempt to build a Crnojevic state had failed.

These events have become the stuff of national history. Montenegro once again is asserting its independence and sites like this one link that Montenegro to the present state. Indeed that site asserts in discussing the Crnojevic that they were nationalists before the term was invented, fighting for the freedom of Montenegro and left a legacy of patriotism in their people's hearts. They cared for the Montenegran state and ultimately were a Balkan version of William Tell, deserted ultimately by the perfidious Italians to the evil designs of the Turks. Nothing could be further from the truth. New research by Diana Wright has brought to light the true nature of the Montenegran principality, through exploring a document left in Venice by Djuradj, his last will and testament. Exploring its concerns allows us to see that Djuradj, far from being a Montenegran patriot, was typical both of his time and place.

Wright's research suggests that Djuradj was an innovater but not in the theatre of politics, in the theatre of love. She suggests, and she uses an Italian form of his name Zorzi that Djuradj was the first writer of love letters in Venice. Reading the testament its possible to see what she means. 17 times Djuradj uses the word consorte to refer to his wife, he leaves her as sole executor of his will. This kind of thing is typical of Venetians at the time: 88% of husbands by this point were leaving their wives as sole executors of their wills. The innovation here may lie less in Djuradj than in the limits of our evidence- its perfectly possible that this isn't the first love letter but it is the first love letter that has survived. In that Wright is justified in asserting Djuradj's importance as a historical figure.

But notice how far we have come from the nationalistic hero of myth- far from being Montenegran and motivated by patriotism, Djuradj was a typical Venetian of his day and married to another Venetian. Reading the testament something else emerges. Djuradj cared little if nothing about his own country, he doesn't mention it. He cared deeply about family honour. He reminded his wife that she had no equal on earth save for Kings and other princes. He plans for his sons, wishing that one be sent to live with the King of France, the other with the Sultan of Turkey, no matter who wins Djuradj wanted a Crnojevic to be on their side. He tells his wife that the rulers of Venice are obligated to them because of what his father did, he tells her that if he dies and she gets back to Montenegro he wants her to endow a monestory with money to whom he gave a vow. All of this revolves not about Montenegran nationalism but around the House of Crnojevic and its prosperity, in heaven and earth.

Wright's research demonstrates how far Djuradj was a typical Balkan nobleman of his time. He was desperate to survive in the brutal world of 15th Century politics. He could side with the Turks or Venetians, indeed he fled to the Turks from the Venetians. Djuradj sought to secure his family, he failed in that but to berate him for not protecting Montenegran independence or to laud him for his contribution is to miss the point. He was not interested in that at all. Rather than being Montenegran, the testament reveals that he was culturally Italian in many ways. We don't know about its influence, but his contact with Turkey was deep throughout his life and he must have absorbed Turkish ways of doing things too. In the swift changing world of Balkan politics, the divisions of 21st Century nationalism make no sense.

Looking at Djuradj, one might almost see him in a line stretching forward to Ali Pasha, the despot of Eastern Greece in the early 19th Century. A whole series of figures arise to my mind, men who attempted to survive under Ottoman rule or with Western support. Djuradj doesn't form part of the history of Montenegran nationalism, his part in history is as a sign of the double face of the Balkans. Looking westwards and northwards towards Italy and southwards and eastwards to Turkey, rulers in the Balkans were constantly caught in a dangerous dance, where they could very easily miscalculate. Djuradj did and his patrimony did not survive, and he is fairly typical of that.

That part of the world has seen vast changes in the twentieth century, probably the greatest since the era of Djuradj's grandfather and the final fall of Constantinople. The Turkish empire has vanished and a series of independent states have replaced it. Attempting to read the history of those states as though the political and ideological world of today is that of yesterday is folly. Djuradj is an interesting example of the way that 15th Century politics worked. His principality was consumed in conflicts over which he had no control and his attempts to control it relied on his ability to influence others, notably the Venetians and even at times the King of France. Attempts which ultimately failed.

Djuradj is an interesting figure- there is more that we don't know about him that could be found out- but Diana Wright's work leaves me in no doubt that the best way to think about him is as a 15th Century prince not a 21st Century patriot.

Cross posted at Bits of News. (The illustration is of his seal)

Blogs under Threat Update

Unity has a very good suggestion here- given the libel laws are so unfairly rigged, why don't we nullify them by refusing to find anyone guilty if charged with libel in a UK Court (accepting obvious cases like the Sun and the Mirror versus Joe Public).

The Triumph of Mayor Sanders. Statesman

Today, as this video shows, the mayor of San Diego, made a stunning announcement. The Republican, Jerry Sanders, announced that he would not veto and would sign a council resolution calling for the City to file a brief in support of Gay Marriage. Sanders may have flung his career away with this gesture, his career has taken him from a senior position in the police, a directorship to the mayor-ship and now he may have thrown it all away. Its interesting to consider for a moment, why he has taken this momentous step and also how such momentous steps are taken.

Mayor Sanders has taken this step because he didn't feel he could look gay constituents, gay workers for his administration or his gay daughter in the eye after rejecting gay marriage. He used to support civil unions- and no argument based on logic or the subtle reasoning of philosophers persuaded him but the vision of his daughter growing up without the kind of support that he himself had from his relationship with her mother. Ultimately that vision of his lonely daughter, deprived of the legal security of marriage, was stronger than any theoretical case on either side. Emotion trumped reason and a tearful Jerry Sanders seems tonight to have cast his career upon this one moment of empathy.

In doing so, Sanders is not alone. Most of us to be honest make our political decisions based on emotional pulls not rational arguments. We justify our politics upon the basis of rational argument, we may even change our minds on the basis of those arguments, but they are fortified and directed by emotion. Most moral theory is based upon kinds of empathetical understanding- justice requires the recognition of another to whom goods can be distributed which we hold ourselves. We may reason ourselves to the reasonable conclusion that that which is admirable is to be loved: but until we see it or more accurately feel it that conclusion is as barren as stone and dust. The pulse of emotion is what makes us act.

That isn't necessarily a good, but sometimes emotion works to advance the cause of human kind. More often than not that advancement is through the working of what we might term generous emotion. This is a case in point. The mayor, Sanders, obviously feels deeply that his daughter and his workers deserve the same rights as he held when he married his wife. Extension of rights, whether in the past to Blacks, Women, Homosexuals or other groups has always worked through that same emotion, why shouldn't this person have the rights that I have. Sanders stands in a long line stretching right back to the first master who manumitted a slave based on the slave's fundamental humanity.

There will be plenty who argue that Sanders today has stepped away from his conservative instincts- and they will be wrong. Ultimately there is nothing more conservative than the opening up of institutions to new members. One might compare this action to Disreali's creation of a new voting franchise- Disreali brought in new voters and they fortified the political establishment- Sanders wants to bring in new men and women to fortify marriage. Those new men and women won't marry the opposite sex but the same sex, all apart from that remains the same- and the fundamental argument rests on the greatest doctrine that an American ever uttered: that all men are created equal and given therefore equal rights over the earth to create and pursue their own happiness.

