Why Theology (Should Be) Fun

The atheist believes, I should think, that religion is a product of humanity. It's curious, therefore, for the atheist to be all together hostile to religion, as one is not thereby showing contempt for a non-existing god, but rather for an integral part of human history and experience. It's a bit like being opposed to politics, or to truck and barter, or to patronage / deference, or to combat: all have been and can be horrible, but if you feel only hostility to these facets of human existence, then well - you don't much like humans. Hatred for religion is pretty much in this category.

I hope to return to blogging for a bit. Tomorrow - stuff on the 1848 Revolutions.

Endless War

Norman Geras finally fills out (a bit) his Euston Manifesto pronouncement in favour of re-ordering the international law on armed intervention across sovereign borders (section 10, 'a New Internationalism).

There's plenty of to-ing and fro-ing in a not terribly coherent manner. The ban on aggressive war is applauded, but then undermined by outlining extraordinarily permissive conditions for its occluding. Sovereignty is seen to lapse when a state is responsible for "intense forms of oppression, backed by the threat of violence and, as needed, actual violence": this makes aggressive war to right such a state of affairs a legitimate matter, only limited by questions of pragmatism. (In the future - presumably when we're enjoying Geras' 'minimum utopia socialism' which, we're assured, will continue to have an honoured place for wars of intervention - a state's sovereignty will lapse if it egregiously oppresses any single citizen). It's very peculiar to cite Hobbes, who holds effective state sovereignty to be so important, in even partial defence of such a position.

The sting is in the tail:

"Where there is state lawlessness there is no peace, and the victims of such lawlessness are entitled to seek what help or escape they may, and others to provide it."

That any treason against the sovereign power is entitled for anyone oppressed is a stark revolutionary ethos. And that any exterior actor is thus mandated to intervene on the victims' side in whichever way they see fit is a formula which reduces the ban on aggressive war to a platitude.

No To a Boycott of Israeli Academics

My Union, the University and Colleges Union, has at its conference passed a motion in favour of circulating branches with a statement arguing for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The Union is not supporting a boycott.

I am not at all happy that this motion has been passed. It was rightly opposed by the General Secretary. However, I am confident the the great majority of UCU branches will reject any boycott action. There is no reason to pick out Israel as especially reprehensible, even if we do not support its governments' every action. if Israel's actions demand an academic boycott, who should 'scape whipping? There is no reason to penalise academics at any Israeli university. They are free to support or to criticize their government's policies, as is quite right.

The Union's account may be found here.

Iranians Oppose Denialism

There's a letter worthy of note in the latest New York Review of Books. It goes like this:

We the undersigned Iranians,

Notwithstanding our diverse views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict;

Considering that the Nazis' coldly planned "Final Solution" and their ensuing campaign of genocide against Jews and other minorities during World War II constitute undeniable historical facts;

Deploring that the denial of these unspeakable crimes has become a propaganda tool that the Islamic Republic of Iran is using to further its own agendas;

Noting that the new brand of anti-Semitism prevalent in the Middle East today is rooted in European ideological doctrines of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and has no precedent in Iran's history;

Emphasizing that this is not the first time that the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has resorted to the denial and distortion of historical facts;

Recalling that this government has refused to acknowledge, among other things, its mass execution of its own citizens in 1988, when thousands of political prisoners, previously sentenced to prison terms, were secretly executed because of their beliefs;

Strongly condemn the Holocaust Conference sponsored by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran on December 11–12, 2006, and its attempt to falsify history;

Pay homage to the memory of the millions of Jewish and non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and express our empathy for the survivors of this immense tragedy as well as all other victims of crimes against humanity across the world.

Cri de Couer

Nick Cohen's phillipic is a fairly damp squib, as he gyrates awkwardly all over the shop. There's a few good slanders (all anti-war demo's were objectively pro-fascism, but that means that even Norman Geras is in restrospect a pro-fascist, even if his pro-fascism would have been mute and private; conservatives are a whisker away from fascism, etc). Overall though, its bends back on itself to add up to much.

It goes something like this:

Lefties used to believe in good causes (but they did do things like have a soft spot for communism [but this wasn’t so bad because it came from the goodness of their hearts]).

Lefties betrayed themselves when they opposed the Liberation of Iraq (but they were justified to say that it was not a good idea to invade [but they were actually just in favour of maintaining Saddam’s fascism {but in fact it only looks this way as they were concentrating their fire on one issue, as all campaigners do}]).

Conclusion: why can’t everyone be moral and balanced, like I used not to be.

I can’t imagine this will have a particularly huge impact. The problem is, it's all moralising wind-baggery which is OK at column length but is just tiresome at any greater length. The Left or ex-Left have lost any capacity for hard analysis, which cannot be said of the Right.

