Saturday, February 17, 2007
Not that it will result in anything as pretty as the Sistine Chapel, alas...
An interesting convergence of the most recent two themes I've been going on about today in El Pais de Murdoch: it seems true believers can now buy indulgences to salve their consciences and aid the suffering souls in environmental purgatory.
Literary Competition Attempt, #2
I never did get any entries in my 'Borges by Chopper' competition. Neither did I ever finish writing my Christmas story about giant robots. However, today I found a file rattling around on my hard drive that contained very little beyond these opening sentences:
What happens next? That is the Dr Clam literary challenge, gentle readers!
Alright, I should have been sober. But if they were in their right minds, they wouldn’t have made the thing so realistic. And they would have made it indestructible, or at least impossible to break off and carry away.
What happens next? That is the Dr Clam literary challenge, gentle readers!
Friday, February 09, 2007
Trying to stay away from big red buttons
This is just to expand my comment on Marco’s blog to make it, with any luck, a bit more obvious what I was trying to point out in my ham-fisted way.
Let us consider a series of questions, corresponding to different degree of ‘skepticism’ between ‘contrarian’ and ‘fanatic’. As you answer ‘yes’ to each question, you move closer to the position of the High Priesthood. It is their goal to sweep you onward from the question to which all sensible people would answer ‘yes’ to the question to which no sensible person would answer ‘yes’ on a wave of emotion, without stopping to think.
Q.1: Is the average surface temperature of the world increasing?
Those who would answer ‘no’ to this question might rightly be called ‘contrarians’ in a pejorative sense.
Q.2: Is this rise in temperature caused by human activity?
Those who would answer ‘no’ to this question are what you or I or Joe Q. Public would reasonably call ‘Greenhouse skeptics’. They are almost certainly wrong.
Q3: Is this rise in temperature a bad thing?
I don’t think anyone has seriously attempted to address this question. The answer ‘no’ is assumed by the High Priesthod and attempts to introduce the question are ridiculed on RealClimate. Most industrialised nations spend more energy on heating than cooling; most of the world has greater death rates in winter than summer; longer growing seasons and ice-free waters are clear bonuses for regions far from the tropics. Closer to the equator, common sense, extrapolation from ice age pollen data, and what tenuous experimental evidence exists suggests that the mid-latitude desert belts will shift towards Los Angeles, Santiago, Cape Town, Madrid, and Melbourne- which are well-off enough to cope with a bit of desertification- and away from Ciudad Obregon, Asuncion, Lusaka, N’djamena, and Tennant Creek- where more arable land would be welcome.
Q4: Should we try and stop this rise in temperature?
Or, would it make more sense to adapt to it? A degree of adaptation will be absolutely inevitable in any case, as we have absolutely no means whatsoever of stabilising the temperature at the status quo short of a nuclear winter. We could do our best to predict what climate would be like in the extreme scenario where the carbon dioxide bands are completely saturated, and plan for that. I have previously argued this at some length and pointed out that regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change are regions that are particularly vulnerable to unchanged climate, anyway. Let’s get people off those marginal rangelands and marshy coasts: they are not good places to live.
Q5: Should we marginalise technical solutions to stopping this rise in temperature?
There seems to be a kneejerk response by the High Priesthood and their followers to sneer at technical solutions. You can see the lips curling when you read what they write. Whatever tinkering around the edges might be achievable by technical advance X, Y, or Z, we have a moral duty to change our lifestyles and adopt proscriptive social-engineering solutions. Even that guy I heard from the Wentworth Group, which is supposed to be a group of scientists, when he came to speak to a graduating class of scientists at Devil Bunny City University, only talked about political, social-engineering, Neo-Stalinist solutions.
Let us consider a series of questions, corresponding to different degree of ‘skepticism’ between ‘contrarian’ and ‘fanatic’. As you answer ‘yes’ to each question, you move closer to the position of the High Priesthood. It is their goal to sweep you onward from the question to which all sensible people would answer ‘yes’ to the question to which no sensible person would answer ‘yes’ on a wave of emotion, without stopping to think.
Q.1: Is the average surface temperature of the world increasing?
Those who would answer ‘no’ to this question might rightly be called ‘contrarians’ in a pejorative sense.
Q.2: Is this rise in temperature caused by human activity?
Those who would answer ‘no’ to this question are what you or I or Joe Q. Public would reasonably call ‘Greenhouse skeptics’. They are almost certainly wrong.
Q3: Is this rise in temperature a bad thing?
I don’t think anyone has seriously attempted to address this question. The answer ‘no’ is assumed by the High Priesthod and attempts to introduce the question are ridiculed on RealClimate. Most industrialised nations spend more energy on heating than cooling; most of the world has greater death rates in winter than summer; longer growing seasons and ice-free waters are clear bonuses for regions far from the tropics. Closer to the equator, common sense, extrapolation from ice age pollen data, and what tenuous experimental evidence exists suggests that the mid-latitude desert belts will shift towards Los Angeles, Santiago, Cape Town, Madrid, and Melbourne- which are well-off enough to cope with a bit of desertification- and away from Ciudad Obregon, Asuncion, Lusaka, N’djamena, and Tennant Creek- where more arable land would be welcome.
Q4: Should we try and stop this rise in temperature?
Or, would it make more sense to adapt to it? A degree of adaptation will be absolutely inevitable in any case, as we have absolutely no means whatsoever of stabilising the temperature at the status quo short of a nuclear winter. We could do our best to predict what climate would be like in the extreme scenario where the carbon dioxide bands are completely saturated, and plan for that. I have previously argued this at some length and pointed out that regions that are particularly vulnerable to climate change are regions that are particularly vulnerable to unchanged climate, anyway. Let’s get people off those marginal rangelands and marshy coasts: they are not good places to live.
Q5: Should we marginalise technical solutions to stopping this rise in temperature?
There seems to be a kneejerk response by the High Priesthood and their followers to sneer at technical solutions. You can see the lips curling when you read what they write. Whatever tinkering around the edges might be achievable by technical advance X, Y, or Z, we have a moral duty to change our lifestyles and adopt proscriptive social-engineering solutions. Even that guy I heard from the Wentworth Group, which is supposed to be a group of scientists, when he came to speak to a graduating class of scientists at Devil Bunny City University, only talked about political, social-engineering, Neo-Stalinist solutions.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Something something Dostoevsky something something
Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry, imagination.
- Max Planck
I've never been able to find this quote in the original German (thus ensuring, I suppose, that by tomorrow morning I shall have a comment from someone who has managed to find it) but in English, I can endorse it unreservedly because of those three words 'at our disposal'. Doubtless there are more true statements than those that can be found by experiment, or that can ever be verified, but the means by which we apprehend them are definitely not 'at our disposal'.
I will now attempt to construct an elaborate metaphor.
The universe which we experience, let us call the Ocean.
Let us give ourselves an instrument for sampling the universe which is at our disposal, which will give reproducible results, with which we can experiment: this is the Cup of Reason.
Let us give ourselves another instrument for sampling the universe which is not at our disposal, which will give irreproducible results: this is the Net of Poetry and Imagination.
