Norman loves T.W.O.T.
Product naming is a really big money spinner these days so I’ve been kicking a few ideas around. I think Thalidomide would be a great name for a sedative, Hindenburg would a brilliant name for an airplane and last but not least there’s Titantic which has a lovely nautical ring to it, perfect for a cruise ship. Now, I know what you’re going to say. All those names I just mentioned are associated with some disaster or other. Well, yes but all of those happened ages ago and I’m sure noboby remembers them now. Anyway, here’s Professor Norman on why he thinks “The War on Terror” (T.W.O.T) is an apt phrase for a justified war.
In today’s Guardian David Miliband takes his distance from the phrase ‘war on terror’. While conceding that it had some merit, he now thinks that ‘the notion is misleading and mistaken’. Reporting on his piece elsewhere in the paper Julian Borger calls it a ‘comprehensive critique‘. If ‘comprehensive’ just means that the foreign secretary has assembled a few arguments against the phrase ‘war on terror’, then OK. But the trouble is, his arguments aren’t compelling.
The first of them is that talking about a war on terror gives a spurious unity to a number of disparate groups and thereby helps the efforts of those intent on unifying them. The only unity the phrase implies is the one that in fact justifies it: namely, that the groups concerned are terrorist groups, that they have adopted terror as a political method. Otherwise they can be as disparate as you want. The same reasoning as David uses here could have been used to discourage anyone talking about fascism (I mean real fascism) between the wars. Apart from this, there is a certain other unity behind much recent terrorism – Islamist politics. That doesn’t mean a total sameness, but it’s a feature hard to overlook.
Second, David says that the offending phrase ‘implied that the correct response was primarily military’. No, it didn’t. (a) If this were so, you’d have to believe that a war on drugs, or on crime, or on corruption, was primarily military – which people usually don’t believe. (b) Even if we take something closer to war in the standard sense, it doesn’t follow that non-military means of fighting it aren’t important. Wars of liberation from tyranny, for example – they could not be won without social and political measures, campaigns, forms of cooperation and persuasion.
Third, David writes:
We must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, for it is the cornerstone of the democratic society. We must uphold our commitments to human rights and civil liberties at home and abroad.
Indeed. But it is no part of the logic of the phrase ‘war on terror’ that we should compromise these values and practices. The war on terror can be fought while upholding them. And it is being fought on behalf of them.
Norman wants poetry even whilst Gaza burns.
Ben Macintyre proposes what I take to be a novel interpretation of a famous remark:
The German writer T.W. Adorno once declared: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” What he meant, I believe, is that art simplifies and reduces history that is messy, ugly and often unsatisfying.
I very much doubt that this was the meaning Adorno intended, and it’s certainly not the main way in which his remark has been understood. Rather, he has been taken to mean that there is something obscene about creating beauty in a world in which there has been Auschwitz. It may relate more particularly to taking material from that monstrous human crime and attempting to give it aesthetic form – as, for example, in Paul Celan’s powerful Deathfugue. But, in any case, the idea is that we have no right to these artistic ‘enhancements’ when people can be done to death at once so cruelly, in such huge numbers, with such indifference, such dull routine.
Adorno was wrong about this. A world with Auschwitz and poetry is better than one with only Auschwitz. Furthermore, we have not only a right but also an obligation to try to comprehend the evils of humankind, including the worst of them. Poetry and the other arts are ways of trying to do that and of trying to get others to see.
Within Adorno’s dictum there may be a defensible kernel of meaning, and it’s this: to allow the time and attention we give to forms of artistic output to divert us from the duties of assistance we have to those in dire straits – duties of solidarity and aid – is to live a life of criminal complicity. But, if too demanding, even this injunction states an inhumanly cramped ethic and one impossible to live by. There is a real problem about how much each of us owes to others in distress or dire need. But nobody owes so much that they are disqualified from enjoying the pleasures of this world – as found in poetry amongst many other things.
Adorno himself, it should be said, later reconsidered his famous remark.
Norman and the moral highground.
Further to this, here’s a story of courage against moral barbarity.
One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.
“Are you going to school?”
Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.
But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others – students and teachers – was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.
Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well – about 1,300 in all.
It’s one to read in full. (Thanks: SC.)
