Sadly that seems to be the case. It is amazing how unwilling or unable to even distinguish between supporting a group and opposing behavior many progressives are. The lack of statements like "I support the Palestinian cause, but this behavior is absolutely unacceptable," is kind of worrying, as though any behavior at all is acceptable if one is on the right side.
That's what is so worrisome. If their ends were "no raping and kidnapping" that'd be one thing, but rather the acceptable ends have very horrible means made acceptable by association, apparently. It really makes you wonder what is going through their heads (presumably nothing good.)
Yea, when did that word become "ok"? It's like people imagine you can "decolonize" a place in some way other than forcibly removing all the people who fall into the colonizer category. Does no one using that term realize it is a synonym for ethnic cleansing? One with a slightly more specific use case, perhaps, but in the end the same process. Yet people bandy it about like they are talking about removing excessive onion from the outside of a bagel.
It's true that a bunch of online progressives are acting like this, but not the elected officials; AOC made a statement saying that the attacks were wrong.
Yea, condemning the attacks then calling for de-escalation instead of, say, freeing of hostages and punishing those who executed the attacks... that seems like equivocation at best, and paying lip service to morality while running cover for the offenders at best.
Totally disagree, deescalation is in Israel's own best interest, although their current leadership will never see that. Like the US after 9/11 they will waste their blood and treasure on collective punishment and lashing out, instead of capitalizing on the global good will they have now.
Thanks again for being here, Dave, for at least trying to steelman the progressive side. Tho I’m sure you’re wrong, based on failed prior deescalations.
What precisely is that good will going to get them? Help against their enemies? Security against further attacks? Retribution?
Hell, is it going to get any neighboring country to say "Ok, we are going to absorb the Palestinians and make them part of our country instead of using them as a permanent refuge-based militant group."
It isn't clear to me that global good will is what Isreal needs as an end right now, nor even particularly what use it is as a means unless to the end of solving one of its existential threats for a while.
I found the footnote in this essay to be worthy of more than a footnote. (Copied here for emphasis.)
"...some libertarians [are] vehemently opposed to Israel and sounding like Progressives, while others view Israel much more favorably, in the process sounding like conservatives. One famous libertarian catch-phrase is “anything peaceful,” and that makes it uncomfortable to take sides in a war. If I had to guess, I would say that should American involvement in the war in the Middle East deepen, libertarians will be opposed to such involvement, just as they tend to be on the side of non-involvement in the Ukraine war."
The problem with the libertarian "anything peaceful" approach to geopolitics is that it ignores the fact that megalomaniacs are evil, and their malevolence doesn't stop at the ocean or national borders. A peaceful approach to Nazi German, Putin's Russia, the Iranian regime and its satellites, now especially Hamas, Chavista Venezuela and others simply doesn't work. We'd eventually pay the heavy price for the benign neglect of "anything peaceful."
I have long believed that this all ends with Tel Aviv a smoking nuclear ruin quickly followed by every Arab/Islamic city becoming a smoking nuclear ruin. There is no middle ground of compromise between the Jews of Israel and the various Islamic governments, no matter how much we or they want to pretend otherwise. Saturday proved this once again. A real and stable solution had to be implemented starting 80 years ago, not yesterday.
If I were in Netanyahu's shoes, the Gazans would be pushed into the sea and the entire region emptied of Arabs. This doesn't mean they have to be killed, but they must be relocated to other countries- same for all remaining Arabs in the West Bank. Of course, this doesn't change the outcome I foresee one iota, but that is the political reality as it stands today.
Yeah, ethnic cleansing is a nasty business, but pair it with a check for a few grand as a "relocation fee" and free plane ticket on Emirates Airlines, and we're firmly in "eh, coulda been worse" territory.
There is no "this all ends". What do you think this is, Ireland? That was nothing. If there is one lesson to draw from history there, it is, "It never ends."
Thinking of that business the other week, the Bari Weiss debate about "whether the sexual revolution failed" or something: a place like Gaza represents to me the failure of that debate to confront the most salient point, the disparate takeup of the sexual revolution around the world.
"just as they tend to be on the side of non-involvement in the Ukraine war"
Are they?
I would have thought that the libertarian response to COVID would have been more libertarian, but a lot of beltway libertarians fell in line with the COVID consensus.
And it's the same with Ukraine. Don't most of your GMU colleagues support aid for Ukraine? If I took a review of the beltway libertarian intellectual circuit I bet a majority would support aid for Ukraine (and sanctions for Russia). That's the impression I get from the substacks I read.
Even Bryan Caplan seems to offer some kind of tacit endorsement of the Ukraine war (saying Putin could not be appeased). I haven't seen him come out against military aid for Ukraine.
Self described libertarian Richard Hanania went on a complete 180 on the Ukraine war issue becoming a mega hawk.
I don't endorse this view, but its very easy to come up with a "we have to fight em over there in order to not fight em over here" view of being pro-war leading to greater peace in the end. A libertarian doesn't have to be against every war.
Hanania thinks the antiwar people are goofy and kind of low IQ moralistic in a way that is not clever or Machivavellian enough for him. He sees them as low status, and "status" considerations are very hot with people in the GMU orbit.
(Of course, his takes on the CRA is low status as well, but he has to pick his battles.)
I guess in a way I find his utter crassness about it less off putting then people who are essentially the same but less honest with themselves. You need a very low bar for anyone to get over it though.
I think it's also just that, to participate in public life, you must endorse the Ukraine war regardless of whether or not you privately think that it is stupid. It is like Sparkle Motion in the Donnie Darko film. Failing to show sufficient enthusiasm for Sparkle Motion will get you cancelled. Hanania understands that even if you have SS and swastika tattoos, if you support Ukraine, you are a good guy and the system will cover for you.