We can dip the cup in many times, and we can learn much about the wetness of the ocean, and the saltness of the ocean, and as we focus our energies more and more on understanding what we find in the cup we will uncover splendid chemical equilibria, and wondrous plankton, and all manner of marvels, and we will understand the ocean, this little cylinder of water circumscribed by reason.
We can dip the net in many times, and many times we will find nothing, but sometimes we might pull out a Crimson Gugfish, and we can show it to our friends and say: 'Look at this image of truth I have imagined' and they will say, if they are sensible and wise and know well the use of reason: 'That thing will not fit in a little cylinder of water'. And we will go away abashed.
- Max Planck
I've never been able to find this quote in the original German (thus ensuring, I suppose, that by tomorrow morning I shall have a comment from someone who has managed to find it) but in English, I can endorse it unreservedly because of those three words 'at our disposal'. Doubtless there are more true statements than those that can be found by experiment, or that can ever be verified, but the means by which we apprehend them are definitely not 'at our disposal'.
I will now attempt to construct an elaborate metaphor.
The universe which we experience, let us call the Ocean.
Let us give ourselves an instrument for sampling the universe which is at our disposal, which will give reproducible results, with which we can experiment: this is the Cup of Reason.
Let us give ourselves another instrument for sampling the universe which is not at our disposal, which will give irreproducible results: this is the Net of Poetry and Imagination.
We can dip the cup in many times, and we can learn much about the wetness of the ocean, and the saltness of the ocean, and as we focus our energies more and more on understanding what we find in the cup we will uncover splendid chemical equilibria, and wondrous plankton, and all manner of marvels, and we will understand the ocean, this little cylinder of water circumscribed by reason.
We can dip the net in many times, and many times we will find nothing, but sometimes we might pull out a Crimson Gugfish, and we can show it to our friends and say: 'Look at this image of truth I have imagined' and they will say, if they are sensible and wise and know well the use of reason: 'That thing will not fit in a little cylinder of water'. And we will go away abashed.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
A response to the Second Comment of Nato on the Reformation
Quoth Nato:
I think if you will look at history, Nato, you will find that the distinction between Church as Institution/Organisation/Structure and Body/Organism/Relationship has been very clear in people’s minds for a very long time before the Reformation and the relationship between the two has been the vital dynamic in all Christian societies.
I’m not seeking to defend the words ‘infallible’ or ‘i.e.’ in your definition of Church as Institution, but to attack the words ‘through Scripture alone’ in your definition of Church as Body of Christ. The words ‘infallible’ and ‘i.e.’ define the difference between the Roman Catholic church and all the other Christian churches, while the words ‘through Scripture alone’ define the difference between the Protestant churches and all the other Christian churches. But there is much more to Christianity than us and youse!
What you ought to do is find a Copt to talk to. You will find that they adhere to the same conception of authority in Christianity as Roman Catholics do, despite having been in schism for around about 1500 years. All the Eastern Churches share with Western Catholicism the conception of authority as lying in the chain of personal relationships that constitute the hierarchical bit of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic church. By holding to this Apostolic tradition, I think they have struck something like the right balance between the inflexibility of Islam and the ‘reed blowing in the wind’ mutability of Protestantism.
You will find that the Copt is pretty similar to a Catholic. I think I have written this somewhere here before, but when I heard a Coptic Priest speak when I was in Devil Bunny City I was struck by how much more Catholic he was after 1500 years of separation than Luther had been after five. Among other things, you will find the traditions of prayers for the dead and veneration for the Mother of God, which Luther dispensed with, going strong in the Coptic community.
The key thing that the Reformation began the process of was to make clear the distinction between:
1. Church as Institution / Organisation / Structure, with truth mediated by a single divinely appointed, infallible 'priestly' human authority (i.e. the Pope);
2. Church as Body/Organism/Relationship (certainly the focus of NT Teaching), with truth freely available to all and mediated by Christ alone, through Scripture alone. The priesthood is made up of all who believe.
I think if you will look at history, Nato, you will find that the distinction between Church as Institution/Organisation/Structure and Body/Organism/Relationship has been very clear in people’s minds for a very long time before the Reformation and the relationship between the two has been the vital dynamic in all Christian societies.
I’m not seeking to defend the words ‘infallible’ or ‘i.e.’ in your definition of Church as Institution, but to attack the words ‘through Scripture alone’ in your definition of Church as Body of Christ. The words ‘infallible’ and ‘i.e.’ define the difference between the Roman Catholic church and all the other Christian churches, while the words ‘through Scripture alone’ define the difference between the Protestant churches and all the other Christian churches. But there is much more to Christianity than us and youse!
What you ought to do is find a Copt to talk to. You will find that they adhere to the same conception of authority in Christianity as Roman Catholics do, despite having been in schism for around about 1500 years. All the Eastern Churches share with Western Catholicism the conception of authority as lying in the chain of personal relationships that constitute the hierarchical bit of the One Holy Catholic Apostolic church. By holding to this Apostolic tradition, I think they have struck something like the right balance between the inflexibility of Islam and the ‘reed blowing in the wind’ mutability of Protestantism.
You will find that the Copt is pretty similar to a Catholic. I think I have written this somewhere here before, but when I heard a Coptic Priest speak when I was in Devil Bunny City I was struck by how much more Catholic he was after 1500 years of separation than Luther had been after five. Among other things, you will find the traditions of prayers for the dead and veneration for the Mother of God, which Luther dispensed with, going strong in the Coptic community.
Friday, January 12, 2007
A response to the First Comment of Nato on the Reformation
1. ‘The Reformation wasn't just about Luther. There were movements all over Europe (e.g. Switzerland, France, Scotland & England), with other key individuals all contributing to the movement (Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, Cramner, & Tyndale to name a few). While I deplore some of their unbiblical methods (don't get me started on Calvin), they all contributed in their own way to the movement as a whole.’
I realised that there is a clash of worldviews here.
A Protestant naturally believe that the Reformation was the restoration of something that once existed, so all the Reformers are labourers in the same garden, petals of the same flower, tentacles of the same octopus, etc., and it is silly to focus on Luther.
A Catholic, on the other hand, sees the Reformation as the irruption of something novel into Christendom that never existed before, and thus highly dependent in all its features on the character and emphases of the man who got it rolling and was the leading Reformer for the first two or three decades of the movement. From my point of view, the four ‘solas’ in your third point are historical accidents arising from Luther’s Augustinian background, and not the central axioms of Christianity.
2. ‘Luther translated the New Testament into German, but his intent was certainly not to divorce it from the entirety of Scripture. Luther's 39 articles were a reaction against the inherent corruption of the teachings of Christ that had built up over the centuries (e.g. Indulgences, Purgatory and Mary worship to name a couple).’
Everywhere in Luther’s writings you will find a very strong dichotomy between ‘Law’ and ‘Gospel’- i.e., between the Old Testament and the New Testament- with ‘Law’ playing the part of ‘scissors’ and ‘Gospel’ playing the part of ‘rock’. In this he stands solidly in the tradition of St. Augustine, St. Paul, and Christianity as a whole, so I am not intending to accuse him of anything untoward in separating the New and Old Testaments.
