Middle-East Dealing, Mobbing The Arts & A Link On Scientism

September 12, 2020 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Rick Francona at Middle East Perspectives on the Israel/UAE deal:

‘If Obama and Kerry had not spent so much time and treasure on the ill-advised Iran nuclear deal, the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), countries like the UAE and Saudi Arabia would not be so worried about a potential nuclear-armed Iran. (See my article from earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and China nuclear cooperation – is Riyadh seeking nukes?)‘

Shifting sands…

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Roger Kimball at the New Criterion:

‘This summer, word came that Keith Christiansen, perhaps the single most distinguished curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, was beset by the mob. His tort? Commenting via his Instagram account on a drawing of the French archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir. Lenoir devoted himself to saving French monuments from the all-consuming maw of the French Revolution. “How many great works of art have been lost to the desire to rid ourselves of a past of which we don’t approve[?],” Christiansen wrote.‘

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Just looking for contrary thinkers around here, standing against the prevailing winds, where tides of moral sentiment push into bays, inlets and swamps.

Edward Feser discusses the work of Paul Feyerabend, and the view that some people are turning the sciences into a kind of religion.

Feser:

‘First: science as an institution, and liberalism as its house philosophy, have taken over the role that the Church and its theology played in medieval society.

Second: the case for this takeover rests on the purported superiority of the methods and results of science, but crumbles on close inspection.

Third: when consistently applied, the most powerful expression of the liberal idea—John Stuart Mill’s defense of free speech in On Liberty—tells against rather than in favor of the hegemony of scientism. Let’s consider these themes in turn.‘

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As for me, I’m still sympathetic to the following.

Clive James revisits many quite original, quite accomplished works of Joseph Conrad:

‘They are, in fact, idealists: and idealism is a cast of mind that Conrad questions even more than he questions radicalism. The logical end of radicalism, in his view, is terrorism; but idealism is the mental aberration that allows terrorism to be brought about. Conrad’s originality was to see that a new tyranny could be generated by people who thought that their rebellion against the old tyranny was rational. Thus his writings seem prescient about what was to happen in the Soviet Union. He didn’t predict the Nazi tyranny because he had underestimated the power of the irrational to organise itself into a state. But then, nobody predicted that except its perpetrators; and anyway, mere prediction was not his business. His business was the psychological analysis made possible by an acute historical awareness. Under Western Eyes is valuable not because it came true but because it rang true even at the time, only now we can better hear the deep, sad note.’

Related on this site: Here’s Nietzsche scholar J.P. Stern on Nietzsche’s anti-Christian, anti-secular morality (Kant, utilitarians), anti-democratic, and anti-Greek (except the “heroic” Greek) biases…See the comments Repost-Camille Paglia At Arion: Why Break, Blow, Burn Was Successful…
Maybe if you’re defending religion, Nietzsche is a problematic reference: Dinesh D’Souza And Daniel Dennett at Tufts University: Nietzsche’s Prophesy…
…Repost-From The Spiked Review Of Books Via The A & L Daily: ‘Rescuing The Enlightenment From Its Exploiters’

Roger That-Will Video Games Corrupt Your Soul And Do You Already Have An Innate Knowledge Of Such Things? Some Links

A Few Iran Links From Ross Douthat And Middle East Perspectives

January 7, 2020 / chr1 / Leave a comment

From Rick Francona at Middle East Perspectives: Fallout from the killing of Qods Force commander Qasem Soleimani

A. I have no doubt there will be reactions, both by Iraqi Shi’a groups/militias, and possibly even the Iranians directly. While in the past, we have seen the Iranians conducting their operations in the region via their Iraqi, Lebanese, even Afghan and Pakistani proxies, the U.S. killing of Qasem Soleimani may cause a direct Iranian response on an American target. I suspect it will be against an American target in the region, possibly the Persian Gulf.