Ukrainian Nazis exist, and they create a serious contradiction for people who use the oppressor/oppressed model. I cannot blame anyone who lived there in 1939-45 and was forced to choose sides between Hitler and Stalin, who chose Hitler as the lesser evil. Bear in mind that Stalin killed more people, and his target group was Ukrainians.
As for beltway libertarians, that to me is a contradiction in terms. At most you get people like Reagan's cabinet members who were too timid to even suggest any real reforms.
Yeah I agree. But no one can see into the heart of someone else, so this could only be inferred by comparing Caplan's past statements to current positions, but even then he could say he simply changed his mind (same with Hananania who literally wrote a book and headed a little think tank contradicting his current position). During WWII, WWI, and the Civil War you could be thrown in prison for contradicting the party line. They don't throw people in prison anymore, but they will take away your job and tortiously interfere with your other relations with impunity if you do not tow the party line. So, I agree too, the Ukraine war is double plus good until it is double plus bad. Woohoo for our healthy and dynamic liberalism which permits just such a diverse range of views to be aired in an open marketplace of ideas free from censorship.
Yes, I imagine that many will write opinion pieces about how mistakes were made when it's already too late to save lives. It's what a lot of them did with Iraq.
I find foreign policy the least politically or narratively consistent topic. I've come around to this after watching sides and narratives shift on a dime throughout my life, much more so than with any domestic issue.
I'm pretty sure there is a consistent military industrial complex, but it allies with whoever it needs to and uses whatever narrative works. This can mean sweeping re-alingments at times.
You can come up with an oppressor/oppressed, civilization/barbarism, war/peace narrative for either side of any conflict without much effort.
At the end of the day, Israel is just in the wrong place. It's surrounded by hundreds of millions of inbred low IQs that don't like them no matter what they do. Either they genocide the entire Middle East or they put up with this shit basically forever.
I have no opinion on what measures they take to "put up with this" as best they can. It's not my or anyone else's business.
This reminds me of the moral fervor and terror that Americans went through after 9/11. It convulsed our politics and resulted in two wars, one of which lasted for over 20 years. After trillions spent and tens of thousands dead, I am unsure what we actually gained or what problem if any we solved. But maybe it wasn't about problem solving, maybe it was just vengeance.
Amid all the moral condemnations, I am not hearing anyone describe what the end game is nor what moral lines if any Israel won't be willing to cross to get there. There are about 2 million people in gaza, of which 35% are 14 or younger. Is the plan to kill them all? If it's not, then what is the plan? Indefinite occupation? Ethnically cleanse gaza by forcibly relocating all the palestinians to different countries and moving israelis to the area?
If we want to do a world war 2 analogy, then I'd point out that Japan is not gaza and its unclear how the lessons of reconstructing japan apply if at all here.
If Israel does take drastic measures, the people who are "neutral" must bear some responsibility. They could try to convince the radical Arabs to stop attempting another holocaust. I think that President Biden personally gets this, better than many in his Administration.
I think it's unlikely that civilian damage will result in people overthrowing Hamas and installing a permanently liberal regime that doesn't just ape Hamas eventually. Rather then assign collective guilt I'd just accept civilian collateral damage as a cost of doing business and not try to make any excuses.
Strategic bombing didn't cause the German or Japanese people to rise up. Twenty years of occupation did nothing in Afghanistan. The Morgenthou plan wasn't working well either.
The only thing that worked was prolonged mass military occupation and reconstruction with the intent and capability to reshape those societies, and we had much better raw material to work with in those two countries. It would probably be a waste of time in the Middle East.
"What should we do?"
I don't know. All I can offer is that it's up to the people involved to decide what to do. The rest of us shouldn't interfere or judge.
This is too vague a statement for you. 'Some responsibility' will translate into lots of corpses, lots of refugees and great suffering. The radicals get what they want, war with Israel, dead Jews and a permanently radicalized generation with millions of relatives spread across the world who will have at least a familial sympathy. This isn't bearing responsibility, this is justifying outcomes.
I didn't comment on prevention or not prevention, or on Israel's response. I object to someone who is typically careful with their thoughts and words trying to deflect blame or guilt. The 'neutral' people are going to suffer in this war, as they always do, but that is a tragic outcome not a justified outcome. You cannot avoid collateral damage in war generally and doubly so when fighting an organization that intentionally uses civilians as shields, but call those civilians what they mostly are- unfortunate- not responsible.
The "Palestinians," as that word is now used, have never been a nation or controlled their own destiny. They, especially in Gaza, rely completely on their sponsors in Iran, Qatar, and elsewhere to keep eating, because neither their sponsors nor Israel allow an economy to be created in the territories. No neighboring country will let them in as refugees. So they have to take their sponsors' orders, which are mostly to play the victim after Hamas launches rockets (and other attacks) from their neighborhoods, and Israel perforce shoots back. In short, the Palestinians really are oppressed, but not by Israel!
This is why I believe Israel should be directing its retaliation at the sponsor countries, especially Iran. As long as the sponsors pay no price for the intifada it will continue, as it has for nearly a century.
I get your point, but on some level, if the Israelis don't respond with serious force, I think they risk looking weak in the eyes of Hamas and its sympathizers, and thus just invite more such attacks. In a conflict like this, just like in, say, a game of chess, you have to consider how the other party will respond and how they will react to your response, etc.
Either they will wipe them all out or they will learn to live with this kind of cyclical violence.
Pick your poison. I'm glad I'm not in their shoes and I don't have an opinion on what they choose.
"its unclear how the lessons of reconstructing japan apply if at all here"
It doesn't. Japan was a high IQ successful society that had a bad spat with militarism that needed to be removed. It had already built a successful civilization, you merely had to RE-construct it with the militarism bits pulled out.
The Middle East is one of the lowest potential civilizations in existence. They never constructed anything (even their cities are things others built for their oil). If we removed their leadership they would just elevate similar leadership one day. They can't build anything, it's beyond their capacity.