Its quite likely that this empathetic argument will be the one which sweeps aside attacks on gay marriage. Dick Cheney's reluctance to be questioned by Wolf Blitzer about his daughter during the last election was of a piece with this trend. Cheney rightly felt uncomfortable, the contradiction between his sense of where his daughter was in her private life and his public position as a loyal servant of the current evangelical President were such that questioning would explode them. Cheney like Sanders faced the strife between empathy and public policy- and as Vice President the administration policy won through. Sanders though has been braver, actually uttering his empathy and allowing it to erode his policy position. Changing your mind and realising that your attitude ultimately was unfair and unempathetic is difficult and to do so reveals a strength that is, dare I say it, statesmanlike. Mr Sanders deserves praise tonight.

One wonders whether this is the way that America and indeed the wider world will gradually come to accept homosexual equality- including marriage- through the working of empathy and kindness.

Crossposted at Bits of News

Blogs under Threat

This morning I was reading a conversation at Harry's Place about Craig Murray- several links to the former ambassador's site were made and they all malfunctioned. I wondered what had happened and thought no more about it. It appears though that the links were taken down after Mr Murray made some accusations about a Uzbeck millionaire who wants to invest in Arsenal called Alisher Usmanov. Instead of suing Mr Murray or attempting to take on Mr Murray's accusations by disproving them, Usmanov contacted Mr Murray's internet service provider and got them to take down his website- the details are at Pickled Politics and Chicken Yoghurt. His website has gone down, so has Tim Ireland's website which linked to the accusations made by Mr Murray, so have some other websites that were constructed by Tim Ireland. This is a classic abuse of power and bloggers from the left and right are rightly furious about it. Mr Usmanov should argue his case out here on the internet- plenty of people say rude things about others on the internet- I've been called an agent of Israel over the last few days for example. Mr Usmanov should learn to take it- its called free speech and without it our democracy is in danger. Hiding behind his wallet, Mr Usmanov is attempting to hush up his critics- which personally though I don't know the substance of the allegations makes me doubt his credibility all the more. Mr Usmanov should remove his legal threats and take on people in argument. The government should look into this- its pretty clear that in this instance as in others UK Libel law has become a tool of the powerful to abuse, not a tool to protect innocent people against press intrustion.

Dr Johnson

James reminds me that it was Dr Johnson's birthday on the 18th, unfortunately I missed this anniversary. Its worth remembering Johnson though for his dictionary obviously, for his essays on notable poets and for his novel Rasselas- as well as for the efforts of James Boswell to describe Johnson's life. However Johnson is one of those interesting personalities that one feels we have lost something by losing- what I mean is that Johnson was famed for his conversation as much as for his output by his contemporaries. Its like say the great actors of the past- we don't have Garrick- we don't even have John Gielgud's Hamlet (supposed to be the greatest of that generation's Hamlets) we have descriptions but we have lost so much through losing the real thing. We will never place Dr Johnson where he deserves in our literary history, partly because we will never be able to evaluate him for his chief strength, conversation. Its yet another reminder that what is significant about the past is as much what we have lost as what we have gained.

Iran- the idea of airstrikes

Much ink is being and has been spilt on what to do about Iran and its possible development of nuclear weapons. As yet the IAEA have declared that they do not have the evidence to say that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and yet the world's major powers seem in bodies like the UN security council to be justly nervous about Tehran's intentions. Its often been argued that, given events in Iraq, it is folly to contemplate at this moment another occupation or invasion and some argue for a set of airstrikes to pulverise the Iranian system and destroy any possible nuclear sites. Given that we don't actually know where the sites are, it would probably be a set of airstrikes which would take in say one or two hundred possible sites. Its worth in this context assessing what the impact on a country is of vast bombing raids- particularly when that country sits right beside an area of global instability.

Thankfully we have such a historical example- in Cambodia. During the early 1970s the United States dropped vast ammounts of bombs upon Cambodia in pursuit of Vietcong bases in the Jungle there. The consequences were profound for Cambodian society- with Khmer Rouge officers explaining to journalists that their success was built upon the bombing raids. There can be no guarentee obviously that Iran would end up like Cambodia- but its worth pondering what the consequences might be. It might for example strengthen conservative elements within Iran or even reactionary elements, that might make us look back with nostalgia to the days of liberal Ahmenidijad. The effects of such bombing raids on Iran need to be part of any calculation before you made them- at the moment such extensive bombing is viewed almost surgically, in truth unless it is very limited (and given what we don't know about the nuclear sites I don't think it could be) it would have an impact and that might rebound to the disadvantage of ordinary Iranians.

Its something worth keeping in mind at least as discussions are held throughout the world about the prospect of an Iranian-American war. Air strikes are not neccessarily a costless way through the struggle and shouldn't be viewed as such.

Wernher von Braun

Some may have been slightly surprised a couple of weeks ago when I posted masterpiece by Tom Lehrer about Wernher von Braun, the German scientist. Hopefully therefore this review of a biography of Von Braun from the Washington Post will help. Essentially the story is easily told. Von Braun was a brilliant engineer and scientist. During World War II he realised that the root to advancement and to securing his ambition of space flight lay through the development of the V1 and V2 rockets, both of which were used to bomb southern England and could have been used to carry a more devestating payload had Hitler wanted to exploit physics. Von Braun's work was very effective- but it relied upon the use of slave labour camps which built the actual structures. Von Braun was whisked away by the Americans at the end of the war in order to help with the construction of nuclear facilities and ultimately to provide one of the leading minds behind NASA during the 1950s and 1960s. His engineering work is what took the Apollo project to the moon and contributed to a giant leap for human kind.

What Lehrer of course and plenty of others have drawn attention to is the price that Von Braun paid for that. The giant leap was based upon the bones of the slave labourers and the victims of the rockets throughout southern England- a row of tombstones is about as adequate a memorial of Von Braun as is the manifest destiny of Neil Armstrong. Von Braun's political neutrality led him into a situation where he was a war criminal- protected but still a war criminal.

Ultimately as with any prominent German of that generation- Wernher Heisenberg would be another- the stench of what they did and didn't know and when they knew it hangs over their reputations. Perhaps one of the best things we can learn about Von Braun and Heisenberg is that whereas they were accepted in the West, they were also lampooned and criticised, they never escaped. Whereas a tyrant like Mao went to his grave secure in the praise of his fellow countrymen, Von Braun went to his with the words of Tom Lehrer echoing around him. It would have been better had they stood in the halls of Nuremberg and heard the judgement of history, but I suppose ridicule is better than nothing- even if it was not universal.

Charity and the Welfare State

Andrew Lillicoe opposed the principle of equality of opportunity over at conservative home over the last week. His argument is actually quite interesting and presents some problems- which I shall move on to. But it basically goes thus: Andrew thinks that if we have a system that dispenses welfare and creates equality of opportunity basically that rules out charity and provision by parents for children and friends for friends. In his view, "the current welfare state offers very limited opportunity for these expressions of love and social bonding." Parents have no reason to provide for their children, friends no reason to provide for their mates because the state will instead.

Its an interesting argument but not one I accept. There are two functions to this argument- one is that Andrew forgets that not all expressions of friendship or parenthood are monetary. The welfare state actually equalises the capacity of us all to express ourselves in non monetary terms- it doesn't negate the fact that good parenthood and kindness will exist, but it does open up the possibility of allowing us all the capacity to be kind to the same degree. That is the issue about income inequality- it makes kindness an affair of wealth or poverty.