3. ‘The Reformation was based around a few key doctrinal issues (sometimes called the "Great Solas")Four that are key to this discussion are:
a) How can you be right with God?
By Grace Alone
(Sola Gratia)
b) How does this Grace Come?
By Christ Alone
(Solus Christus)
c) How do we find Christ?
Through Scripture Alone
(Sola Scriptura)
d) How are we 'saved'?
(jargon, I know, but scriptural
language so I'll use it)
By faith alone
(Sola Fide)’
Here’s an extract from something Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor wrote in the Spectator last month. I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket for a few days, so I should probably write it down before it gets washed:
4. ‘Sola Scriptura is not unscriptural: try
2 Timothy 3:16-17 & 2 Peter 1:16-21 + 3:13-16 New Testament) and Psalm 119 (Old Testament) for starters - I'm happy to unpack them a litte more another time.’
The problem is, if Christ has intended the Church to be guided by a book, he would have said so: this is something pretty important, after all. Thus your citations should be something like Matthew X1:y1-z1, Mark X2:y2-z2, Luke X3:y3-z3 and John X4:y4-z4 to be convincing. What he did say about what would happen after he left involved the sending of the ‘Comforter’ – who Muslims believe to be Muhammad, and Christians the Holy Spirit- and something ambiguous about Peter being given the keys to bind and loose.
From the Second Letter of St. Paul to Timothy, 3:16-17:
Saying all scripture is profitable is not at all the same thing as saying that only scripture is profitable.
From the Second Letter of St. Peter, 1:16-1:21
This seems to support the opposite point of view: ‘no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation’ implies that it is useless to read it without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This quote also certainly does not equate all Scripture with prophecy, or imply that the men moved by the Holy Spirit to make prophecies were necessarily recorded accurately.
and 3:14-16:
You could equally well say ‘ignorant and unstable people distort Ikea flat pack instructions, to their own destruction’: this does not imply ‘only Ikea flat pack instructions are useful in avoiding destruction.’
Are there two ways of numbering the Psalms? My Psalm 119 is very short and does not seem appropriate:
Or, maybe it is appropriate...
Should you ever think that 'when you speak, I am for fighting', remember this nifty quote attributed to Leo Szilard: ‘A scientist's aim in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to clarify.’ ;)
I realised that there is a clash of worldviews here.
A Protestant naturally believe that the Reformation was the restoration of something that once existed, so all the Reformers are labourers in the same garden, petals of the same flower, tentacles of the same octopus, etc., and it is silly to focus on Luther.
A Catholic, on the other hand, sees the Reformation as the irruption of something novel into Christendom that never existed before, and thus highly dependent in all its features on the character and emphases of the man who got it rolling and was the leading Reformer for the first two or three decades of the movement. From my point of view, the four ‘solas’ in your third point are historical accidents arising from Luther’s Augustinian background, and not the central axioms of Christianity.
2. ‘Luther translated the New Testament into German, but his intent was certainly not to divorce it from the entirety of Scripture. Luther's 39 articles were a reaction against the inherent corruption of the teachings of Christ that had built up over the centuries (e.g. Indulgences, Purgatory and Mary worship to name a couple).’
Everywhere in Luther’s writings you will find a very strong dichotomy between ‘Law’ and ‘Gospel’- i.e., between the Old Testament and the New Testament- with ‘Law’ playing the part of ‘scissors’ and ‘Gospel’ playing the part of ‘rock’. In this he stands solidly in the tradition of St. Augustine, St. Paul, and Christianity as a whole, so I am not intending to accuse him of anything untoward in separating the New and Old Testaments.
3. ‘The Reformation was based around a few key doctrinal issues (sometimes called the "Great Solas")Four that are key to this discussion are:
a) How can you be right with God?
By Grace Alone
(Sola Gratia)
b) How does this Grace Come?
By Christ Alone
(Solus Christus)
c) How do we find Christ?
Through Scripture Alone
(Sola Scriptura)
d) How are we 'saved'?
(jargon, I know, but scriptural
language so I'll use it)
By faith alone
(Sola Fide)’
Here’s an extract from something Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor wrote in the Spectator last month. I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket for a few days, so I should probably write it down before it gets washed:
I never hear the name of the Church without smiling at the mischievous remark of Karl Barth, the great 20th-century Swiss Calvinist theologian. For him, ‘Santa Maria sopra Minerva’ was a perfect description of what is wrong with Catholicism: it is founded, said Barth, upon ancient pagan wisdom (and not on the Gospel), is too accepting of insights which arise outside the confines of Christianity (because it is too positive about the presence of grace everywhere) and it makes too much of Mary (because it dares to think that human beings have the dignity to ‘co-operate’ with God throught the exercise of their freedom).
Now Barth was called by Pope Pius XII the greatest theologian since Thomas Aquinas, so we have to take him seriously; but if Barth says that these things are what is wrong with Catholicism, I think I could make a fair case for saying that these are precisely the things that are right about Catholicism. Our European Christian culture- there is such a thing and it is central to the character of Europe, and it is a misrepresentation to delete Christianity from Europe’s past, present, and future- draws upon streams of wisdom and philosophy from ancient Greece and Rome, and this is undoubtedly an enrichment. As a Catholic, I most certainly believe that grace is at work everywhere in God’s creation, and not only within the life of Christians, because God is creator of all and leaves marks of his presence in every culture. Finally, I hold that God’s approach to us, and to Mary whom he asks to become the mother of the Saviour, respects our freedom to choose and respond to him- God, after all, does not impose divine love upon us. When God comes to us in Christ, he is welcomed by Mary, the first of those to be saved by him.
4. ‘Sola Scriptura is not unscriptural: try
2 Timothy 3:16-17 & 2 Peter 1:16-21 + 3:13-16 New Testament) and Psalm 119 (Old Testament) for starters - I'm happy to unpack them a litte more another time.’
The problem is, if Christ has intended the Church to be guided by a book, he would have said so: this is something pretty important, after all. Thus your citations should be something like Matthew X1:y1-z1, Mark X2:y2-z2, Luke X3:y3-z3 and John X4:y4-z4 to be convincing. What he did say about what would happen after he left involved the sending of the ‘Comforter’ – who Muslims believe to be Muhammad, and Christians the Holy Spirit- and something ambiguous about Peter being given the keys to bind and loose.
From the Second Letter of St. Paul to Timothy, 3:16-17:
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
Saying all scripture is profitable is not at all the same thing as saying that only scripture is profitable.
From the Second Letter of St. Peter, 1:16-1:21
For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, ‘This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased’ and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
This seems to support the opposite point of view: ‘no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation’ implies that it is useless to read it without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This quote also certainly does not equate all Scripture with prophecy, or imply that the men moved by the Holy Spirit to make prophecies were necessarily recorded accurately.
and 3:14-16:
But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
You could equally well say ‘ignorant and unstable people distort Ikea flat pack instructions, to their own destruction’: this does not imply ‘only Ikea flat pack instructions are useful in avoiding destruction.’
Are there two ways of numbering the Psalms? My Psalm 119 is very short and does not seem appropriate:
To the Lord in the hour of my distress I call and he answers me
‘O Lord, save my soul from lying lips, from the tongue of the deceitful.’