If Israel wasn't there and they didn't have oil we would think of the Middle East no more then we think of Africa.
Isn’t it possible to believe that Palestine is oppressed (the progressive view) and to NOT believe that they have no choice but to slaughter people at a music festival?
From my perspective, the one doesn’t follow the other, and I would assume that the vast majority of progressives would be against the slaughtering even as they say, yes, the Palestinians are oppressed.
I don't doubt such a view is possible and I don't mean at all to impute anything menacing to you personally, just your comment connects to my thoughts about progressive ideology ...
At the risk of wading into something Kling perhaps wishes to wait until his next piece: I feel like the idea that 7 million Jews in a New Jersey basically, surrounded by 20? 30? times as many Arabs - even permitting Arabs within their own border, while not given such privilege in return - are or could be oppressors, is pernicious on its face - for them, of course, but also for its wider application in the future.
I have never seen a copy of "Mein Kampf" but someone I trust who needs to understand things for himself, looked into it (no, he didn't read the whole damn thing or anything close), and said he found it not quite what he thought it would be.
His was of course not a novel revelation, but is not, I think, the generally emphasized view. What was unexpected for him at the time (probably a teenager) was he found in it the concept of not one "Master Race", for Hitler - but two.
It is hard not to see that Hitler has won the day, in this regard. The world has designated Jews a master race, who will always be oppressors no matter what. All these niceties and potential war crimes we are discussing - it will matter for those involved but it won't matter to the wider world one bit, so entrenched is the notion.
I would even go so far as to say this idea infects even the well-intentioned conservative, a little bit. In the hands of lunatics and stupid people - and progressives - it is pure poison.
The attack is also an example of the mimesis of war. Israel made a reputation for itself as being at the forefront of military technology and "cyberwarfare." However, the attack the other day was accompanied by what was apparently a highly successful cyberattack that shut down alarm systems and communications, with rumored support from Iranian hackers. Hamas made use of inexpensive drones to destroy and disable many tanks and vehicles, used cheap gliders (a longtime favorite tool of special forces going back to WW2), and evaded pervasive surveillance that should have caught the plot. Hamas exploited the complacency of the incumbent power.
W.r.t. the progressive framing, this really upends the typical progressive-UN-type way of looking at Hamas and the Palestinians more broadly as victims without agency. In this case, they were the aggressors, and they won a strategic victory and many tactical victories broadcast on livestream. Israel is also outgunned by Iran, and even with US assistance, if Iran enters, the outcome of the war is really up in the air. It also upends the conservative viewpoint that just sees that Palestinians as "stone age" barbarians. It reminds me of how the US had trouble parsing the technological superiority of coordinated Japanese sea and air power in the early stages of the Pacific war. Neither way of looking at the problem is particularly helpful to the Israelis or relevant to the reality on the ground.
The details about how it was done are inherently matters that if still secret must be kept secret for a long time. It is hard to trust any writing on this event, so we just have to live with deep uncertainty about how important was the relative role from whatever contributed to the operation.
That being said, they could have done this without cyber and without rockets. It's all about numbers, which Hamas had, and hard obstacles standoff, which the Israelis didn't. They will. That's my prediction for how this reaches a new equilibrium. If that means carving a five kilometer wide "moat" and saturating it with dozens of layers of tall razor wire fences and landmines to make it as impenetrable to mass movement as the Korean DMZ, then that is what will happen. The jury is out as regards whose land will get the mines, but my guess is some from both sides, to seem "fair".
In security analysis, any fixed point, no matter how robustly secured, can be overcome and breached by some amount of simultaneously concentrated force, such as a large number of sufficiently resourced militants. Once the line is breached, if you are not manning each side with forces equivalent to those deployed in serious trench warfare, you will not be able to close the breach quicker than the enemy can fully exploit the gap in your defenses.
So, in the near future, the obstacle zone between Gaza and Israel will be augmented such that the minimally adequate breaching force is raised from four figures to seven or eight.
That (the lack of big, visible barriers between the Pals and Israelis) struck me when I saw the frontier down there, which I think was before they put in the new fencing but after 2006. I had been expecting some kind of militarized border, but it just looked like a lot of dirt in the Jordanian direction and towards Egypt. In the context of what happened the other day, the sheer smallness and openness of the region under attack cannot be understated. I remember almost taking a wrong turn towards a border crossing, but it just looked like the ones we have between the US and Canada. Unfortunately for the American supporters of "cyberfences, like Israel does it" will win over the alternative of a "big beautiful" concrete wall with many bunkers and lots of landmines on either side.
After such incidents, there is a lot of jockeying between the military specialties, and the future security posture is determined to a significant extent by which one wins the argument. My belief is that the old school, low-tech, uncool, cheap, and crude Ground Engineers will win, and new school, hi-tech, sexy, expensive and 'smart' Air, Intel, and Cyber will lose. You get a LOT more security bang for the buck, so to speak, with trenches, walls, razor wire, mines, and moats. They are cheap, forbidding, require comparably negligible maintenance, upkeep or updating in furious arms races. The engineers can turn Gaza into the newest Mediterranean island in a week. You can't hack a moat full of mines. "East Gaza Beach: It's a Blast!"
Public social media outcry, "#LetThemDig!"
For years the Israelis have been fooling themselves the same way as all the other fools, if we are richer and smarter, our advantage must be in the high tech and the capital intense. Wrong.
They have the advantage there, but they still have a more compelling comparative advantage in digging trenches and laying minefields. So they'll dig.
Re: "Israel should not be held to absurd standards of non-barbarity during war."
The sentence might be taken to have two different meanings:
(a) During war, don't hold Israel to *absurd* (unreasonably high) standards of non-barbarity, but do hold Israel to *reasonable* standards of non-barbarity. Naturally, questions arise: In practice, are there bright lines? Or are blurry lines and ethical ambiguity necessarily a crucial margin in war?