Actually, I agree with Norm on this, throwing acid in a child’s face is an act of moral barbarism. However, I’m just wondering how one should describe a nation that rallies around pilots who do not feel a thing except a light bump to the plane when they drop bombs on entire families and crush them to death. And catchy little phrase for the following would also come in handy:
January 5 The Times reports that telltale smoke has appeared from areas of shelling. Israel denies using phosphorus
January 8 The Times reports photographic evidence showing stockpiles of white phosphorus (WP) shells. Israel Defence Forces spokesman says: “This is what we call a quiet shell – it has no explosives and no white phosphorus”
January 12 The Times reports that more than 50 phosphorus burns victims are taken into Nasser Hospital. An Israeli military spokesman “categorically” denies the use of white phosphorus
January 15 Remnants of white phosphorus shells are found in western Gaza. The IDF refuses to comment on specific weaponry but insists ammunition is “within the scope of international law”
January 16 The United Nations Relief and Works Agency headquarters are hit with phosphorus munitions. The Israeli military continues to deny its use
January 21 Avital Leibovich, Israel’s military spokeswoman, admits white phosphorus munitions were employed in a manner “according to international law”
January 23 Israel says it is launching an investigation into white phosphorus munitions, which hit a UN school on January 17. “Some practices could be illegal but we are going into that. The IDF is holding an investigation concerning one specific unit and one incident”
Norman Geras continues The War Against The Guardian.
The Guardian publishes pro-Palestinian pieces which clearly makes them self-hating-Judeo-Islamo-fascist-liberal anti-semites. The fact that they print just as many if not more pro-Israeli articles is surely just a ruse to cover their tracks. Thankfully, Professor Norman, an intellectual titan of our times, is on their case. Today, eagle-eyed Norman found evidence in an article by Afua Hirsh that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that she too is a self-hating-Judeo-Islamo-fascist-liberal anti-semite. She wrote a sentence mentioning Israeli war crimes without also mentioning Palestinian war crimes. Thirteen Israelis were killed during this war and Israeli cats and dogs were severely traumatised. Compared with this horror, the death of one thousand two hundred and eighty five people in Gaza, who were all quite clearly guilty of being Palestinian, pales into insignificance.
Remember Peter Preston – and the Guardian as exemplar of the pursuit of unbiased understanding? Well, take a look at this letter to the paper. It’s from a number of international lawyers and says that the government ‘has a duty under international law to exert its influence to stop violations of international humanitarian law in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas’. It urges the government, in particular…
…to condemn publicly attacks by the parties to the conflict that target civilians directly, or fail to discriminate between civilians and combatants, or which are expected to cause disproportionate injury to the civilian population.
You may have noted: ‘the parties to the conflict’ and ‘target[ing] civilians directly’. Now check out this report by Afua Hirsch from the same edition of the paper. Observe how the communication from those international lawyers is rendered by her:
The letter argues that Israel has violated principles of humanitarian law, including launching attacks directly aimed at civilians and failing to discriminate between civilians and combatants. [Emphasis added by me - NG.]
The ‘parties to the conflict’ have been reduced to the single party, Israel; and ‘attacks directly aimed at civilians’ from… ohhh, Gaza into Israel, have departed the scene. This is perhaps meant to illustrate the meaning of the idea that facts are sacred. But reporting sure the hell is free.
Norm clutches at straw.
Norman wonders whether President Obama and his new administration will be pro-Zionist or pro-Zionist.
Warning: If you try this at home, Norman will shriek hysterically that you are a self-hating-Judeo-Islamo-fascist-liberal anti-semite.
Straws in the wind? This one:
Senior British sources say that although the new president is expected to make a decisive break with the past by withdrawing troops from Iraq and closing the Guantánamo prison camp, he is likely to reinforce Mr Bush’s staunch support for Israel…
And this one:
She [Hillary Clinton] acknowledged… that many past presidents, including her husband, had tried and failed to solve seemingly “intractable” problems in the Middle East. “The President-elect and I understand and are deeply sympathetic to Israel’s desire to defend itself under the current conditions, and to be free of shelling by Hamas rockets. However, we have also been reminded of the tragic humanitarian costs of conflict in the Middle East, and pained by the suffering of Palestinian and Israeli civilians,” she said.
“This must only increase our determination to seek a just and lasting peace agreement that brings real security to Israel, normal and positive relations with its neighbours and independence, economic progress and security to the Palestinians in their own state.”
Asked if she would be willing to engage directly with the Islamic extremists controlling Gaza, Mrs Clinton replied: “You cannot negotiate with Hamas until it renounces violence, recognises Israel and agrees to abide by past agreements. That is an absolute. That is my position and the President-elect’s position.”
Or merely fuel for speculation, as this suggests?
Obama will have to choose between the lady at his State Department and the left-wing talk-at-any price wing of his party. No one can guess which this most opaque of all new presidents will choose.
And another straw in the wind?
Iranian demonstrators burned photographs of Barack Obama today as they protested against America’s inaction over Gaza.