What shall he repay you in return, O treacherous tongue?
The warrior’s arrows sharpened and coals, red-hot, blazing.
Alas, that I abide a stranger in Meshech, dwell among the tents of Kedar!
Long enough have I been dwelling with those who hate peace.
I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for fighting.
Or, maybe it is appropriate...
Should you ever think that 'when you speak, I am for fighting', remember this nifty quote attributed to Leo Szilard: ‘A scientist's aim in a discussion with his colleagues is not to persuade, but to clarify.’ ;)
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
I’m having a wonderful time but I’d rather be whistling in the dark
This is just a mild plea to Nato to expand his comment point number 2 for me. :)
Without knowing the sources upon which you base your historical analysis of the Reformation, I find your conclusions regarding church history and authority (e.g. Luther divorcing the New Testament from the rest of the Bible and the 'infallibility' of the Bible to name two) to be at significant odds with my understanding of what I would call 'evangelicalism' (the driving spirit of the Reformation).
It’s not surprising that any of my conclusions regarding church history and authority are at significant odds with the Protestant understanding of the Reformation, since my premises regarding church history and authority are at significant odds with the Protestant understanding of the Reformation! As far as I know, attributing Luther’s (unscriptural) doctrine of ‘sola scriptura’ to the example of Islam is my own idea, though I may have picked it up from Belloc or another sabre-rattling Catholic apologist of yesteryear. I think if anyone really does believe in the ‘infallibility’ of the Bible, they are more than halfway to Islam if they are intellectually honest, because if they ever chance to pick up the Qur’an they will realise: ‘Whoa! So that’s how an infallible book should be written. This must be the One.’
Without knowing the sources upon which you base your historical analysis of the Reformation, I find your conclusions regarding church history and authority (e.g. Luther divorcing the New Testament from the rest of the Bible and the 'infallibility' of the Bible to name two) to be at significant odds with my understanding of what I would call 'evangelicalism' (the driving spirit of the Reformation).
It’s not surprising that any of my conclusions regarding church history and authority are at significant odds with the Protestant understanding of the Reformation, since my premises regarding church history and authority are at significant odds with the Protestant understanding of the Reformation! As far as I know, attributing Luther’s (unscriptural) doctrine of ‘sola scriptura’ to the example of Islam is my own idea, though I may have picked it up from Belloc or another sabre-rattling Catholic apologist of yesteryear. I think if anyone really does believe in the ‘infallibility’ of the Bible, they are more than halfway to Islam if they are intellectually honest, because if they ever chance to pick up the Qur’an they will realise: ‘Whoa! So that’s how an infallible book should be written. This must be the One.’
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Sources of Authority
The folly of calling for a reformation in Islam comparable with the ‘reformation’ in Christianity lies in the different sources of authority in the two religions.
In Islam, the source of authority is a single infallible book, which is considered by many Muslim scholars to predate the existence of the earth. This book explicitly claims to be infallible. It explicitly claims to be the direct word of God. It reiterates these claims often and at length. Any reformation of Islam must return to the Qur’an, which is fixed and immurable. The moving finger has written and moved on, and nothing can be changed. A Caliph has no authority to add anything to, or take anything from, what is written. His is primarily a political role, and he cannot chose to adapt Islam to suit changing conditions. It is as it is: take it or leave it. Even the tradition, or hadith, those few extra doctrines not found in the Qur’an- such as the idea that Muhammad was the last, the seal of the Prophets- is a closed canon, and has not been augmented for a thousand years.
If you were going to reform Islam, you could plausibly take a look at the Qur’an and make a serious effort to determine which suras might be supplanted by other ones. The logical way to do this would be to take the later, less-tolerant Medinan suras wherever they conflicted with the earlier, more-tolerant Meccan ones. I doubt this is what Janet Albrechtsen has in mind. This will result in a harder, fiercer, less flexible religion, which up to a point will be able to resist the modern world, but it will not be in any way a reformation which will allow Islam to adapt to the modern world.
Another thing you could do is reject the hadith, and go back to the Qur’an alone. In itself this is going to be an entirely negative reform. It can only become positive and adaptive if, in rejecting the un-Qur’anic idea of Muhammad as the seal of the Prophets, you allow a new Prophet to come in with additional teachings expanding on those of Muhammad. This is not a new idea. This is what the Druze did, and the Baha’i’s, and a number of other religions, all of which have in common the fact that through this reformation they are no longer Islam. This path will not result in a reformed Islam, simply in more daughters to join the family of Abrahamic religions.
In Christianity, the ultimate source of authority is a person. Historically, this has been understood to be mediated by an unbroken chain of personal contacts linking the hierarchical Church to the historical person called the Christ. This person never wrote a book, not commanded that any book be written about him. Many things were written about him and his teachings, nevertheless, and were collected by the Church, but these writings do not claim to be infallible, do not claim to be the direct word of God, and as they contradict each other in many places rely on the interpretation of the insititution which originally collected them. The hierarchical Church has historically claimed the power to bind and unbind: to preserve and defend a certain core of dogma, which may be extended from time to time, and to supplement it with a penumbra of disciplinary laws which can be, and are, changed from century to century to adapt to changing conditions.
Now, Christianity can and has been reformed in any number of ways, because reformation seeks to go back to the person who is the ultimate source of authority and express his will in a way which is suited to particular conditions. The hierarchical church is an intrinsically adaptive and reforming institution. On the scale of a human lifetime, it may seem as inflexible as Islam, but on a time scale of millennia you can see that it is alive.
Of course, if you want to have a ‘Martin Luther-style Reformation’, you want to reform Christianity by going outside the traditional means of mediating authority. You need to come up with something besides the hierarchical Church. Luther, having the example of Islam before him- Hungary was on the ropes, and the legions of the Sultan were marching towards the heart of Christendom- seized on the idea of a sacred book as a source of authority. Thus, he took the New Testament, a book far less suitable for such a purpose than the Qur’an or the Torah, and set it up as an infallible authority. This has been shown by events since to have been a dumb idea. Once extracted from its original context, the New Testament has given rise to a bewildering medley of sects that have almost nothing in common, because it does not have the properties of an infallible sacred book that the Qur’an has. It does not answer all the questions that need to be answered. Martin Luther’s ‘reformation’ was a catastrophe for Christendom that left us open for the cancer of moral relativism that has destroyed Western Civilisation in its ancient heartlands. But, I am getting off the track and indulging in gratuitous Prod-bashing. What is important is that it is not possible to do anything remotely analogous to what Luther did in Islam. You cannot extract anything other than the Qur’an as the ultimate source of authority without ceasing to be Islam.
There is only one way to reform Islam that I have thought of. There was once an institution somewhat analogous to the Papacy in its capacity to define and extend dogma, but it was not the Caliphate. It was the Imamate, as understood by the Shi’a, and it ceased to exist many centuries ago with the disappearance of the 12th Imam. Thus, if we truly want to reform Islam- not just open it up to the same postmodernist cancer that has infected Christendom- we need to do two things. We need to support the ascendancy of Shi’a over Sunni, like the United States has been inadvertently doing in Iraq, and we need to hope that the 12th Imam shows up soon.