But he does have a point about the whole idea of equality of opportunity. I think its worth just thinking for a second about what that concept is. Often its useful to contrast two concepts in order to understand them. What therefore does inequality of opportunity look like? Inequality of Opportunity could be defined say as the old boy network, the way that people get jobs not because of who they are, but because of whose son or daughter you are, whose surname you bear. Equality of Opportunity is taking people seriously as they are the people they are. It means that you judge them by their virtues and vices. That doesn't mean that people won't be there to help you if you fail and shouldn't be allowed to- for whatever reason they chose- but it does mean that those who have merit but not connections can ascend.

The problem with Mr Lillicoe's view of the world is that firstly its so determined by money and secondly so determined by the way that people should stay where they are in society. He believes in a static society. I'm not sure that that is a promising way forwards or indeed way to think. It ends in an injustice.

This is the beggining of an answer- not an answer.

Happy Birthday to me

I should note that its this blog's birthday today. Officially I started posting on 16th September 2006 but the actual first post was this thought about the Pope's speech which caused a furore last year. Its a post I'm still quite proud of, though to be honest not so much of the formatting- I hadn't actually learnt at that point how to hyperlink or indeed to blockquote- the things one learns blogging. Anyway in that time I've made a large selection of friends through blogging and met some of them like James Hamilton and Matt Sinclair and many of them are friends I only know online- Messrs Higham, Ashok Karra, Political Umpire and Ian from Imagined Community amongst so many others. They have all as have so many of those commenting on this blog made me very welcome and I hope this site is quite welcoming as well- lets go on for another year and see what happens. I'm sure whatever does I'll learn a lot!

Alan Greenspan: City Slicker

Alan Greenspan has made some rather unconventional friends recently. In his memoirs he argued that the Iraq war was about oil- he said that

"I'm saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows -- the Iraq war is largely about oil."

Greenspan should not be interpreted, as some naive columnists from the Guardian, have been saying that 'we went to war to get the oil'. Rather Greenspan suggested that the security of oil supplies was the key issue, he seems to be suggesting that America went to war to avoid another oil shock of the 1970s, to stabilise supply rather than gain control of the reserves. But is even that a plausible argument about the motivation for the Iraq war- and if it isn't, why did the Central Bank Chairman seem to think it was

The thesis that the Iraq war was all about oil has never seemed particularly convincing to me. For a start had the United States wanted to get its hands or its corporate hands upon that oil, there were much cheaper ways to do that than to invade. Invasion is an incredibly expensive enterprise and that could have easily been predicted as soon as the first gun fired. The United States government had no real need either to invade: Saddam Hussein needed to export his oil. Had the US made his readmission to the international community conditional on handing over contracts to American companies, Saddam would have complied. The dollars were more important to him than his opposition to the United States, indeed for a dictator trying to stay alive in a difficult region like the Middle East, ultimately the most important thing is to get hold of that oil revenue and start using it to arm yourself. Saddam therefore can be disposed of as a factor in this equation, if anything Iraq needed to export more than the rest of the world needed to import oil.

Greenspan however isn't really dealing with that point. His worry was not so much that Saddam would stop exporting oil or would be unconcerned with the export of oil, as that Saddam would use his reserves of oil to manipulate the price. In particular, Greenspan believed that Iraq would withhold oil strategically on the international market in order to provoke a price rise beyond 100 dollars. I will return to this motivation later- but I don't think it explains the US's conduct in Iraq since day one. Because if the United States had been so motivated by stability, they would not have proceeded to do what they did in the aftermath of the invasion. They would not have dismissed the Iraqi army and tried to build a democracy in Iraq, rather Americans would have strived to find another Baathist dictator, get stability and get out and reap the rewards of huge contracts. The point is that the Americans did not act as though stability of supply was their number one objective, they acted as though other things dominated their thinking.

The administration and its allies in Iraq were motivated by a large number of things- and obvious conflicts were present right from the beggining. Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz had different agendas at the Pentagon, Colin Powell had another agenda at the State Department as did the Vice President and in the midst the President had his own ideas, reflected in his rhetoric, about bringing freedom to the Middle East. I doubt we will fully know for many years anything but the outline of what happened in Iraq and how the factional battle turned out inside the administration- but briefly set out I think there was a rational for what happened in Iraq, and surprisingly I think oil was peripheral to it.

The rationale was that dictatorship and terrorism are linked. The argument goes thus: the dictatorships of the Middle East are the root of the problem of Islamic terrorism. It isn't something natural to either Muslims or Arabs to be terrorists, it is something natural to those living in tyrannies. If the central tyranny in the region is decapitated and replaced by a functioning democracy there is a chance that the example will spread and benificent consequences will follow from that. Its often forgotten how many proponents of the war like Christopher Hitchens wax lyrical about the Kurdish democracy in the North of Iraq, something one hopes that can be preserved out of the wreck. It should also be remembered that the most influential people on the administration were Iraqi exiles, Ahmed Chalabi for example, who fostered dreams of a Minnesotan democracy in Messopotamia. Furthermore it would, they hoped, provide an example within the Middle East that Western cultures of rights and democracy can be reconciled with Muslim populations, something that Osama Bin Laden is striving against. It will also provide the United States with a way to evacuate its forces from Saudi Arabia, the ultimate cause of Bin Laden's hatred of America, and furthermore would weaken the position both of Iran and Syria.

Alongside this there were genuine worries about weapons of mass destruction. I have never ceased believing and the evidence in the UK in particular from both the Hutton and Butler inquiries bears this out, that many of the key actors involved in the invasion of Iraq believed that Weapons of Mass Destruction would be found there. Tony Blair believed it for example. For Blair and those in the UK administration and I'm willing to wager many in the US administration, the worry was that given Saddam had these things (as they thought) he might either hand them to terrorists, or as he fell lose them to terrorists in a future situation. Blair talked of the nexus between failed states, weapons of mass destruction and terrorists enough to take him seriously. What he meant by that was that only a state could develop Weapons of Mass Destruction, but through instability it might lose them to another group.

Obviously there were other motivations alongside this- some members of the Bush administration just wanted revenge on Saddam, others like Michael Ledeen (a pundit from outside the administration) thought that America ought to go and take some small country and thump it every ten years and yes there may have been some people in the administration who were concerned about the security of the oil supply. However one wonders quite how much they were concerned about the Iraqi oil and how much about the security of the oil regionwide. Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction could destabilise a region full of oil and in that sense the fear about regional insecurity, is as Matt Yglesias points out, a fear about what Saddam could do to oil supply. A stable democratic Iraq as a side result would have the effect of stabilising oil revenues for the West, and victory over the jihadist opponents of Western capitalism would promote the profit not only of those in the Middle East but also their ability to sell oil on Western markets.

Why though be so sanguine in dismissing the views of Mr Greenspan? This comes back to my second question, why would Greenspan believe this or want to say it. Well the words are taken from his book, but in an interview with Mr Woodward of the Washington Post, Mr Greenspan has clarified his views. Mr Greenspan's reported statement to Mr Woodward was

"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in an interview Saturday, "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."

That statement presents a slightly different view of what Mr Greenspan was saying. He was saying that the destruction of Saddam was 'fortunate' because of the oil issue. Indeed later in the same interview he denies that any administration official ever told him that oil supply was crucial to it. The impression I receive from that interview is that Greenspan was outside the whole decision.