A quick word on the killing of Soleimani. There has been speculation in some media that the intelligence used to support the decision to kill Soleimani and Kata’ib Hizballah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was not as definitive as portrayed by U.S. Administration officials.

My response is that there has been sufficient cause for years to eliminate Soleimani. It was Soleimani who was behind proxy Iraqi Shi’a militias which caused the death of over 600 American troops, and the wounding of hundreds more. That alone, to me, is enough reason to kill him. Killing al-Muhandis? A bonus.

Ross Douthat at the NY Times applies some Walter Russell Mead American foreign policy thinking:

Douthat here:

‘The Iranian government is indeed our enemy, to an extent that the Hamiltonians in the Obama administration sometimes underestimated, and in that sense Trump’s hawkishness toward the mullahs fits with his Jacksonian approach. But the Tehran regime’s capacity and inclination to cause problems for America also reflect our regional presence, posture and alliances, which mostly exist to advance a kind of mixtape of Hamiltonian and Wilsonian grand strategies — access to Middle Eastern oil, the promotion of democracy and human rights, and regime change in Tehran itself.

As posted:

Both from The Federalist:

President Trump Can Still Avert A Catastrophe With Iran, And He Should

Panic Over War With Iran Is An Info Operation To Preserve The Iran Deal

My thoughts as a semi-informed citizen: I remember thinking that the Iranian regime (proxies, guns, terrorism) was the kind of regime with whom we couldn’t really do business (anti-American from the get-go), and that the deeper, populist ambitions of many Persians might support some kind of Iranian level-up to nuclear legitimacy, further destabilizing the region after a longer American strategic retreat.

Many signs pointed towards a conflict.

At the time, I didn’t much like the McCain campaign’s noises on Iran, potentially leading to a stand-off or even a much more difficult war than the Iraq campaign, without many of the Iraq war’s architects and supporting base having to examine their underlying assumptions. This, given the many failure of America’s political and intellectual classes to properly consider what I see as many current American internal social, political and cultural divisions.

This process of decay and/or re-formation of our political and intellectual elite still seems to be ongoing. All in all, I remain highly skeptical.

Add to this the ‘our-deal-or-war’ peace rhetoric of the Obama administration and what seemed the amateurish quality of their foreign policy goals?

Here we are, I suppose.

Relevant key-word search on this site ‘Iran’: How’s That Iran Deal Going, Exactly?…

Repost-Henry Kissinger & George Schulz Via The WSJ: ‘The Iran Deal And Its Consequences’

Adam Garfinkle had a thoughtful piece on American political discourse and the Iran deal.

No Country For Liber-tari-ans And Nobody’s Business But The Turks? Some Links

April 9, 2018April 12, 2018 / chr1 / Leave a comment

From Middle-East Perspectives: ‘What Are Erdogan’s Intentions After The Fall Of Afrin?‘

‘That said, it is interesting that Erdoğan keeps using the term “Ottoman” in much of his rhetoric – for decades the Turks have avoided the term, claiming that atrocities such as the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides were not done by Turks, but the Ottomans. It appears now that is a distinction without a difference. His displays of the 1920 “national oath” map are not accidental – it is there for a reason.’

Sorry for the title, but I’m still thinking the resurgent Islamism and authoritarian populism of Erdogan, combined with the fires burning across the Middle-East, along with the revanchism of Putin’s Russia, and the relative weakness of European leadership, bears watching. It’s got me worried.

Via Stratfor via Twitter:

Read Stratfor’s latest Middle East assessment: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of a U.S. Pullout From #Syria. Want to see all the angles? Read Stratfor. https://t.co/WFttPuveL0 pic.twitter.com/Chb7nNK19v

— Stratfor (@Stratfor) April 8, 2018

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Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic: ”A Dissent Concerning Kevin Williamson‘

Written from inside the publication:

‘Individuals participating in the public sphere, and publications that aspire to cultivate a broad civic dialogue, ought never slip into indifference to injustice or abandon moral judgments. But neither should they mistake tolerance for moral collapse. Much can be worked out by objecting to the objectionable in ways that do not foreclose the possibility of all cooperation. As citizens, if not as employees of any particular company, we are inescapably bound. And it is incumbent on all of us, even in our inevitable moments of pained outrage, to model how to work together.’