In Islam, the source of authority is a single infallible book, which is considered by many Muslim scholars to predate the existence of the earth. This book explicitly claims to be infallible. It explicitly claims to be the direct word of God. It reiterates these claims often and at length. Any reformation of Islam must return to the Qur’an, which is fixed and immurable. The moving finger has written and moved on, and nothing can be changed. A Caliph has no authority to add anything to, or take anything from, what is written. His is primarily a political role, and he cannot chose to adapt Islam to suit changing conditions. It is as it is: take it or leave it. Even the tradition, or hadith, those few extra doctrines not found in the Qur’an- such as the idea that Muhammad was the last, the seal of the Prophets- is a closed canon, and has not been augmented for a thousand years.
If you were going to reform Islam, you could plausibly take a look at the Qur’an and make a serious effort to determine which suras might be supplanted by other ones. The logical way to do this would be to take the later, less-tolerant Medinan suras wherever they conflicted with the earlier, more-tolerant Meccan ones. I doubt this is what Janet Albrechtsen has in mind. This will result in a harder, fiercer, less flexible religion, which up to a point will be able to resist the modern world, but it will not be in any way a reformation which will allow Islam to adapt to the modern world.
Another thing you could do is reject the hadith, and go back to the Qur’an alone. In itself this is going to be an entirely negative reform. It can only become positive and adaptive if, in rejecting the un-Qur’anic idea of Muhammad as the seal of the Prophets, you allow a new Prophet to come in with additional teachings expanding on those of Muhammad. This is not a new idea. This is what the Druze did, and the Baha’i’s, and a number of other religions, all of which have in common the fact that through this reformation they are no longer Islam. This path will not result in a reformed Islam, simply in more daughters to join the family of Abrahamic religions.
In Christianity, the ultimate source of authority is a person. Historically, this has been understood to be mediated by an unbroken chain of personal contacts linking the hierarchical Church to the historical person called the Christ. This person never wrote a book, not commanded that any book be written about him. Many things were written about him and his teachings, nevertheless, and were collected by the Church, but these writings do not claim to be infallible, do not claim to be the direct word of God, and as they contradict each other in many places rely on the interpretation of the insititution which originally collected them. The hierarchical Church has historically claimed the power to bind and unbind: to preserve and defend a certain core of dogma, which may be extended from time to time, and to supplement it with a penumbra of disciplinary laws which can be, and are, changed from century to century to adapt to changing conditions.
Now, Christianity can and has been reformed in any number of ways, because reformation seeks to go back to the person who is the ultimate source of authority and express his will in a way which is suited to particular conditions. The hierarchical church is an intrinsically adaptive and reforming institution. On the scale of a human lifetime, it may seem as inflexible as Islam, but on a time scale of millennia you can see that it is alive.
Of course, if you want to have a ‘Martin Luther-style Reformation’, you want to reform Christianity by going outside the traditional means of mediating authority. You need to come up with something besides the hierarchical Church. Luther, having the example of Islam before him- Hungary was on the ropes, and the legions of the Sultan were marching towards the heart of Christendom- seized on the idea of a sacred book as a source of authority. Thus, he took the New Testament, a book far less suitable for such a purpose than the Qur’an or the Torah, and set it up as an infallible authority. This has been shown by events since to have been a dumb idea. Once extracted from its original context, the New Testament has given rise to a bewildering medley of sects that have almost nothing in common, because it does not have the properties of an infallible sacred book that the Qur’an has. It does not answer all the questions that need to be answered. Martin Luther’s ‘reformation’ was a catastrophe for Christendom that left us open for the cancer of moral relativism that has destroyed Western Civilisation in its ancient heartlands. But, I am getting off the track and indulging in gratuitous Prod-bashing. What is important is that it is not possible to do anything remotely analogous to what Luther did in Islam. You cannot extract anything other than the Qur’an as the ultimate source of authority without ceasing to be Islam.
There is only one way to reform Islam that I have thought of. There was once an institution somewhat analogous to the Papacy in its capacity to define and extend dogma, but it was not the Caliphate. It was the Imamate, as understood by the Shi’a, and it ceased to exist many centuries ago with the disappearance of the 12th Imam. Thus, if we truly want to reform Islam- not just open it up to the same postmodernist cancer that has infected Christendom- we need to do two things. We need to support the ascendancy of Shi’a over Sunni, like the United States has been inadvertently doing in Iraq, and we need to hope that the 12th Imam shows up soon.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Sometimes it's not worth scoring pedant points
I just composed this letter for El Pais de Murdoch, but decided it would serve no useful purpose:
I can see what Janet Albrechtsen is getting at with her call for a ‘Martin-Luther-style reformation’ of Islam. The Muslim world clearly needs another violent mass movement led by an anti-intellectual Jew-bashing demagogue.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
The Vehicle is not the Destination
Scene 1: A quote by 1960s geneticist Robert Sinsheimer, quoted in ‘Brave New Worlds’ by Bryan Appleyard.
The old eugenics was limited to a numerical enhancement of the best of our existing gene pool. The new eugenics would permit in principle the conversion of all the unfit to the highest genetic level ... it is a new horizon in the history of man. Some may smile and feel that this is but a new version of the old dream, the perfection of man. It is that, but it is something more. The old dreams of the cultural perfection of man were always sharply constrained by his inherent, inherited imperfections and limitations ... to foster his better traits and to curb his worse by cultural means alone has been, while clearly not impossible, in many instances most difficult ... we now glimpse another route – the chance to ease the internal strains and heal the internal flaws directly, to carry on and consciously perfect far beyond our present vision this remarkable product of two billion years of evolution.
Scene 2: A quote about that quote by Bryan Appleyard, in his book...
Both Sinsheimer and the NAS report took the view that biological control represented a logical extension of mankind’s glorious progress to complete mastery of nature. This progress is seen as the defining project of the species. In both quotations one feels that nothing else but science is of significance. All other human activity and achievements are reduced to a sideshow, for it is science that changes ‘man’s view of hismelf’, and it is science that can ‘ease the internal strains and heal the internal flaws’. If science alone can do all these things, it is difficult to know what else there is to be done and what possible historical status can be accorded to anybody who is not a scientist.
Scene 3: S’nshmra, the island of Flores, BCE 12,000
The old swimming was limited to the strength of one hobbit. With the new boats, we can in principle take any person, whether they are strong or weak, across the ocean to other places ... it is a new horizon in the history of hobbitkind. Some may smile and feel that this is but a new version of the old dream, the perfection of hobbitkind. It is that, but it is something more. The old dreams of the cultural perfection of swimming were always sharply constrained by our inherent, inherited imperfections and limitations ... to achieve the ability to cover miles of open ocean by training and practice alone has been, while clearly not impossible, in many instances most difficult ... we now glimpse another route – the chance to surpass the internal strains and internal flaws of the swimmer, to carry on and consciously perfect far beyond our present vision our remarkable capacity to travel not only on land, but in water.