(b) Standards of non-barbarity during war are *per se* absurd, i.e., barbarity is intrinsic to war. To parse barbarity, then, is beside the point.
I look forward to learning more in your next essays.
I suspect item b is right out as a possible meaning from Kling. Condoning or even apparently encouraging rape, kidnapping, slaughtering of civilians, etc. is all obviously barbaric and something the west has largely managed to avoid for the past hundred and fifty odd years.
I don't know that there is a single bright line, but there are at least a few bright lines. E.G., in many parts of the world at different times, warfare included rape, looting and pillaging, and the torture, killing and mutilation of prisoners/wounded enemies. I would hope we could all agree those are all on the far side of the barbarism line.
Centrists use a fourth, "both sides" axis. In this axis, individuals are somehow separate from the organizations that act in their name. Hamas is not Gazans. The IDF is not Israelis. "Both sides are responsible". We need "the international community" to be involved. Individuals could not want violence, therefore there must be a shadowy conspiracy that explains how it happened. Calls for de-escalation, "proportionality", "restraint", and ceasefire. Politicians speak in the passive voice.
I find this “both sides are to blame” stance to be morally bankrupt. It seems to me the the defense of civilized society is a goal that trumps all others, and the behavior and rhetoric of Hamas does not come close to being civilized.
A major limitation of all these axes is that they too easily lead people to think of them as binaries rather than spectra. It is tempting, because it feels satisfying, to believe there is a Side of Civilization and a Side of Barbarism, or a Side of The Oppressed vs a Side of the Oppressors. Propagandists certainly want you to believe that, and will work as hard as they can to get you to surrender to temptation. But in real life there are always degrees of these things, and most important real-world moral choices involve holding one's nose in some way to pick the lesser evil.
This is certainly true of WWII: the Allies committed monstrous and indefensible war crimes-- even if you don't think e.g. Hiroshima or Dresden fall in this category, consider the Red Army's mass rape campaign-- and yet were still clearly the lesser evil, in both ends (jus ad bellum) and means (jus in bello). Recognizing this doesn't require you to support or excuse Allied war crimes, nor free you from the moral responsibility to advocate reforms that make such crimes less likely in the future. But it does require you to cast aside simplistic good-vs-evil binaries, make your peace with the reality of a second-best world, and commit to supporting such lesser evils as one must in that world. Similarly, you can take a very dim view indeed of the Israeli regime and its ideology and conduct, and even the whole Zionist project, and still recognize that it is, at least for the foreseeable future, the obvious lesser evil compared with Hamas.
Doing so requires some level of emotional and intellectual maturity, and I think the maturity/immaturity axis is an underappreciated fourth dimension here. It is also a mature contemplation of a second-best world, for example, that permits one to utter such a phrase as "Markets fail; use markets". Maturity has often been associated with conservatism-- think of Churchill's famous remarks, or more recently Yuval Levin's work on formative institutions as builders of maturity-- but this is not a necessary association: in the Trump era there is no lack of immaturity on the Right. Indeed a general diminution of maturity across the political spectrum (maybe connected to "17 is the new 15" somehow?) is one of the persistent problems with the present discourse and with presently available political choices in much of the world.
I find Arnold Kling's book good as far as it goes, but naive in that it assumes that negotiating a settlement is always possible and desirable. On some topics and against some opponents, fighting is truly the only constructive reaction.
I see the "three languages" as really the way people on each side organize their feelings. The choice of one is more than a communication preference, but is not an "analytical approach" because nobody really uses analysis to decide his feelings. Man is not a rational animal but a rationalizing animal.
That being said, the "oppressor/oppressed" model is not just wrong on this topic -- it is always wrong. Show me an oppressed group and I'll show you someone who is trying to assert entitlement to preferential treatment by labeling himself as belonging to that group. Intersectionality is worthless as a measure of virtue by any rational standard, and is simply never credible.
Now, as to "how barbaric" can Israel be, the answer is probably not barbaric enough. History has shown that every time they beat the Palestinians, and no matter how much they try to limit them, the Palestinians will always find a way to attack. They are effectively Satan in Dante's Inferno. Only frozen in place and suffering is he no threat. He'd be pitiable but for the fact that he would destroy everything if freed.
An animal with whom no peace is possible is put down. With a human society, we don't want to do that.
I'd suggest that the de-nazification of Germany post WWII is probably one of the better historical examples of how to forcibly change the views of a populace. Of course, Israel waging that kind of psychological coercion and control would be seen as barbaric or brain-washing as well, but it's maybe one of the least bas options.
El Salvador style mass incarceration seems like it might be worth a try.
Historical, formal hostage taking sounds barbaric, but I wonder if it would have any influence here. Likely not, but maybe if it were done on a broad enough scale?
Thanks for sharing the Sam Harris essay. He makes a very strong civilization vs barbarism argument, which shows one needs to look beneath the obvious political labels. That goes double for libertarians (of whom it has always been true that the label hides much heterogeneity).
There is absolutely no need of taking a charitable view of Progressives on this topic
Sadly that seems to be the case. It is amazing how unwilling or unable to even distinguish between supporting a group and opposing behavior many progressives are. The lack of statements like "I support the Palestinian cause, but this behavior is absolutely unacceptable," is kind of worrying, as though any behavior at all is acceptable if one is on the right side.
they are leftists; the ends justify the means
That's what is so worrisome. If their ends were "no raping and kidnapping" that'd be one thing, but rather the acceptable ends have very horrible means made acceptable by association, apparently. It really makes you wonder what is going through their heads (presumably nothing good.)
indeed, the end is "decolonization" which means genocide
Yea, when did that word become "ok"? It's like people imagine you can "decolonize" a place in some way other than forcibly removing all the people who fall into the colonizer category. Does no one using that term realize it is a synonym for ethnic cleansing? One with a slightly more specific use case, perhaps, but in the end the same process. Yet people bandy it about like they are talking about removing excessive onion from the outside of a bagel.