Greenspan is through his book attempting to define what the Iraq war was about after it happened, having not really participated in the decision. His reasons for doing this are clear as well. Greenspan wants to define the decision to go to war, because the course of the war is at the moment up for grabs in the United States. Greenspan is a canny political operator. He has his own ends in mind. As someone who seems immune from the neo-conservative virus, and as a pragmatic financial operator, it seems to me more than likely that this was an attempt to remind people about the oil reserves in Iraq and their importance to global energy security. A reminder that Greenspan may conceive some Democrats might need at present- however his comment has boomeranged spectacularly, providing the more insane parts of the left with credence to their views.

We must also recognise that this may well have been the reason that Mr Greenspan supported the war. People, even at the top of government, have different ideas about why things should happen and support things for different reasons. The US government during the period of the invasion of Iraq and the UK government are classic examples. Did Donald Rumsfeld care about Iraq for the same reasons as Anne Clywd? Both supported it. But the veteran defence secretary may have had an eye on the balance of power more than the leftwing firebrand for whom human rights is a religious cause. Greenspan therefore may be pronouncing his own reasons for supporting the war, reasons which have nothing to do with the official reasons that the war happened. That interpretation becomes even clearer once one realises that Greenspan confesses that no administration official ever suggested this reason to him for the invasion.

Greenspan's comments have given a respectability to conspiracy groups on the left who will believe that oil is the root of any American policy in the Middle East. The problem with the 'its the oil stupid' reaction is that it can be used for any plausible US policy unless it is combined with evidence. Given that people much closer than Greenspan to the US decision seem to have been concentrating on other problems and issues- terrorism, democratisation, the regional balance of power- and given the counter intuitive nature in terms of costs to the US itself it does seem an implausible argument. It won't stop people making it, and for them Greenspan's revelation will be an affirmation like no other.

Ultimately Mr Greenspan's comments tell us more about Mr Greenspan than about anyone else. He believed that the war was justified because of global oil supply worries. Did anyone else? It doesn't seem so from the evidence we have at the moment. As I have said that may need to be revised in the light of further disclosure- one day we will have the records of what went on in meetings between President Bush and his advisors and there will be surprises. But at the moment I think its reasonable to say that there were a variety of justifications for the war current amongst those making policy. There were those who believed in a democratisation project. There were those worried about terrorists getting WMD. There were those worried about the regional balance of power. It now appears there was one peripheral figure worried about the oil price. There were probably people concerned about a mixture of the four (I would suggest mostly the first three) with different emphasis depending on their views of the world.

What I think we can definitely say is that the Iraq war was not only about Oil. Its comforting to believe in a great conspiracy running the world to their own benefit, its less comforting to realise the truth that the world is run through a mixture of motives by a group of fallible and flawed human beings.

Crossposted at Bits of News.

Defending the Twelve Angry Men

Leo McKinstry in this week's Spectator has launched a ferocious attack against the Sidney Lumet Film Twelve Angry Men. Made in 1957, the film takes place entirely (almost!) in a jury room and concerns the deliberations at a trial. You don't see anything outside the jury room, we have no idea about the process of the trial save for what is said by the jurors. All we know is that they are trying a capitol case, a case of murder, and they then present the evidence. McKinstry sees the film as a sophistical attempt to create doubt in the mind of the viewer. He is though entirely wrong.

McKinstry's critique of the film contains several vital errors and misses almost all of the points that the film actually makes about the judicial process. The central point of Twelve Angry Men is about doubt. Again and again Fonda's character comes back to ask the question could x or y have seen what they testified to seeing, could they have heard what they testified to hearing. There are two eye witnesses in the case- an old man who lives downstairs and heard a boy murdering his father, and a woman who lived across the alley who says that she saw it happen. It's established that as the father is murdered a train was passing by, substantial evidence to suggest that the old man could not have distinctly heard the boy's voice. It's also established that the prosecution have concealed that the woman wears glasses. Both of these facts don't establish the witnesses are lying but they do establish a degree of doubt within the minds of the jurors which means that they cannot convict.

What McKinstry cannot get is that the concept of jury trial, restated in dramatic form here, is precisely that. Once you have acquired a reasonable doubt about some evidence you cannot convict upon its basis. There are other reasons to doubt the testimony provided in the trial. Some of the evidence in the trial, members of the jury are able to show, was actually wrong. The boy's knife it was argued was a unique weapon, but actually Fonda's character manages to purchase one round the corner from the court. Furthermore it is suggested that the stab wound into the father's chest came from a downward action, another juror who lives in the slums suggests that anyone habituated to using the knife would only use it going upwards, never downwards. Further doubt is therefore cast on whether the weapon could have been used in the way that the prosecution allege.

Not merely that but Fonda demonstrates something about the boy's alibi as well. There is a long discussion about whether the boy should have been able to remember what films he had seen on the night in question when he claimed that he was in the cinema. As Fonda shows its perfectly possible to forget such incidental detail, even without the shock of one's father's death and one's own arrest for murdering him. The point is made therefore that the boy is not neccessarily lying or at least that a reasonable doubt exists as to whether he is lying or not.

To say all of that is not liberal or conservative- at least in the way that those terms are conventionally explained. McKinstry seems to miss this- he seems to miss that if there is a conservative critique of jury trial it could indeed rely upon this film suggesting that reasonable doubt is too difficult a standerd to meet. One British judge, in private conversation with me recently, doubted as to how a jury could ever convict beyond reasonable doubt and its a sensible position to have, but that's a philosophical argument. If you oppose this film then you oppose the whole concept of jury trial. For in this film jury trial works perfectly. Twelve men sit in a room and debate and find that there is a reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the accused.

Lets be clear about what that means. McKinstry isn't. He says that the case for the defence involves inconsistencies. There is no question that the case in the film for the not guilty verdict is not neccessarily internally consistent but it doesn't have to be. The jurors are not called upon to evaluate the man's innocence but to evaluate his guilt and what they find is that he is, as the verdict has it, not guilty. Amongst the cleverest things about the film is the way that it never informs you about whether the accused actually is guilty or innocent- he could be either. What can definitely be said is that there is not enough evidence to send him to the chair. McKinstry fails to realise that the burden of proof is not upon the defence but upon the prosecution.

The process of the juror's discussion is the film's main subject. Much of those discussions demonstrate that the jurors voting for guilty are voting on the basis of prejudice. One juror has racist feelings about 'them' and what 'they' are like. Another juror wants a quick verdict so he can see a baseball game. A third juror has confused feelings about his own son which he transposes over to the trial. All these jurors end up facing moments of revelation or moments where their attitudes are revealed in their entirity- and often they bring their own lives from outside the court room into the room. So for instance an old man is able to say that another old man might just might have seen things he hasn't because he wants to be important.

There is something else here though which McKinstry objects to and yet again is wrong to object to. At one point, in his first speech Fonda says that he votes not guilty because the accused has been kicked around all his life and he thinks he should have a chance. Lets be clear about what Fonda is saying here. At this point in the trial Fonda doesn't know the kid is not guilty, he doesn't suggest that he actually is. He just wants to kick around the evidence and think about it. He wants to give the kid a chance of having someone deliberate seriously about his innocence or guilt. What this reflects is two things. Firstly an eminently moral instinct. Fonda doesn't believe that any human being should be sent away to his death without a hearing. He is sympathetic to that extent. Secondly it reflects the fact that during the trial with one exception the jurors all take the process seriously. Whether they vote guilty or innocent they have all thought about it, as a member of a jury that actually matches well with my experience of the way that jurors behave.