Scene 3: P’plrda, the island of Flores, BCE 11,970
S’nshmra took the view that boatbuilding represented a logical extension of hobbitkind’s glorious progress to complete mastery of nature. This progress is seen as the defining project of the species. In her quotation one feels that nothing else but boatbuilding is of significance. All other hobbit activity and achievements are reduced to a sideshow, for it is boatbuilding that can ‘perfect hobbitkind’, that can ‘surpass the internal strains and internal flaws of the swimmer’. If boatbuilding alone can do all these things, it is difficult to know what else there is to be done and what possible historical status can be accorded to anybody who is not a boatbuilder.
The old eugenics was limited to a numerical enhancement of the best of our existing gene pool. The new eugenics would permit in principle the conversion of all the unfit to the highest genetic level ... it is a new horizon in the history of man. Some may smile and feel that this is but a new version of the old dream, the perfection of man. It is that, but it is something more. The old dreams of the cultural perfection of man were always sharply constrained by his inherent, inherited imperfections and limitations ... to foster his better traits and to curb his worse by cultural means alone has been, while clearly not impossible, in many instances most difficult ... we now glimpse another route – the chance to ease the internal strains and heal the internal flaws directly, to carry on and consciously perfect far beyond our present vision this remarkable product of two billion years of evolution.
Scene 2: A quote about that quote by Bryan Appleyard, in his book...
Both Sinsheimer and the NAS report took the view that biological control represented a logical extension of mankind’s glorious progress to complete mastery of nature. This progress is seen as the defining project of the species. In both quotations one feels that nothing else but science is of significance. All other human activity and achievements are reduced to a sideshow, for it is science that changes ‘man’s view of hismelf’, and it is science that can ‘ease the internal strains and heal the internal flaws’. If science alone can do all these things, it is difficult to know what else there is to be done and what possible historical status can be accorded to anybody who is not a scientist.
Scene 3: S’nshmra, the island of Flores, BCE 12,000
The old swimming was limited to the strength of one hobbit. With the new boats, we can in principle take any person, whether they are strong or weak, across the ocean to other places ... it is a new horizon in the history of hobbitkind. Some may smile and feel that this is but a new version of the old dream, the perfection of hobbitkind. It is that, but it is something more. The old dreams of the cultural perfection of swimming were always sharply constrained by our inherent, inherited imperfections and limitations ... to achieve the ability to cover miles of open ocean by training and practice alone has been, while clearly not impossible, in many instances most difficult ... we now glimpse another route – the chance to surpass the internal strains and internal flaws of the swimmer, to carry on and consciously perfect far beyond our present vision our remarkable capacity to travel not only on land, but in water.
Scene 3: P’plrda, the island of Flores, BCE 11,970
S’nshmra took the view that boatbuilding represented a logical extension of hobbitkind’s glorious progress to complete mastery of nature. This progress is seen as the defining project of the species. In her quotation one feels that nothing else but boatbuilding is of significance. All other hobbit activity and achievements are reduced to a sideshow, for it is boatbuilding that can ‘perfect hobbitkind’, that can ‘surpass the internal strains and internal flaws of the swimmer’. If boatbuilding alone can do all these things, it is difficult to know what else there is to be done and what possible historical status can be accorded to anybody who is not a boatbuilder.
God's Politics, Part Two
I don’t deserve Marco’s admiration. I am not, in the main, finding Jim’s book refreshing. In fact, I have stalled completely, since it is like reading porridge.
One of its features is inclusion of a great many fragments Jim wrote previously. To prove to you all that I am actually reading it, I should discuss one of them. The one that leapt out at me first is a ‘Six Point Plan’ for Iraq that Jim prepared with a number of other religious leaders in the US and UK in February/March 2003. Interestingly, this appears in two versions: one that mostly makes sense (pp.51-52), and an edited-down version sent to Tony Blair that makes much less sense (p.54).
Point one, version one:
[This preamble to point 1 is eminently sensible, and suggests a made-for-cinema-release war plan. I can envision a Jean-Claude van Damme-led special ops team seizing control of television stations and the presidential palace in a demonstration of ‘V for Vendetta’-style regime change. This would have been a good idea, I think. But this does not seem to be what Jim and company have in mind. How do they suggest that Hussein be targetted?]
There is this understandable current of thought that if the Iraqi people had risen up and overthrown Saddam Hussein, that would have been good; but having somebody else overthrow him is bad. I can sympathise with this point of view, but it a view that is largely alien to the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. There aren’t any psalms full of exhortations for the Israelites to rise up against their oppressors; there are lots pining for the coming of a Righteous Ruler who will show their oppressors what for. (NB: You should check this for yourselves, since I haven’t re-read the Psalms for a couple of years and may be talking through my hat) In a similar vein, you will see in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica that the first criterion for a just war is that it be waged by a lawfully constituted authority of some kind. The Pope tried abandoning this principle once, and exhorted the English to rise against Queen Elizabeth, but had his fingers burned so badly that his successors have never tried it again, not against Stalin, not against Hitler. Much as I, too, am in thrall to the romantic vision of brave rebels overthrowing the bad guys, the weight of Judaeo-Christian tradition is in favour of the Good King riding in to cast them down.]
In the letter to Tony Blair, the preamble is ditched, and the amble is made more specific:
[Would a mandate like this have been forthcoming? I don’t think so. If such a mandate was forthcoming, would Saddam have complied with it? I don’t think so. What possible incentive for co-operation with the U.N. does he have if we have already signalled he has ‘no future’ in Iraq? We can dream, but any such resolution would have to specify what the U.N. would do if Saddam didn’t comply: and the only credible thing it could say was, ‘we’ll come in and do it whether you like it or not.’ I think the hope of getting a mandate like Jim describes, with the coda that is needed to make it believable, was why GWB went down the U.N. route in the first place. By working with the U.N. to try to get it to enforce its resolutions, which were all about weapons of mass destruction, he only handed his critics this big stick to hit him with, labelled ‘Bush Lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction, Boo, Hiss.’ But I am digressing.]
Point two for Tony:
[The loss of the detail given in the first version effectively emasculates this point, I think.]
Point three, version one:
[Hang on: if ‘internal and external forces’ bring down Saddam, surely they are going to have their own ideas about running the country. This is clearly not a ‘Six Point Plan’, but a series of ‘If than else’ points: ‘If point 1 doesn’t work, and either point 2 leads to the regime falling when the multinational force is present, or point 2 fails and the Americans move on to point 2a, then we go to point 3...’
Besides this quibble I only have a rhetorical question: is a democratic Iraq more likely to be fostered by an unelected regime that is composed of people who are, when they are at home, practitioners of democracy themselves, or an unelected regime composed of people appointed by a committee including Libya, China, Sudan, Woy Woy, etc.?]
Point three for Tony:
[Which looks even more ‘if-than-else’-ish in the executive summary version.]
Point four, version one:
[This is the sort of thing one would hope would be part of any plan, though if Hussein was in power there is no practical way relief could be provided in such a way as to make him seem other than the benevolent father of his people. This point serves as a reminder that we always worry about catastrophes that don’t happen, and don’t see the ones that do happen coming...]
Point four for Tony:
[Now, Jim and company veer off to consider points that are only feebly connected to the other four.]