It's true that a bunch of online progressives are acting like this, but not the elected officials; AOC made a statement saying that the attacks were wrong.
And ten more hedging. Or doing penance for having done so.
Yea, condemning the attacks then calling for de-escalation instead of, say, freeing of hostages and punishing those who executed the attacks... that seems like equivocation at best, and paying lip service to morality while running cover for the offenders at best.
Totally disagree, deescalation is in Israel's own best interest, although their current leadership will never see that. Like the US after 9/11 they will waste their blood and treasure on collective punishment and lashing out, instead of capitalizing on the global good will they have now.
Thanks again for being here, Dave, for at least trying to steelman the progressive side. Tho I’m sure you’re wrong, based on failed prior deescalations.
What precisely is that good will going to get them? Help against their enemies? Security against further attacks? Retribution?
Hell, is it going to get any neighboring country to say "Ok, we are going to absorb the Palestinians and make them part of our country instead of using them as a permanent refuge-based militant group."
It isn't clear to me that global good will is what Isreal needs as an end right now, nor even particularly what use it is as a means unless to the end of solving one of its existential threats for a while.
Increasingly any topic
I found the footnote in this essay to be worthy of more than a footnote. (Copied here for emphasis.)
"...some libertarians [are] vehemently opposed to Israel and sounding like Progressives, while others view Israel much more favorably, in the process sounding like conservatives. One famous libertarian catch-phrase is “anything peaceful,” and that makes it uncomfortable to take sides in a war. If I had to guess, I would say that should American involvement in the war in the Middle East deepen, libertarians will be opposed to such involvement, just as they tend to be on the side of non-involvement in the Ukraine war."
The problem with the libertarian "anything peaceful" approach to geopolitics is that it ignores the fact that megalomaniacs are evil, and their malevolence doesn't stop at the ocean or national borders. A peaceful approach to Nazi German, Putin's Russia, the Iranian regime and its satellites, now especially Hamas, Chavista Venezuela and others simply doesn't work. We'd eventually pay the heavy price for the benign neglect of "anything peaceful."
I have long believed that this all ends with Tel Aviv a smoking nuclear ruin quickly followed by every Arab/Islamic city becoming a smoking nuclear ruin. There is no middle ground of compromise between the Jews of Israel and the various Islamic governments, no matter how much we or they want to pretend otherwise. Saturday proved this once again. A real and stable solution had to be implemented starting 80 years ago, not yesterday.
If I were in Netanyahu's shoes, the Gazans would be pushed into the sea and the entire region emptied of Arabs. This doesn't mean they have to be killed, but they must be relocated to other countries- same for all remaining Arabs in the West Bank. Of course, this doesn't change the outcome I foresee one iota, but that is the political reality as it stands today.
Yeah, ethnic cleansing is a nasty business, but pair it with a check for a few grand as a "relocation fee" and free plane ticket on Emirates Airlines, and we're firmly in "eh, coulda been worse" territory.
There is no "this all ends". What do you think this is, Ireland? That was nothing. If there is one lesson to draw from history there, it is, "It never ends."
Fair enough. This cycle of it ends.
Thinking of that business the other week, the Bari Weiss debate about "whether the sexual revolution failed" or something: a place like Gaza represents to me the failure of that debate to confront the most salient point, the disparate takeup of the sexual revolution around the world.
"just as they tend to be on the side of non-involvement in the Ukraine war"
Are they?
I would have thought that the libertarian response to COVID would have been more libertarian, but a lot of beltway libertarians fell in line with the COVID consensus.
And it's the same with Ukraine. Don't most of your GMU colleagues support aid for Ukraine? If I took a review of the beltway libertarian intellectual circuit I bet a majority would support aid for Ukraine (and sanctions for Russia). That's the impression I get from the substacks I read.
Even Bryan Caplan seems to offer some kind of tacit endorsement of the Ukraine war (saying Putin could not be appeased). I haven't seen him come out against military aid for Ukraine.
https://betonit.substack.com/p/the-ethics-of-putin
Self described libertarian Richard Hanania went on a complete 180 on the Ukraine war issue becoming a mega hawk.
I don't endorse this view, but its very easy to come up with a "we have to fight em over there in order to not fight em over here" view of being pro-war leading to greater peace in the end. A libertarian doesn't have to be against every war.
Hanania thinks the antiwar people are goofy and kind of low IQ moralistic in a way that is not clever or Machivavellian enough for him. He sees them as low status, and "status" considerations are very hot with people in the GMU orbit.
(Of course, his takes on the CRA is low status as well, but he has to pick his battles.)
Yeah I know his schtick.
I guess in a way I find his utter crassness about it less off putting then people who are essentially the same but less honest with themselves. You need a very low bar for anyone to get over it though.
I think it's also just that, to participate in public life, you must endorse the Ukraine war regardless of whether or not you privately think that it is stupid. It is like Sparkle Motion in the Donnie Darko film. Failing to show sufficient enthusiasm for Sparkle Motion will get you cancelled. Hanania understands that even if you have SS and swastika tattoos, if you support Ukraine, you are a good guy and the system will cover for you.
Ukrainian Nazis exist, and they create a serious contradiction for people who use the oppressor/oppressed model. I cannot blame anyone who lived there in 1939-45 and was forced to choose sides between Hitler and Stalin, who chose Hitler as the lesser evil. Bear in mind that Stalin killed more people, and his target group was Ukrainians.
As for beltway libertarians, that to me is a contradiction in terms. At most you get people like Reagan's cabinet members who were too timid to even suggest any real reforms.
That's my take as well.
With Hanania it's almost more forgiving because he wears that intention on his sleeve.