But Fonda's point is a point which comes from outside. A robotic intelligence would not see the need for a discussion, Fonda does. Part of the reason that we have jury trials is because we trust the people, the twelve in this case men, who sit down and find guilt or innocence. They do that using their own native wits and their own experience of life. Not all experience is equal: Fonda's sympathy which allows the boy a hearing is more equal than the racism of the other juror but it is all relevant to the process of the trial. Jurors must decide the case on their own common sense. McKinstry at one point hammers them and especially Fonda for being prejudiced, again he has failed to understand. For the soul of jury trial, is that prejudices are tested, the experience of being in a jury room tests your prejudices by confronting them with the prejudices of the others there. But also there are some prejudices, for instance Fonda's to sympathy or the old man's instinctual understanding of another old man, that are useful. Not all judgements can be rational and not all judgements are rational. There is no test which can decide, except debate.

Ultimately what McKinstry thinks is that this film is a sophistical film. It stretches to make a point about the innocence of a man who is definitely guilty and manipulates the truth to do it. But he is entirely wrong. The film is socratic. The most socratic institution within our society is the jury trial. It is the place where argument and thought test each other out, where prejudice meets prejudice, and where the ultimate test is not whether you guess x or y but whether you know x or y. If there is a scintilla of doubt in your mind, you must find the person not guilty even though there is then the possibility that you have let free a guilty man. McKinstry is too modernist to have remembered that old rule that it is better eleven guilty men walk free than that one innocent be convicted.

McKinstry also doesn't understand that what happens after conviction and the process of conviction are very different things. He lambasts the justice system and mentions such miscarriages as the OJ Simpson trial where guilty men were set free, but forgets that there have been cases both in the Uk and the wider world in which innocent men have been imprisoned or even hung. The case of Randall Adams demonstrates that a jury that doesn't pay attention to the evidence can end up almost hanging an innocent man, and worse from McKinstry's view letting a guilty one off free. In that case you can see that a McKinstry view of the justice system might well be one where the innocent do less well.

Twelve Angry Men remains a wonderful film and exploration of the jury system. Styllistically its also worth noting- the pictures in this article come from various stages of the film- note how towards the end the camera angle moves lower. That is to give the impression of the room getting smaller and more claustrophobic. With simple devices like that, and a wonderful script, not to mention some wonderful performances, I am definitely willing to agree with McKinstry that the director and his actors did brilliantly. The film is a styllistic tour de force. But whereas McKinstry sees that as part of a styllistic forgery, I rather see it as a wonderful expression of a good idea about justice, guilt and innocence. Thoughtful and interesting, this classic deserves to be watched long after my name and Leo McKinstry's have vanished into the dust.

Crossposted at Bits of News

Stephen Colbert Interview

His reasons for doing comedy- that it makes him feel happy- are about the best to do anything.

Sir David Manning and Anglo-American Relations

Sir David Manning is a name that the public today don't recognise, but that those involved in the worlds of diplomacy and politics do. Historians will see him as one of the key actors in the Iraq war and its aftermath- and ever since the mid 1990s in the UK's reactions to the Middle East. He has served in many places at key points in history, he was in Moscow during the coup of 1991 against Gorbachev, served in Israel in the mid 1990s during the peace process, then went to advise Tony Blair after the events of September 11th and furthermore was in Washington during the messy aftermath of Iraq. Manning's interview with the New Statesman's John Kampfner is interesting partly because it shows someone involved deeply within the events of the last couple of years conceptualises their development. This is Manning's story and its a story ultimately of failure.

For David Manning, like most well intentioned people who worked for or cooperated with the present British administration, sees the events of the last few years as being a 'tragedy'. The Atlantic has grown wider and wider over the last couple of years. Tony Blair's aspiration to bridge the sea looks less and less plausible as the years go by, though a different US President may change matters. Its worth remembering that there have been tensions between the British and Americans before- Margaret Thatcher was severely dissappointed with the American response to the Falklands, Anthony Eden was even more upset about the Suez crisis, so much so that American opposition lost him the Premiership. He notes from Washington that 'I doubt very much that people round here [Washington] were thrilled he [Blair] chose climate change and Africa as the themes [of the G8 summit in 2005]'. Such moments of tension reinforce Manning's sense that the relationship between Britain and the US is very close but that the US is not the UK on steroids, whatever that may mean.

But Manning has more to say than just that- for he goes on to describe the major differences and distinctions between the way that the UK sees the world and the way that the US sees the world. Britain is a member of most international clubs going- from the EU to NATO. The United States has seen sovereignty as something to be jealously guarded and scepticism runs deep about anything multilateral from the United Nations to the Kyoto Accord. British and American politics differ in other ways as well. The UK has been far more open to climate change, is more liberal and less religious than the US. In the Middle East, the United Kingdom was always much more pro the Arab case on the future of Palestine. A Yes Prime Minister episode ridicules the British foreign office for its Arabist tendencies. Definitely Manning reinforces the sense that of the two allies, Britain is more open to the Palestinians than the United States- indeed he sees failing to shift the American attitude on the issue as his major failing as a foreign policy specialist.

Over the last couple of years Manning was involved deeply in all of this. Disputing for instance with the Americans that the Palestinian issue was about land not just terrorism. There are also obvious tensions over Iraq. For Manning Iraq has been a failure and Blair's premiership a tragedy. That attitude I would suggest is one reflected in the highest circles of the UK government. Manning reserves the opinion that things might get better- but one senses that he really doesn't believe that. Rather the UK government's attitude is reflected by the recent withdrawel from Basra. Manning recalls that such a pessimistic mood set in early, after the Americans' failure to appreciate the situation in Iraq and their tolerance of looters, Manning refers to 'disquiet' in Downing Street. Ultimately he openly describes the first few weeks of the invasion of Iraq as a 'failure'.

If Manning is clear about the differences between the US and UK about Iraq- then he is also clear that they arose early and that London made mistakes, crucial mistakes in its evaluation of the internal politics of the administration. In Manning's view the mistakes in Iraq preceded from the fact that the internal strategical battle within the US was won by Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon not by Colin Powell's state department. He suggests that assurances given to the British by everyone up to and including President Bush were neglected because of the ultimate victory of the Pentagon in the internal Washington turf wars. Manning argues that Blair wishes it had never come to war- wishes that there had been another way- that regime change had been accomplished by the threat of war producing a coup or even by Saddam acquiescing in the UN process. He also blasts intelligence about Iraq- saying that we never have in the West had good intelligence on Iraq. Manning suggests that the perception that before the intelligence had always underestimated Iraqi intentions- say about the invasion of Kuwait or about WMD and so it was assumed amongst the foreign policy community it had this time too. Unfortunately the dial had slipped the other way.