When you write for money, you have to make some compromises on principle; you’re part of an organization. You’ll have to plug other people’s work and placate the financial interests and readers of the magazine. More broadly, all of us are, subtly, and often imperceptibly, influenced by the people and environments through which we move.

My two cents regarding the fracturing of the political Left: The Atlantic, The NY Times, The New Yorker etc. have long published and endorsed various forms of progressive and radical politics, especially since the 60’s. Such politics traditionally came packaged with a commitment to the arts, the avant-garde, dissenting voices, liberal and sometimes even conservative establishmentarianism. In the past, there was more of a functioning establishment to react against.

As I see the world, pegging highest ideals and deepest moral thinking to Civil Rights activism, social justice, and various reactionary and collectivist political movements has caught up with these publications. There’s always someone more pure.

Just as there is a fractured and frustrated conservative movement and Republican party, there is a fractured liberal and activist Left and Democrat party. The Atlantic is plugged into much of that populist Left sentiment (irrationally anti-Trump).

Don’t be surprised when it happens: Many individuals on the Left will continue to subsume their own experiences into group identity, feeling perfectly righteous and justified as part of a mob swarming dissenters on the path to the better, or perhaps, the perfect world to come (speaking and acting for what they believe to be ALL women and minorities within group indentity and endless protest).

Kevin Williamson, and for that matter, Fridersdorf if he’s not careful, can easily become dissenters.

Heretics, even.

Via The Future Of Capitalism: ‘The Politics Of The New Yorker’

Under A Green Moon-Ira Stoll At The New York Sun: ‘Comma in the New Yorker Opens Up Quite a Vista Of Liberal Parochialism’

From The New Yorker: ‘Writing Powered By Amtrak’

Kevin Williamson At The National Review: ‘Whose Liberalism?’

The Personal Ain’t Political-Holding The Line Against Rape Ideologues-Conor Friedersdorf On George Will

Michael Totten Interviews Rick Francona At World Affairs: ‘From Saigon to Baghdad’

May 12, 2012 / chr1 / Leave a comment

Full interview here.

Totten is guest-hosting at Instapundit. An informal, interesting discussion about the Middle East:

‘Most US military sources I’ve spoken to are familiar with Iraq and the Persian Gulf but know relatively little about the Levant (the Eastern Mediterranean) and even less about distant North Africa. Francona knows Iraq and the Gulf, and the Levant and the crucial parts of North Africa.’

Francona from the interview:

‘The only country that ever seriously embarked on a nuclear weapons program and failed to develop a bomb is Iraq, and that’s only because the Israelis stopped it. Every other country that had the will and the material support has succeeded. No one has ever been stopped by technology. Everyone has been able to acquire the fissile material by hook or by crook. It’s no longer magic. It just isn’t.

Non-lethal methods are always better than blowing things up, but I don’t think anything will stop the Iranians short of war. You and I were at the same briefing about this in Israel. The Israelis think Iran can’t be deterred, and I think they’re right.

So we have to do one of two things. We either tell the Iranians that we won’t allow them to develop nuclear weapons, and that we’re prepared to physically stop them, or we start planning for the day when Iran has the bomb’

Walter Russell Mead At The American Interest: ‘Iran: Keeping The World’s Oddest Couple Together’…Materialism and Leftism Paul Berman On Bloggingheads: The Left Can Criticize Iran

…From Michael Totten: ‘An Interview With Christopher Hitchens’…From Abu Muqawama: ‘Mubarak And Me’…From Michael Totten: ‘The New Egyptian Underground’…Michael Totten At The American Interest: “A Leaner, Meaner Brotherhood”