Caplan pretends to be a truth telling intellectual though.
For other Beltway libertarians I think they actually drink the Kool Aid.
Yeah I agree. But no one can see into the heart of someone else, so this could only be inferred by comparing Caplan's past statements to current positions, but even then he could say he simply changed his mind (same with Hananania who literally wrote a book and headed a little think tank contradicting his current position). During WWII, WWI, and the Civil War you could be thrown in prison for contradicting the party line. They don't throw people in prison anymore, but they will take away your job and tortiously interfere with your other relations with impunity if you do not tow the party line. So, I agree too, the Ukraine war is double plus good until it is double plus bad. Woohoo for our healthy and dynamic liberalism which permits just such a diverse range of views to be aired in an open marketplace of ideas free from censorship.
Yes, I imagine that many will write opinion pieces about how mistakes were made when it's already too late to save lives. It's what a lot of them did with Iraq.
Grrr, we would have succeeded if it was not for Fall Guy [insert Paul Bremer, Petraeus, Zelensky in 6 months, etc. here]!
You know even having a Fall Guy would be an improvement. I see a lot of the same names stick around war to war these days.
I find foreign policy the least politically or narratively consistent topic. I've come around to this after watching sides and narratives shift on a dime throughout my life, much more so than with any domestic issue.
I'm pretty sure there is a consistent military industrial complex, but it allies with whoever it needs to and uses whatever narrative works. This can mean sweeping re-alingments at times.
You can come up with an oppressor/oppressed, civilization/barbarism, war/peace narrative for either side of any conflict without much effort.
At the end of the day, Israel is just in the wrong place. It's surrounded by hundreds of millions of inbred low IQs that don't like them no matter what they do. Either they genocide the entire Middle East or they put up with this shit basically forever.
I have no opinion on what measures they take to "put up with this" as best they can. It's not my or anyone else's business.
This reminds me of the moral fervor and terror that Americans went through after 9/11. It convulsed our politics and resulted in two wars, one of which lasted for over 20 years. After trillions spent and tens of thousands dead, I am unsure what we actually gained or what problem if any we solved. But maybe it wasn't about problem solving, maybe it was just vengeance.
Amid all the moral condemnations, I am not hearing anyone describe what the end game is nor what moral lines if any Israel won't be willing to cross to get there. There are about 2 million people in gaza, of which 35% are 14 or younger. Is the plan to kill them all? If it's not, then what is the plan? Indefinite occupation? Ethnically cleanse gaza by forcibly relocating all the palestinians to different countries and moving israelis to the area?
If we want to do a world war 2 analogy, then I'd point out that Japan is not gaza and its unclear how the lessons of reconstructing japan apply if at all here.
If Israel does take drastic measures, the people who are "neutral" must bear some responsibility. They could try to convince the radical Arabs to stop attempting another holocaust. I think that President Biden personally gets this, better than many in his Administration.
I think it's unlikely that civilian damage will result in people overthrowing Hamas and installing a permanently liberal regime that doesn't just ape Hamas eventually. Rather then assign collective guilt I'd just accept civilian collateral damage as a cost of doing business and not try to make any excuses.
Strategic bombing didn't cause the German or Japanese people to rise up. Twenty years of occupation did nothing in Afghanistan. The Morgenthou plan wasn't working well either.
The only thing that worked was prolonged mass military occupation and reconstruction with the intent and capability to reshape those societies, and we had much better raw material to work with in those two countries. It would probably be a waste of time in the Middle East.
"What should we do?"
I don't know. All I can offer is that it's up to the people involved to decide what to do. The rest of us shouldn't interfere or judge.
This is too vague a statement for you. 'Some responsibility' will translate into lots of corpses, lots of refugees and great suffering. The radicals get what they want, war with Israel, dead Jews and a permanently radicalized generation with millions of relatives spread across the world who will have at least a familial sympathy. This isn't bearing responsibility, this is justifying outcomes.
So what should we do to prevent this ?
I didn't comment on prevention or not prevention, or on Israel's response. I object to someone who is typically careful with their thoughts and words trying to deflect blame or guilt. The 'neutral' people are going to suffer in this war, as they always do, but that is a tragic outcome not a justified outcome. You cannot avoid collateral damage in war generally and doubly so when fighting an organization that intentionally uses civilians as shields, but call those civilians what they mostly are- unfortunate- not responsible.
By neutral I meant the EU and other countries not Gaza civilians
The "Palestinians," as that word is now used, have never been a nation or controlled their own destiny. They, especially in Gaza, rely completely on their sponsors in Iran, Qatar, and elsewhere to keep eating, because neither their sponsors nor Israel allow an economy to be created in the territories. No neighboring country will let them in as refugees. So they have to take their sponsors' orders, which are mostly to play the victim after Hamas launches rockets (and other attacks) from their neighborhoods, and Israel perforce shoots back. In short, the Palestinians really are oppressed, but not by Israel!
This is why I believe Israel should be directing its retaliation at the sponsor countries, especially Iran. As long as the sponsors pay no price for the intifada it will continue, as it has for nearly a century.
Ok, my mistake interpreting you incorrectly then. Sorry.
I get your point, but on some level, if the Israelis don't respond with serious force, I think they risk looking weak in the eyes of Hamas and its sympathizers, and thus just invite more such attacks. In a conflict like this, just like in, say, a game of chess, you have to consider how the other party will respond and how they will react to your response, etc.
Either they will wipe them all out or they will learn to live with this kind of cyclical violence.
Pick your poison. I'm glad I'm not in their shoes and I don't have an opinion on what they choose.
"its unclear how the lessons of reconstructing japan apply if at all here"
It doesn't. Japan was a high IQ successful society that had a bad spat with militarism that needed to be removed. It had already built a successful civilization, you merely had to RE-construct it with the militarism bits pulled out.