There is much that is interesting in this. Personally I'm not so sure I believe Manning when he says that Blair didn't want war in 2003. I think that he did. There is evidence to suggest from things that Hans Blix said that there was evidence to refute the WMD charge, evidence that the British and Americans refused to acknowledge. Furthermore Manning is being too kind to Blair- for if he really believed in regime change without blood being spilt or through some deus ex machina then he was profoundly naive. Evidence from others suggests that Blair was inside on the effort to go to war from 2002 onwards- even though its perfectly possible that his principle civil service advisor was never told (another indication of the 'sofa' government that Blair practised). Manning's predecessor as ambassador in Washington Sir Christopher Meyer referred to Blair as being star struck by the American President- that doesn't emerge in Manning's account at all.

What I think we see here is the UK's reaction to Iraq which has been subtly different from the United States's reaction. The British as exemplified by Manning and Lord Ashdown have argued that the real failure in Iraq was the failure to have a reconstruction plan. Therefore people like Ashdown have begun seriously thinking about nation building in a way that the Americans appear reluctant to do. For Sir David Manning such concerns were there from the start- possibly the UK did not insist enough upon them. But the real issue is that it would be unlikely that this group of people will embark on another war where there is no plan for day one of the occupation. There seems a certainty in government circles that that was the key mistake. As Christopher Hitchens puts it in a recent interview the real issue was not whether the Americans were right or wrong, but were they competent to get the electricity on in Baghdad or secure the national museum the day after Saddam fell. If anything emerges from Manning's account it is that this is the central lesson Whitehall has learnt from the disaster- a lesson it may not have needed to have been taught but a lesson whose importance has moved up in the priorities of things to be sorted out before any future invasions are contemplated.

Manning's account represents a sober reexamination by someone at the top in 2003 of what went wrong. In that it represents also a reexamination of the special relationship between the UK and US. There is no question that Manning and most foreign policy experts in the UK consider the US as a central ally. Cooperation in various fields from the economy to terrorism is as advanced and important as ever and our aims are often similar- both nations have a stake in the security of the West and the advance of liberal democracy. But Manning's words and the Brown government's attitudes represent a change of tone if not intention towards the US. There is an increased awareness of the differences between the two nations. For example the British willingness to talk is contrasted by Manning with the United States's ostracism of various states- the North Koreans come to mind. Gordon Brown's administration will, he says rightly, have to work closely with George Bush and even more importantly George Bush's successor but the relationship may be judged more soberly in the days to come. One hopes that never again will a British ambassador be able to describe a British Prime Minister as star struck by the White House.

Sir David Manning is a fascinating character- it would be nice to hear more from him in the future about these issues. More substantive than Christopher Meyer and wiser than many of the politicians who were his titular seniors, his thinking about foreign policy is worth listening to. His interview in the New Statesman is worth reading. At times he exaggerates distinctions that I feel were probably less there at the time, but he does give an accurate barometer of what the thinking in London about Iraq and about America is at the moment. In short his solution, more time devoted to nation building and less to shouting obscenities is one with some merit. It would be good if British Prime Ministers in future speak frankly to their American counterparts- the future of the West rests largely on American shoulders, and the Americans need frank friends.

Cross posted at Bits of News.

Analogies and how not to use them

Richard Munday wrote an article recently about why Britain should bring in liberalisation on gun laws. Now I'm not questioning or discussing his main points- but at one point he quoted Thomas Jefferson about the way that guns in the hands of the public reduced crime. The problem is that when Jefferson wrote that, he wrote it about a society that had no police force, was predominantly rural and was also very parochial. Mr Munday should realise that what was right and proper for Thomas Jefferson's society might not be for ours. Its worth bearing this kind of lesson in mind: historical analogies work only if you establish that the situation you are dealing with is similar- in this case no matter what your views of the central issue, your views on law enforcement and gun law are very different depending on the society that you live in and Jefferson's society was very different from ours today.

Self Righteousness

Ruthie triumphs again with this post about her encounter with some pro-life activists. Ruthie is actually herself pro life- but realises that this is a complicated issue- its not an easy one. Furthermore she has taken out of Christianity what I think is its most powerful lesson- that judgement of others is for God to wield not human beings. That complacency is the true enemy of Christ. I am not a Christian but the doctrine of not casting the first stone and of understanding before condemning is one of the noblest achievements of mankind in any era. That doctrine completely undermines what either those pro-life activists heedlessly condemning others to hell were doing or indeed what other groups (say those who presumed guilt in the Duke rape case and even today criticise for a crime that was never committed) do. If we judge others and use harsh rhetoric on the provision that we never make mistakes, then out of our own mouths let us be condemned. By the judgements and sentences we pass, we should judge ourselves.

This blog occasionally, indeed often can, stray into selfrighteousness- for that I want to offer an apology. Its something that I ought to say more often- that this blog makes endless mistakes- I hope though it doesn't extend to the smug complacency of the anti-abortion activists of the Duke Professors that Ruthie and the Economist rightly have attacked this week.

Justices on the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of the United States must be one of the oddest bodies on earth, its geriatric membership are appointed for life and can expect to sit for ten years at least before retirement or death and yet they wield vast powers to determine what policies the United States will follow. One of the oddities of their tenure is that justicies often appointed for one end- to be good conservatives (David Soutar comes to mind) for example- will immediatly act to another end. An interesting article on Salon discusses them in this context.

The problem is that thinking of Supreme Court Justices as conservative or liberal often mistakes what they actually are- afterall legal philosophies are not so neatly divided- though their consequences may be. However even despite that its difficult often to see consistant legal philosophies being applied by each justice in each case- and particularly by the court as a whole where the swing justice (at the moment Anthony Kennedy) can often decide which kind of judicial interpretation will win this week. Rather the Court seems to decide issues based on a complex interrelationship of personalities where private friendships and enmities decide great issues of state.

And ultimately it is what one might expect. Shut away in a room alone the justices debate and have debated in some cases for almost twenty years. Two new justices may have joined them over the last couple of years- but there are still appointments sitting on the court from the eras of Nixon and Reagen, Bush the elder and Clinton. Old disputes and old friendships are revived and some are unexpected. They owe nothing to anyone outside that room, nothing to any constituency and so decisions are made on internal logic within the nine.

Its an interesting system to decide the government of a nation upon- but its the system that often great issues of state like the rights of terrorist suspects ultimately come down to in the states. It will be interesting to see what happens after the next Presidential election- afterall various of the justices are as ever aging- even a recently appointed justice like Ruth Bader Ginsburg (the only woman left) is in her seventies and that forgets the fact that the oldest justice John Paul Stevens is in his late eighties.

We shall see- but one thing we can be certain about is that imperceptible movements amongst the nine will decide many vital issues within America in the years to come.

September 11th

Lord Nazh who often frequents these parts, has just put up a post in remembrance of the events of September 11th 2001. I agree with him that the people who died on that day deserve remembrance- but I am not sure about the status of September 11th in the popular mind at the moment. I have severe doubts about whether that day should be remembered as avidly as it is: in language that is almost religious. What happened was horrifying but compared to other things that the last hundred years have allowed humanity to witness, its horror diminishes- America ultimately was attacked but is not a victim as a nation generally.