I think it is hubristic in the extreme to suppose that anyone can come in and simply impose a peace plan on Israel/Palestine. And as far as putting effort in to negotiate a diplomatic solution, I can’t imagine anybody putting more serious, sincere effort in than Bill Clinton did. He tried really hard, and it didn’t work. The only thing he didn’t do- because he is basically sane, and decent- is join the U.N. orthodoxy of reflexively condemning Israel for everything. Is this what Jim wants? Would this point of the plan be satisfied if the U.S. were to vote for all the ritualistic anti-Israel resolutions, even if this didn’t – as it wouldn’t- bring us one step closer to a resolution of the conflict?
It is only fair to point out that Israel was the first, and as far as I know, the only state established by a U.N. resolution.]
Point five for Tony:
[The little introductory sentence is gone. This point is now just lumped in with the other points! Note that the sensible phrasing ‘a root cause’ which provided a vague link to the first four points has vanished. Note also that the reasonable ‘a roadmap’- committing us to some plan - has been replaced by ‘the roadmap’, commiting us to one particular plan that had already fallen by the wayside by 2003. The ambiguous ‘enforced by the international community’ is gone, but the equally impractical ‘guarantees’ has appeared. It is hubris, again, to say the international community can ‘guarantee’ a good outcome.]
Point six, version 1:
[Ping! (That is the hyperbole meter going off.) There is no supervillain poised to destroy all major Western capitals with weapons of mass destruction. ‘Networks of suicidal terrorists’ are only a symptom of the greatest threat the world faces, the ideological vacuum and general gormlessness at the heart of Western Civilisation (sic). Jim Wallis has failed to engage with the ‘draining the swamp’ metaphor:
‘Prime Minister, the greatest public health problem Southern Italy faces is malaria, which everyone knows is spread by mosquitoes. Our campaign against mosquitoes has succeeded in squashing billions of mosquitoes. But it is in danger of being disrupted, both by acrimony and by lack of attention, as your government focuses on draining the Campagna marshes...’
The networks of suicidal terrorists of which Jim speaks require only two things to flourish: (1) an ideology that leads them to despise the godless West, and (2) a belief that the West is not only despicable, but weak and vanquishable. So long as these two things persist, there will be an inexhaustible supply of terrorists, and all our stupid infringements of civil liberties will avail us naught. We cannot directly address the terrorist ideology, we can only affect their perception of us. ‘Draining the swamp’ hence means ‘stomping on leaders who have thumbed their noses at the U.S. and the U.N. since forever’. I recognise that this is a debatable argument, and might not be working out so well in practice, but the only thing that a war on ‘terror’ can really mean is a war on ‘the perception that we are gormless losers’.]
Point six for Tony:
One of its features is inclusion of a great many fragments Jim wrote previously. To prove to you all that I am actually reading it, I should discuss one of them. The one that leapt out at me first is a ‘Six Point Plan’ for Iraq that Jim prepared with a number of other religious leaders in the US and UK in February/March 2003. Interestingly, this appears in two versions: one that mostly makes sense (pp.51-52), and an edited-down version sent to Tony Blair that makes much less sense (p.54).
Point one, version one:
1. Remove Hussein and the Baath party from power. The Bush administration and the antiwar movement are agreed on one thing- Hussein is a brutal and dangerous dictator. Virtually nobody has any sympathy with him, either in the West or in the Arab world, but everybody has great sympathy for the Iraqi people, who have already suffered greatly from war, a decade of sanctions and the corrupt and violent regime of Hussein. So let’s separate Hussein from the Iraqi people. Target him, but protect them.
[This preamble to point 1 is eminently sensible, and suggests a made-for-cinema-release war plan. I can envision a Jean-Claude van Damme-led special ops team seizing control of television stations and the presidential palace in a demonstration of ‘V for Vendetta’-style regime change. This would have been a good idea, I think. But this does not seem to be what Jim and company have in mind. How do they suggest that Hussein be targetted?]
As urged by Human Rights Watch and others, the Security Council should establish an international tribunal to indict Hussein and his top officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This would send a clear signal to the world that he has no future. It would set into motion both internal and external forces that might remove him from power. It would make clear that no solution to this conflict will include Hussein or his supporters staying in power. Morton Halperin has pointed out: ‘As we have seen in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, such tribunals can discredit and even destroy criminal regimes.’[‘set into motion both internal and external forces that might remove him from power’. What does this mean? Presumably, since it isn’t a very Christian sentiment, Jim doesn’t mean ‘we hope those coloured folks will get rid of Saddam while all our boys stay at home.’ But really, what else is this plan going to mean in practice? Indicting Slobodan Milosevic was part of a plan that also involved invading his country with a dubious Coalition of the Willing, and the Rwandan genocide architects were only indicted after a ruthless Tutsi rebel leader and his band of ruthless Tutsi rebels had kicked them out of power. An indictment would have been a nice gesture, but for it to amount to something it has to be bundled with something else.
There is this understandable current of thought that if the Iraqi people had risen up and overthrown Saddam Hussein, that would have been good; but having somebody else overthrow him is bad. I can sympathise with this point of view, but it a view that is largely alien to the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. There aren’t any psalms full of exhortations for the Israelites to rise up against their oppressors; there are lots pining for the coming of a Righteous Ruler who will show their oppressors what for. (NB: You should check this for yourselves, since I haven’t re-read the Psalms for a couple of years and may be talking through my hat) In a similar vein, you will see in St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica that the first criterion for a just war is that it be waged by a lawfully constituted authority of some kind. The Pope tried abandoning this principle once, and exhorted the English to rise against Queen Elizabeth, but had his fingers burned so badly that his successors have never tried it again, not against Stalin, not against Hitler. Much as I, too, am in thrall to the romantic vision of brave rebels overthrowing the bad guys, the weight of Judaeo-Christian tradition is in favour of the Good King riding in to cast them down.]
In the letter to Tony Blair, the preamble is ditched, and the amble is made more specific:
1. Indict Saddam Hussein for his crimes against humanity and send a clear signal that he has no future in Iraq, setting into motion the internal and external forces that could remove him from power and bring him to trial at the International Court in The Hague. History has shown, as with Slobodan Milosevic, that this can help bring down a criminal regime.
[They have cut the Rwandan reference, probably seeing that it had some problems. On the other hand, by specifying the International Court at The Hague they have guaranteed that their point will be ignored. A Republican administration might have gone for a one-off tribunal to indict Saddam, but the International Court of Justice is one of those button-pushing things: they don’t want to hand over any sovereignty to permanent institutions of the United Nations, nor give them any more legitimacy than they have to. Everybody knows that.]
Point two, version one:
2. Pursue coercive disarmament. Removing Hussein must be coupled with greatly intensified inspections. This would mean not just more inspections but inspections conducted more aggressively and on a much broader scale. The existing U.S. military deployment should be restructured as a multinational force with a U.N. mandate to support and enforce inspections. The force would accompany inspectors to conduct extremely intrusive inspections, retaliate against any interference and destroy any weapons of mass destruction it found. There should be unrestricted use of spy planes and extended no-fly and no-drive zones.