The Middle East is one of the lowest potential civilizations in existence. They never constructed anything (even their cities are things others built for their oil). If we removed their leadership they would just elevate similar leadership one day. They can't build anything, it's beyond their capacity.
If Israel wasn't there and they didn't have oil we would think of the Middle East no more then we think of Africa.
Isn’t it possible to believe that Palestine is oppressed (the progressive view) and to NOT believe that they have no choice but to slaughter people at a music festival?
From my perspective, the one doesn’t follow the other, and I would assume that the vast majority of progressives would be against the slaughtering even as they say, yes, the Palestinians are oppressed.
I don't doubt such a view is possible and I don't mean at all to impute anything menacing to you personally, just your comment connects to my thoughts about progressive ideology ...
At the risk of wading into something Kling perhaps wishes to wait until his next piece: I feel like the idea that 7 million Jews in a New Jersey basically, surrounded by 20? 30? times as many Arabs - even permitting Arabs within their own border, while not given such privilege in return - are or could be oppressors, is pernicious on its face - for them, of course, but also for its wider application in the future.
I have never seen a copy of "Mein Kampf" but someone I trust who needs to understand things for himself, looked into it (no, he didn't read the whole damn thing or anything close), and said he found it not quite what he thought it would be.
His was of course not a novel revelation, but is not, I think, the generally emphasized view. What was unexpected for him at the time (probably a teenager) was he found in it the concept of not one "Master Race", for Hitler - but two.
It is hard not to see that Hitler has won the day, in this regard. The world has designated Jews a master race, who will always be oppressors no matter what. All these niceties and potential war crimes we are discussing - it will matter for those involved but it won't matter to the wider world one bit, so entrenched is the notion.
I would even go so far as to say this idea infects even the well-intentioned conservative, a little bit. In the hands of lunatics and stupid people - and progressives - it is pure poison.
Excellent piece and framing. As my essay today makes clear, I do not take a charitable view of the progressive side of this.
The attack is also an example of the mimesis of war. Israel made a reputation for itself as being at the forefront of military technology and "cyberwarfare." However, the attack the other day was accompanied by what was apparently a highly successful cyberattack that shut down alarm systems and communications, with rumored support from Iranian hackers. Hamas made use of inexpensive drones to destroy and disable many tanks and vehicles, used cheap gliders (a longtime favorite tool of special forces going back to WW2), and evaded pervasive surveillance that should have caught the plot. Hamas exploited the complacency of the incumbent power.
W.r.t. the progressive framing, this really upends the typical progressive-UN-type way of looking at Hamas and the Palestinians more broadly as victims without agency. In this case, they were the aggressors, and they won a strategic victory and many tactical victories broadcast on livestream. Israel is also outgunned by Iran, and even with US assistance, if Iran enters, the outcome of the war is really up in the air. It also upends the conservative viewpoint that just sees that Palestinians as "stone age" barbarians. It reminds me of how the US had trouble parsing the technological superiority of coordinated Japanese sea and air power in the early stages of the Pacific war. Neither way of looking at the problem is particularly helpful to the Israelis or relevant to the reality on the ground.
The details about how it was done are inherently matters that if still secret must be kept secret for a long time. It is hard to trust any writing on this event, so we just have to live with deep uncertainty about how important was the relative role from whatever contributed to the operation.
That being said, they could have done this without cyber and without rockets. It's all about numbers, which Hamas had, and hard obstacles standoff, which the Israelis didn't. They will. That's my prediction for how this reaches a new equilibrium. If that means carving a five kilometer wide "moat" and saturating it with dozens of layers of tall razor wire fences and landmines to make it as impenetrable to mass movement as the Korean DMZ, then that is what will happen. The jury is out as regards whose land will get the mines, but my guess is some from both sides, to seem "fair".
In security analysis, any fixed point, no matter how robustly secured, can be overcome and breached by some amount of simultaneously concentrated force, such as a large number of sufficiently resourced militants. Once the line is breached, if you are not manning each side with forces equivalent to those deployed in serious trench warfare, you will not be able to close the breach quicker than the enemy can fully exploit the gap in your defenses.
So, in the near future, the obstacle zone between Gaza and Israel will be augmented such that the minimally adequate breaching force is raised from four figures to seven or eight.
That (the lack of big, visible barriers between the Pals and Israelis) struck me when I saw the frontier down there, which I think was before they put in the new fencing but after 2006. I had been expecting some kind of militarized border, but it just looked like a lot of dirt in the Jordanian direction and towards Egypt. In the context of what happened the other day, the sheer smallness and openness of the region under attack cannot be understated. I remember almost taking a wrong turn towards a border crossing, but it just looked like the ones we have between the US and Canada. Unfortunately for the American supporters of "cyberfences, like Israel does it" will win over the alternative of a "big beautiful" concrete wall with many bunkers and lots of landmines on either side.
After such incidents, there is a lot of jockeying between the military specialties, and the future security posture is determined to a significant extent by which one wins the argument. My belief is that the old school, low-tech, uncool, cheap, and crude Ground Engineers will win, and new school, hi-tech, sexy, expensive and 'smart' Air, Intel, and Cyber will lose. You get a LOT more security bang for the buck, so to speak, with trenches, walls, razor wire, mines, and moats. They are cheap, forbidding, require comparably negligible maintenance, upkeep or updating in furious arms races. The engineers can turn Gaza into the newest Mediterranean island in a week. You can't hack a moat full of mines. "East Gaza Beach: It's a Blast!"
Public social media outcry, "#LetThemDig!"
For years the Israelis have been fooling themselves the same way as all the other fools, if we are richer and smarter, our advantage must be in the high tech and the capital intense. Wrong.
They have the advantage there, but they still have a more compelling comparative advantage in digging trenches and laying minefields. So they'll dig.
The old ways are the best ways.
"Libertarians use a liberty-coercion axis."