Says Christopher Hitchens, “For Cohen, as for some others of us, this is no longer a difference of emphasis within the family of the left. It is the adamant line of division in a bitter fight against a new form of fascism, at home no less than abroad.” Yep, that doesn’t sound over the top at all.

P.S. Cohen also complains about anti-semitic and anti-zionist toe-rags spewing e-mail hatred at him. I don't doubt it , and he has my sympathy there.

Anderson on Russia

Perry Anderson has a long and very interesting article on Russia in the LRB. There's a lot to take in. Here are some gobbets:

"Far from the demise of the USSR reducing the number of Russian functionaries, the bureaucracy had – few post-Communist facts are more arresting – actually doubled in size by the end of Yeltsin’s stewardship, to some 1.3 million. Not only that. At the topmost levels of the regime, the proportion of officials drawn from the security services or armed forces soared above their modest quotas under the late CPSU: composing a mere 5 per cent under Gorbachev, it has been calculated that they occupied no less than 47 per cent of the highest posts under Yeltsin."

Anderson quotes with approval an analysis by Geogri Derluguian:

‘The collapse of the USSR marks more than the failure of the Bolshevik experiment. It signalled the end of a thousand years of Russian history during which the state had remained the central engine of social development.’ Three times – under Ivan IV, under Peter I and Catherine, and under Stalin – a military-bureaucratic empire was constructed on the vast, vulnerable plains, to emulate foreign advances and resist external invasions, powering its own expansionism. Each time, it was initially successful, and ultimately shattered, as superior force from abroad – Swedish in the Baltic wars, German in the Great War, American in the Cold War – overwhelmed it. But the last of these defeats has buried this form, since it was inflicted not on the battlefield, but in the marketplace. The USSR fell because the traditional ‘Russian state-building assets’, in Derluguian’s phrase, were abruptly ‘devalued’ by transformation of the world economy. ‘Capitalism in the globalisation mode is antithetical to the mercantilist bureaucratic empires that specialised in maximising military might and geopolitical throw-weight – the very pursuits in which Russian and Soviet rulers were enmeshed for centuries.’

Finally, here's a useful Russian term: poshlost meaning (roughly) pretentious banality.

The Second Invasion of Iraq

An expansion of US forces in Iraq is widely expected. More significant is its expected function.

The Nouri Maliki government is derided by the Bush Administration. Maliki's government is seen as a plaything of Shia supremicists committed to victory in a sectarian civil war (which is broadly the case). Though Moqtada al-Sadr's followers have left the governing coalition for now, the debacle surrounding the execution of Saddam - orchestrated to press every Shia sectarian button - is ample evidence that communal imperatives now shape the admittedly limited policy options of the Baghdad government.

A US troop surge will be designed to side-line and effectively demobilise domestic Iraqi security forces. This will be a complete reversal of occupation strategy to date. There will be an attempt to smash completely the al-Mahdi militia. The Iraqi government is to be left suspended in mid air, at the whim of the US. It is then to be be re-constructed as a non-sectarian, de-politicised and technocratic regime. For this fantastic project to be realised, it will presumably be neccessary to gut the remaining content of popular democracy .

This cannot be a project attractive to the Iraqi majoritarian government. Little wonder that Maliki would prefer to leave office.

I have to admit that I'm rather impressed by Christopher Hitchens' prescience, a consequence presumably of his complete absorption of the NeoCon world view. We all had a good laugh when we read, in 2005, Michael Totten's guileless account of liberal imperialists laying down the law to the natives over dinner and wine. Recall this:

"Christopher Hitchens said to Ghassan Atiyyah: “If the Iraqis were to elect either a Sunni or Shia Taliban, we would not let them take power.” And of course he was right [remarks Totten]. We didn’t invade Iraq so we could midwife the birth of yet another despicable tyranny. “One man, one vote, one time” isn’t anything remotely like a democracy.

"But Atiyyah would have none of that. He exploded in furious rage. “So you’re my colonial master now, eh?!” You have to understand – this man’s voice really carries."

Now Hitchens, loyal interpreter of His Master's Voice to the remaining credulous lefties willing to listen, prepares the shtick-script to justify a neo-colonial imposition of an authoritarian regime (in the Jeane Kirkpatrick sense).

Will Bush's strategy work? Of course it bloody well won't work. But let us be in no doubt about what is in the offing. This will be a troop incursion primarily to crush Shia Iraq and to destroy the country's limited capacity for independent government. It is a manouvre to reverse Iranian gains in the region. It may seem unbelievable, but such are the consequences of lame-duck leaders seeking historical vindication: we are on the brink of the second invasion of Iraq.