To put it in context on September 11th 2001, an unjustified, unwarrented attack was carried out on American soil. Osama Bin Laden and his allies were and are mass murderers who veil their murders behind the shield of a religious extremist obsession. His lordship considers that this event changed the nature of the world- it didn't. During the last ten years almost 4 million people have died in the Congo, since the invasion of Iraq 100,000 civilians have died, over that period hundreds of thousands have died in areas of the world that noone covers- from Chechnya to Tibet, from Darfur to Columbia. Whatever happened on September 11th pales when compared with this gory record- and furthermore with the gorier record of the last fifty years which has seen tyrants like Stalin, Kruschev, Mao, Pol Pot, Mugabe, and we could go on to mention even American allies like Pinochet and Suharto who murdered in some cases millions, in some cases thousands.

None of this excuses what happened on September 11th- but it does put it in context. The world changed possibly for Americans in that for the first time they realised that they too might come under attack- but for millions outside the United States the even was merely one of several bloody assaults on human dignity- some conducted with the approval of the United States. Obviously we should remember and regret those events- but lest we forget let them not obscure continuing genocides in other parts of the world- let them not obscure the fact that the United States is no unique victim in this world, indeed has done rather well- and let them not obscure the situations whether in Africa or Asia that are happening now- the slaughter in Darfur, Iraq, Zimbabwe and many other parts of the world. We can indeed as his lordship wishes use September 11th for a political reason- I'd suggest the best way to think about it is to think of New York on that day, as Sudan every day, Iraq every month etc- it can extend our humanity to understand other's sufferings. September 11th can be something that becomes a barrier between the west and the world, or it can become a bridge- enabling us to understand a little of the suffering of others through the suffering of the United States on that day.

And so personally I'd like to extend my sympathy to everyone who lost anyone from that vile mass murder- and also to anyone living where death and disaster aren't news but part of every day life.

Maajid Nawaz's defection

Maajid Nawaz has just left the British wing of Hizb ut Tahrir. Nawaz was an activist for the group- though only 29- he had been elected to the party's leadership committee in the UK and also had been involved in trying to set up Islamic parties in other countries. Nawaz was imprisoned by the Egyptian authorities for 4 years for his activities there in the early 2000s. Whilst he was not a key member of the party, he is obviously one of the more articulate members of the party. His defection comes hot on the heels of the former activist Ed Hussein's book- The Islamist- which came out recently. Nawaz though unlike Hussein has some rather precise theological reasons for leaving the group- theological reasons that deserve analysis because they demonstrate both the content of the core of Hizb ut Tahrir's ideology, which it holds in common with other radical Islamists, and also some of its vulnerabilities.

The party has been around for a long time. It's a party which is professedly peaceful but it shares ideology with some groups who are in favour of violence. Basically the party calls for the establishment of a Caliphate across the Middle East and central Asia, the destruction of the current status quo in the Middle East, the abstention of Muslims from the normal political process in the West and government through an Islamic state. Opposed to democracy and modernity, the group argues that a Muslim must live within a Muslim state- and argues that most of the states in the Middle East are not Muslim. They argue that a Muslim state denies Muslims the right to be Muslim- a right which they believe includes living under a Muslim state. Such a statement is incomplete but it is necessary before we dive into the more theological reasons that Maajid Nawaz has left the group.

Nawaz's departure from the group seems to have been for theological reasons- he has published an essay about his differences from them here, and it promises to be the first in a very interesting series. Essentially Nawaz argues that the central premises of the party's political involvement are dual- firstly that

Party members are obliged to believe that the whole world today is Dār
al-Kufr (contra-Islamic land), synonymous in its literature to Dār
al-harb (land of war)

and secondly that

So these texts indicate that to rule with anything other than the laws
of Allāh is a matter which makes it obligatory upon Muslims to declare
war against the ruler, and it is an evidence which indicates that
implementing Islām is a condition for having Dār al-Islām, otherwise
the ruler must be fought against.

Nawaz's argument mainly concerns first of these two principles. The principle was originally established in the work of Said Qutb. He argued that all the lands of the world are Dar al-Kufr and that consequently any Muslim must go to war with lands governed in such unIslamic ways. Qutb argued this in particular with relevance to Egypt under Nasser- an argument that became even more plausible when Nasser proclaimed the Egyptian, Syrian union from Moscow, the capital of Atheism in Qutb's view. Nawaz though discards this approach.

Nawaz's argument is based on a jurisprudential approach to the problem of defining the Dar al-Kufr. As in most Islamic theology, there are many sources of legitimacy: the word of God, the Quran, the sayings of the prophet, the Hadith, and lastly the work of the classic Islamic Sunni jurists. Nawaz's argument is that the Quran says almost nothing about the dar al-Kufr and the dar al-Islam, neither do the Hadith. His argument is based upon the work of the Islamic jurists. He suggests that given that the Islamic jurists have differing attitudes to what the dar al-Kufr is, it is acceptable for believers to have differing beliefs on that as well. Hence he would argue that such a party which sought through force to rebel or even to overthrow regimes would arrogate to impose an interpretation of the scholarship of the past upon other Muslims. Such a line brings a key accusation against extremists that they arrogate the power to excommunicate- to declare takfir. This has for years been a very controversial opinion in Sunni Islam and as Fred Kagan rightly argues is something that other Muslims routinely accuse the extremists of professing.

Nawaz provides as the basis for his argument a series of citations from the Sunni jurists who seem to have distinct and very different arguments about what constitutes the dar al-Kufr. Lets examine some of them and I rely on Nawaz's own translations here, but his statements have been published on Hizb's website and they haven't been questioned there. Basically his citations come down to arguing for three definitions of a dar al-Islam (the opposite of dar al-Kufr). The first definition is straightforwardly that the dar al-Islam is a land ruled by an Islamic ruler- whether Muslims or non-Muslims live there. If the law imposed is the law of an Islamic state then the land is part of dar al-Islam (though that law Nawaz argues need not be the Shariah, just a law which maintains the 'safety to manifest such rulings'). It is not conditional to Dār al-Islām that Muslims reside there, rather being in the hands of the Imām and his Islām is sufficient. Secondly there is the definition of dar al-Islam which sees it as any land in which Muslims are in a majority and which doesn't share a border with a land within dar al-Kufr. Thirdly some scholars argued that the dar al-Islam is a land in which Muslims can practise their religion- that would make say the United Kingdom part of the dar al-Islam. Nawaz doesn't make any comment on what argument he supports- just suggests that there is enough room for genuine Muslims to have differing opinions upon. He definitely believes that there is such a thing as dar al-Kufr or even dar al-Harb but argues that their location can be a matter of dispute.

If one were to accept Nawaz's argument therefore there is no conclusive argument amongst the Islamic jurists which supports the suggestion from Said Qutb and the party that the lands of the Middle East are places in which a Muslim is enjoined to rebel or to politically agitate against. The point of this argument is that by creating uncertainty about that argument Nawaz effectively closes off Hizb ut-Tahrir's main policy platform. He suggests that it just is not true that to be legitimate- ie part of the dar al-Islam- its necessary for the government of the said country to be governed under Sharia or as part of a Caliphate. Any argument to that end, Nawaz suggests is actually a takfiri argument- it gives to the party, not the prophet or the jurists, the power to declare who is or is not a Muslim, what kind of government is or is not Islamic.