Those libertarians are demonstrably confused: https://jclester.substack.com/p/coercion-and-libertarianism
Re: "Israel should not be held to absurd standards of non-barbarity during war."
The sentence might be taken to have two different meanings:
(a) During war, don't hold Israel to *absurd* (unreasonably high) standards of non-barbarity, but do hold Israel to *reasonable* standards of non-barbarity. Naturally, questions arise: In practice, are there bright lines? Or are blurry lines and ethical ambiguity necessarily a crucial margin in war?
(b) Standards of non-barbarity during war are *per se* absurd, i.e., barbarity is intrinsic to war. To parse barbarity, then, is beside the point.
I look forward to learning more in your next essays.
I suspect item b is right out as a possible meaning from Kling. Condoning or even apparently encouraging rape, kidnapping, slaughtering of civilians, etc. is all obviously barbaric and something the west has largely managed to avoid for the past hundred and fifty odd years.
I don't know that there is a single bright line, but there are at least a few bright lines. E.G., in many parts of the world at different times, warfare included rape, looting and pillaging, and the torture, killing and mutilation of prisoners/wounded enemies. I would hope we could all agree those are all on the far side of the barbarism line.
Centrists use a fourth, "both sides" axis. In this axis, individuals are somehow separate from the organizations that act in their name. Hamas is not Gazans. The IDF is not Israelis. "Both sides are responsible". We need "the international community" to be involved. Individuals could not want violence, therefore there must be a shadowy conspiracy that explains how it happened. Calls for de-escalation, "proportionality", "restraint", and ceasefire. Politicians speak in the passive voice.
I find this “both sides are to blame” stance to be morally bankrupt. It seems to me the the defense of civilized society is a goal that trumps all others, and the behavior and rhetoric of Hamas does not come close to being civilized.
I believe Gretchen Whitmer supplied the textbook example of this the other day.
A major limitation of all these axes is that they too easily lead people to think of them as binaries rather than spectra. It is tempting, because it feels satisfying, to believe there is a Side of Civilization and a Side of Barbarism, or a Side of The Oppressed vs a Side of the Oppressors. Propagandists certainly want you to believe that, and will work as hard as they can to get you to surrender to temptation. But in real life there are always degrees of these things, and most important real-world moral choices involve holding one's nose in some way to pick the lesser evil.
This is certainly true of WWII: the Allies committed monstrous and indefensible war crimes-- even if you don't think e.g. Hiroshima or Dresden fall in this category, consider the Red Army's mass rape campaign-- and yet were still clearly the lesser evil, in both ends (jus ad bellum) and means (jus in bello). Recognizing this doesn't require you to support or excuse Allied war crimes, nor free you from the moral responsibility to advocate reforms that make such crimes less likely in the future. But it does require you to cast aside simplistic good-vs-evil binaries, make your peace with the reality of a second-best world, and commit to supporting such lesser evils as one must in that world. Similarly, you can take a very dim view indeed of the Israeli regime and its ideology and conduct, and even the whole Zionist project, and still recognize that it is, at least for the foreseeable future, the obvious lesser evil compared with Hamas.
Doing so requires some level of emotional and intellectual maturity, and I think the maturity/immaturity axis is an underappreciated fourth dimension here. It is also a mature contemplation of a second-best world, for example, that permits one to utter such a phrase as "Markets fail; use markets". Maturity has often been associated with conservatism-- think of Churchill's famous remarks, or more recently Yuval Levin's work on formative institutions as builders of maturity-- but this is not a necessary association: in the Trump era there is no lack of immaturity on the Right. Indeed a general diminution of maturity across the political spectrum (maybe connected to "17 is the new 15" somehow?) is one of the persistent problems with the present discourse and with presently available political choices in much of the world.
I find Arnold Kling's book good as far as it goes, but naive in that it assumes that negotiating a settlement is always possible and desirable. On some topics and against some opponents, fighting is truly the only constructive reaction.
I see the "three languages" as really the way people on each side organize their feelings. The choice of one is more than a communication preference, but is not an "analytical approach" because nobody really uses analysis to decide his feelings. Man is not a rational animal but a rationalizing animal.
That being said, the "oppressor/oppressed" model is not just wrong on this topic -- it is always wrong. Show me an oppressed group and I'll show you someone who is trying to assert entitlement to preferential treatment by labeling himself as belonging to that group. Intersectionality is worthless as a measure of virtue by any rational standard, and is simply never credible.
I'll give (the very progressive) Sam Harris credit for having a very clear and convincing pro-Israel understanding of things. https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/why-dont-i-criticize-israel.
Now, as to "how barbaric" can Israel be, the answer is probably not barbaric enough. History has shown that every time they beat the Palestinians, and no matter how much they try to limit them, the Palestinians will always find a way to attack. They are effectively Satan in Dante's Inferno. Only frozen in place and suffering is he no threat. He'd be pitiable but for the fact that he would destroy everything if freed.
An animal with whom no peace is possible is put down. With a human society, we don't want to do that.
I'd suggest that the de-nazification of Germany post WWII is probably one of the better historical examples of how to forcibly change the views of a populace. Of course, Israel waging that kind of psychological coercion and control would be seen as barbaric or brain-washing as well, but it's maybe one of the least bas options.
El Salvador style mass incarceration seems like it might be worth a try.
Historical, formal hostage taking sounds barbaric, but I wonder if it would have any influence here. Likely not, but maybe if it were done on a broad enough scale?
Thanks for sharing the Sam Harris essay. He makes a very strong civilization vs barbarism argument, which shows one needs to look beneath the obvious political labels. That goes double for libertarians (of whom it has always been true that the label hides much heterogeneity).
We all draw red lines (maybe gray lines)in the sand of time. You're either in the game or playing Moses on top of some mountain.
I've got lots of gray lines as a red line requires courage and conviction and one sided empathy.