[Would a mandate like this have been forthcoming? I don’t think so. If such a mandate was forthcoming, would Saddam have complied with it? I don’t think so. What possible incentive for co-operation with the U.N. does he have if we have already signalled he has ‘no future’ in Iraq? We can dream, but any such resolution would have to specify what the U.N. would do if Saddam didn’t comply: and the only credible thing it could say was, ‘we’ll come in and do it whether you like it or not.’ I think the hope of getting a mandate like Jim describes, with the coda that is needed to make it believable, was why GWB went down the U.N. route in the first place. By working with the U.N. to try to get it to enforce its resolutions, which were all about weapons of mass destruction, he only handed his critics this big stick to hit him with, labelled ‘Bush Lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction, Boo, Hiss.’ But I am digressing.]
Point two for Tony:
2. Pursue coercive disarmament with greatly intensified inspections based by a U.N. mandated multinational force.
[The loss of the detail given in the first version effectively emasculates this point, I think.]
Point three, version one:
3. Foster a democratic Iraq. The United Nations should begin immediately to plan for a post-Hussein Iraq, administered temporarily by the United Nations and backed by an international armed force, rather than a U.S. military occupation. An American Viceroy in an occupied Iraq is the wrong solution. An internationally directed post-Hussein administration could assist Iraqis in initiating a constitutional process leading to democratic elections.
[Hang on: if ‘internal and external forces’ bring down Saddam, surely they are going to have their own ideas about running the country. This is clearly not a ‘Six Point Plan’, but a series of ‘If than else’ points: ‘If point 1 doesn’t work, and either point 2 leads to the regime falling when the multinational force is present, or point 2 fails and the Americans move on to point 2a, then we go to point 3...’
Besides this quibble I only have a rhetorical question: is a democratic Iraq more likely to be fostered by an unelected regime that is composed of people who are, when they are at home, practitioners of democracy themselves, or an unelected regime composed of people appointed by a committee including Libya, China, Sudan, Woy Woy, etc.?]
Point three for Tony:
3. Foster a democratic Iraq through a temporary post-Hussein U.N. administration, rather than a U.S. military occupation.
[Which looks even more ‘if-than-else’-ish in the executive summary version.]
Point four, version one:
4. Organise a massive humanitarian relief for the people of Iraq now. Rather than waiting until after a war, U.N. and nongovernmental relief agencies should significantly expand efforts to provide food, medical supplies and other humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people now. Focusing on the suffering of the Iraqi people, and immediately trying to relieve it, will further help to protect them from being the unintended targets of war. It would also help to further isolate Hussein from the Iraqi public by contrasting the world’s humanitarian concern with his indifference to his own people.
[This is the sort of thing one would hope would be part of any plan, though if Hussein was in power there is no practical way relief could be provided in such a way as to make him seem other than the benevolent father of his people. This point serves as a reminder that we always worry about catastrophes that don’t happen, and don’t see the ones that do happen coming...]
Point four for Tony:
4. Organise a massive humanitarian relief for the people of Iraq now, rather than only after a war.
[Now, Jim and company veer off to consider points that are only feebly connected to the other four.]
Finally, to ensure a lasting peace in that troubled region, two other points are necessary:[What will ‘enforced by the international community’ mean? An invasion of Israel? If you could get the U.N. to agree to a resolution approving the invasion of just one country, I suppose that would be it. I don’t see how either side could be made to accept terms they consider grossly unfair except by overwhelming force.
5. First, we should recommit to a ‘road map’ to peace in the Middle East. The United States, Britain, and other European Union nations must address a root cause of Mideast conflict with a peace plan resulting in a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by 2005, structured to include meaningful deadlines enforced by the international community.
I think it is hubristic in the extreme to suppose that anyone can come in and simply impose a peace plan on Israel/Palestine. And as far as putting effort in to negotiate a diplomatic solution, I can’t imagine anybody putting more serious, sincere effort in than Bill Clinton did. He tried really hard, and it didn’t work. The only thing he didn’t do- because he is basically sane, and decent- is join the U.N. orthodoxy of reflexively condemning Israel for everything. Is this what Jim wants? Would this point of the plan be satisfied if the U.S. were to vote for all the ritualistic anti-Israel resolutions, even if this didn’t – as it wouldn’t- bring us one step closer to a resolution of the conflict?
It is only fair to point out that Israel was the first, and as far as I know, the only state established by a U.N. resolution.]
Point five for Tony:
5. Commit to implement the ‘roadmap’ to peace in the Middle East, with a clear timetable toward a two-state solution that guarantees a Palestinian state and a secure Israel by 2005.
[The little introductory sentence is gone. This point is now just lumped in with the other points! Note that the sensible phrasing ‘a root cause’ which provided a vague link to the first four points has vanished. Note also that the reasonable ‘a roadmap’- committing us to some plan - has been replaced by ‘the roadmap’, commiting us to one particular plan that had already fallen by the wayside by 2003. The ambiguous ‘enforced by the international community’ is gone, but the equally impractical ‘guarantees’ has appeared. It is hubris, again, to say the international community can ‘guarantee’ a good outcome.]
Point six, version 1:
6. Second, we should refocus the world’s energies on the greatest threat it faces- networks of suicidal terrorists. The international campaign against terrorism has succeeded in identifying and apprehending suspects, freezing financial assets and isolating terror networks. But it is danger of being disrupted, both by acrimony and by lack of attention, as the world focuses on the impending conflict with Iraq.
[Ping! (That is the hyperbole meter going off.) There is no supervillain poised to destroy all major Western capitals with weapons of mass destruction. ‘Networks of suicidal terrorists’ are only a symptom of the greatest threat the world faces, the ideological vacuum and general gormlessness at the heart of Western Civilisation (sic). Jim Wallis has failed to engage with the ‘draining the swamp’ metaphor:
‘Prime Minister, the greatest public health problem Southern Italy faces is malaria, which everyone knows is spread by mosquitoes. Our campaign against mosquitoes has succeeded in squashing billions of mosquitoes. But it is in danger of being disrupted, both by acrimony and by lack of attention, as your government focuses on draining the Campagna marshes...’
The networks of suicidal terrorists of which Jim speaks require only two things to flourish: (1) an ideology that leads them to despise the godless West, and (2) a belief that the West is not only despicable, but weak and vanquishable. So long as these two things persist, there will be an inexhaustible supply of terrorists, and all our stupid infringements of civil liberties will avail us naught. We cannot directly address the terrorist ideology, we can only affect their perception of us. ‘Draining the swamp’ hence means ‘stomping on leaders who have thumbed their noses at the U.S. and the U.N. since forever’. I recognise that this is a debatable argument, and might not be working out so well in practice, but the only thing that a war on ‘terror’ can really mean is a war on ‘the perception that we are gormless losers’.]
Point six for Tony:
Reinvigorate and sustain international cooperation the campaign against terrorism, rather than having it disrupted by a divisive war against Iraq that intelligence officials believe will likely lead to further attacks.
[I have just realised now after having written the thing that I have no real desire to rehash the invasion of Iraq again, so I should have kept looking for something else to write about from Jim’s book. Perhaps I should just quickly post something else, in a weaselly effort to avoid discussion of the weak points in my arguments...]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)