What I hope this episode suggests is the degree to which Hizb and other extremists are vulnerable because of their stance that the governments of the world if they are not a Caliphate or do not legislate Sharia are anti-Islamic is actually something that can be criticised. There are lots of arguments surrounding what is the true Islamic religion. As I've suggested before- those arguments are irrelevant so long as we are analysing Islam as a political or historical reality- and are not interested in the theological substance of the religion- then there is no essential religion to look at. Rather there are differing strategies for playing what is in Wittgensteinian terms a language game about the Quran, Hadith and rulings of the Scholars, what I hope this article suggests is that there are more ways of playing that game than merely the extremist option.

I am no expert in Islamic theology- and that shines through this article- but I do think that this argument between Nawaz and his former colleagues illustrates something else. Its worth us understanding the importance of this idea of the contrast between the dar al-Kufr and dar al-Islam and the way that that contrast works in different versions of Islamic theology, that and the distinction between those who believe in the admissibility of excommunicating other Muslims and those that don't. It is upon those distinctions and this ideological war- in which other factors, economic, social etc are involved- that the future of relations between the Muslim world and the West depends.

Crossposted at Bits of News.

Mike Gravel

Were I an American, that is who I should vote with, with Dennis Kucinich running a distant second though both are not options I'd be happy with, apparantly 35% of my platform matches Gravel and 22% Kucinich with Tommy Thompson third on a 5% match and Romney the first of the major candidates in there at 4%. Obviously its quite unreliable as a test of what one might do- but this US Presidential candidate calculator is good fun- anyway I'm off to find some leftwing Democrats- looks like I might have a lot in common with them...

The Structure of Protagoras

Protagoras is one of Plato's most interesting dialogues- focusing on the question of how we might teach excellence and ultimately what excellence is itself, Socrates unfolds a theory that to be evil is to be ignorant. One of the most interesting things about the dialogue though is that in itself it contains a defence of the dialogic form- a defence of the principle of theoretical discussion in question and answer format. Its interesting because it reflects on what Plato meant by philosophy and also upon what he took to be the best procedure to educate with and also the starting point of philosophical enquiry- one senses in this dialogue for Plato that those two things are one and the same.

The dialogue's setting is fairly simply conveyed. A young friend of Socrates, Hippocrates who wishes to be educated in the arts of government, leads Socrates off to meet with Protagoras who resides at the house of Critias. Despite the fact that there are many people there- up to 21- it appears that they are all content to listen to Protagoras and Socrates square off in a philosophical dual. There are interruptions and some of them are important to this argument- in particular it is important to note the presence of two characters Alciabedes and Prodicus, both of whom we shall return to.

The discussion between Protagoras and Socrates is fairly ill tempered- at various points, one or other threatens to leave or seems upset with the others approach in argument (see for example 331c, 334c-338e5 and 348b). Its worth examining several segments of this argument and in particular the middle segment which encapsulates the key issues between the two individuals, Socrates and Protagoras. Protagoras's view of the good life is that the good life can be learned from individuals who teach how to live it. He is keen to offer Hippocrates his teaching in public (317c) because he contends that being a sophist is something that it is not neccessary to hide, it is he says an 'ancient' calling (316d). As Socrates tells us Protagoras wants to 'put on a performance' to the large audience. (317c-d) Protagoras then proceeds to tell Socrates and Hippocrates and the others exactly what Hippocrates will learn from him:

What I teach is the proper management of one's own affairs, how best to run one's household and the management of public affairs, how to make the most effective contribution to the affairs of the city both by word and by action.

During the dialogue Protagoras continually assumes a teaching role- there is a sense in which the dialogue is indeed a seminar with him in the role of teacher, in 320c for example he tells Socrates that he will 'as an older man speaking to his juniors' tell a parable to explain his argument. There is much about Protagoras's method that strikes one as longwinded- he is addicted to making long and verbose speeches about various subjects- an example could be for instance his parable (320c8-328d2).

Both Socrates and Alciabedes reflect on the fact that this though isn't a perfect method of teaching people. Both of them state that the problem is that even an educated man can only 'nearly' remember what has been said after such a long time (Socrates 329b) and Alciabedes is even more blunt, arguing that it merely demonstrates the teacher's inadequacy to the subject if he makes

a long speech in reply to every question, staving off objections and not giving answers, but spinning it out until most of the people forgot what the question was.(336d)

What Socrates and Alcibiades seek on the other hand is a model of argument by question and answer, where propositions are disputed and then discarded if found untrue. This is the model that prevails during the rest of the dialogue after the middle section.

But its worth noting what this form of argument does. Firstly it discards the use of elegance and allusion. Hippias is right to deem that Socrates's argument is plainer than Protagoras's style of argument (338a) and its also worth noting that when Protogaras seeks to teach through literary example, Socrates disables that kind of argument with ease when he shows that you can bend the words of the poet Simonides (who Protogaras alludes to) into a Socratic form (338e6-347a5). The point of this discussion of Simonides is to undermine yet another Protogaran approach to education, it undermines the virtue of using literary or textual exempla in order to convey a point. Socrates wants us to argue in plain language and question and answer format and that is how the crucial theoretical points within the argument are made- including the revelation that both Socrates and Protogaras have learnt from the argument. (361a-b) Secondly its worth noting that the question and answer format is much less confrontational and much more egalitarian than the Protogaran format. Protagoras assumes his age and wisdom allows him to make speeches and for those speeches to be accepted by the others. Socrates though establishes a format of equality, without a chairman, where each protagonist in the argument takes turns to ask and answer simple questions about their position (338d-e). Under the Protogaran format egos had broken loose and it seemed likely that one of the participants at least might leave (335c8-d), Socrates' format allows both participants to remain, philosophically grow and even promise to meet each other once more to discuss issues not yet resolved (361e-362a).

If we turn once more to the issue of education, what is Socrates saying here- because I do beleive it has a wider importance than just the choice of long speeches as against dialogue as a form for learning. The first thing that I think Socrates is getting at is that sophistical or Protogaran education merely breeds ego and respect for seniority. He suggests that alluding to philosophy is ultimately a waste of time- that it distracts from the actual argument and as Alciabedes says it avoids the questions at stake. Indeed Socrates attacks even the idea of writing philosophy down in Phaedrus (275c). And I think that leads us on to a second point which is that philosophy in Plato's scheme is authorityless- short extracts from poetry are cited by Socrates often to explain a point- but a knowledge of a poem (poets taken by many Greeks to be as wise as philosophers- Protagoras in this very dialogue compares himself to Homer for example (316d)) is irrelevant to the true study of philosophy- it is dialogue and examination in the here and now that matters, not authorities cited or footnotes shown.

Obviously Plato's argument has relevance only for philosophy, which he is willing to admit is a distinct type of knowledge (312a-b) from others like music or literary studies. But the simple point that the structure of the Protagoras makes is that long speeches, disquisitions filled with allusions and argument by means of continuous illustration without questioning is flawed and does not bring forth truth or light, but in the end culminates with discord, pride and wounded dignity. Dialogue on the other hand is the way not merely to produce a discussion in which both parties are partners, and neither age nor increased literary or even historical knowledge separates them, but a rigorous examination of the logical coherence of concepts and arguments unites them, produces real results and also real comity between those engaged within it.

More from Mr Lehrer- His views on Pollution!

I've put the other video of Lehrer I just found up at Imagined Community where I'm doing a bit of guest posting- head across for Lehrer's take on nuclear war!