Remora


Literally hundreds of my readers have been writing in demanding that I compare, point for point, Edmund Spenser's A Veue of the Present State of Ireland with the current discourse in the press about the 'terroristic" Palestinians.

Okay, okay, maybe not literally hundreds. Maybe LI doesn't even have hundreds of readers.

But still, if hundreds had written in to suggest this idea, it would have made sense to me. Since many of the rhetorical arguments rehearsed, in Spenser's text, to justify the English occupation of Irish territory and the abridgment of Irish rights, under common law, up to and including seizure of property, imprisonment, and death, resurface periodically like a chronic neural disease in the Western body. LI was thinking about this while perusing the bloodier effusions of the Washington Posts marching corps of conservative apologists, especially Michael Kelly and the always delightful Charles Krauthammer. For instance, here is Chalie me darlin' talking about the kvetching bolshies and the war:

"Just five days into the war, for example, Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, demanded that U.S. bombing stop so she and her indispensable cohort could feed the hungry. Had we listened to them, tens of thousands of Afghans would have died. As it was, the bombing defeated the Taliban -- whose cruel and catastrophic misrule was the source of the famine -- and thus saved the Afghans from starvation.

By year's end, with Afghanistan liberated and the Bill of Rights still intact, the opposition moved on. To military tribunals.Alas, no luck. And no legs. Americans have not much appetite for giving al Qaeda the run of a massive judicial apparatus designed for those who live by the American Constitution. They sensibly want to keep the number of years-long, jury-endangering, media-circus civilian trials for terrorists down to the bare minimum. Already three -- John Walker Lindh, American Taliban; Zacarias Moussaoui, "20th hijacker"; and Richard Reid, shoe bomber -- will enjoy O.J. levels of media coverage."

This is amazingly good stuff. I love the moral outrage about the Taliban's cruelty to the Afghans -- a cruelty rediscovered, with alacrity, after 9/11, by the same people who were, well, a little blind to it before. Before then, of course, there was, shall we admit it? a bit of softness for the Taliban on the right. A bit of admiration for this offshoot of the one good war, the Gippers war in Afghanistan. This article in Counterpunch quotes a 1997 London Telegraph story about Texas hospitality and the Taliban, at that time the legitimate guv, or so it seemed, sitting on a strategic area that Unocol in particular would like to put an oil pipeline through. According to that article, the "Taliban was learning how the "other half lives," and according to The Telegraph, "stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus." The Taliban representatives "...were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marveled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms." Mr. Miller, said he hoped that UNOCAL had clinched the deal.

Dick Cheney was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is."

As the Good Lord's son said, though, the wind blows where it listeth. Or time and tide wait for no man. Or something like that. In any case, we shouldn't underestimate the revelation that Krauthammer is four square against mass starvation. This is a distinct softening of the Bush's favorite organ, the heart-- it is even, dare I say it, compassionate conservativism at work. That Krauthammer now believes that the mass starvation of those without the law is, well, plumb wicked, is a step up the moral ladder. Isn't that Maslow's term? Soon, who knows, he might come out with some aberrant position against taking the bread from the mouths of orphans. I doubt it, however. There's a coloring, in that phrase, of the dread welfare state. Don't want that back, do we?

But this is mere icing on the cake. What we really, really love is CK's irritated assent to the jury tradition in common law. He of course knows that it is a bad thing, an encouragement to minorities to get uppity, and an impediment to throwing people in jail without having them get all that publicity. The Argentine military had a way of handling these things that, in grave times, one has to admire. It causes a guy like Krauthammer extreme pain to see the guilty being accorded rights. Rights, of course, are for the non-guilty. Silly. All the fault of the Warren court. But goddamn it, let's not start giving everybody rights. That would definitely be the decline of civilization, or the triumph of the wogs, one. Incidentally, we love the 20th hijacker label too, especially since the guy inconveniently didn't hijack anything. Luckily, in the current climate in America, a middle eastern sympathizer with Satan isn't going to get away with not hijacking an airplane -- he's obviously guilty, in his dreams, and so let's hang him high. That the death penalty is shirked at for people who, uh, haven't hijacked planes but wanted to is the kind of lily livered thing lefties are famous for. Along with their well known affection for sher'ia. How this coheres with their other affections (for lesbians and gays and environazis and degenerate art) is a question for the psychoanalyst more than for poor CK. He's a simple guy, who knows perversion when he smells it.

Ah, and this takes us back to our man Spenser: compare the rantings of Krauthammer with this oaken appeal to sophistry in the service of imperial power in VPSI. The Speakers in this dialogue are colloquying together about the Irish, and in the course of this dialogue an astonishing number of the myths that have justified occupations, imperialism, and the unequal treatment of peoples in their own Heimat are, if not shaped for the first time, at least collected together. In particular, Spenser comes up with a mythical history about the English ownership of Ireland, which was apparently conceded to the English long ago, and the craft of the natives, who hied to the hills in the fourteenth century and waited until the War of the Roses distracted the noble Brits. Then, you know it, bingo, like white on rice, the so called natives are all over the true possessors of the land. There is much in this story that corresponds to the Israeli myth that the Palestinians just picked up and fled in '48, without the stimulus of the Israeli militia. And in the same way that myth relies on two natural characteristics of the native -- cowardice and craftiness -- so, too, it feeds into the justification for inequity in the justice system. A la our man Krauthammer.

"Iren: The comon law is, as I before said, of it selfe most rightfull and verie convenient, I suppose, for the kingdom for which it was first devized; for this, I thinke, as yt seemes reasonable, that out of the manners of the people, and abuses of the countrie, for which they were invented, they tooke theire first begynninge, for else they should be most unjust: for no lawes of man, accordinge to the straight rule of right, are just, but as in regard of the evills which they prevent, and the safetie of the common weale which they provide for. As for example, in the true ballancinge of Justice, it is a flatt wrong to punishe the thought or purpose of any, before it be enacted: for true justice punisheth nothing but the evill acte or wycked worde, yet by the lawes of all kingdomes it is a capitall cryme, to devise or purpose the death of the King: the reason is, for that when such a purpose is effected, it should be too late to devise of the punishment therof, and should turne that common-weale to more hurt by suche losse of theire Prince, then suche punishment of the malefactors. And therefore the lawe in that case punishes his thought: for better is a mischief, then an inconvenience. So that jus polliticum, though it be not of it selfe just, yet by applicacon, or rather necessitie, it is made just; and this only respect maketh all lawe just. Nowe then, if these lawes of Ireland be not likewise applied and fitted for that Realme, they are sure verie inconvenient.

Eudox: You reason stronglie; but what unfitness doe you fynde in them for that Realme? shewe us some
particulers.

Iren: The common lawe appointeth that all trialls, aswel of crymes as titles and ryghtes, shall be made
by verdict of Jurye, chosen out of the honestist and most substancal free-holders: Nowe all the ffree-holders of that Realme are Irishe, which when the cause shall fall betwene an Irishe man and an Englyshe, or betwene the Quene and any ffreeholder of that countrye, they make no more scruple to passe against the Englisheman or the Quene, though it bee to strain theire oaths, then to drinke milke unstrayned. So that before the jury goe togeather, it is all to nothing what theire verdict will be. The tryall thereof have I so often sene, that I dare confidentlie avouche the abuse thereof: Yet is the lawe of it selfe, as I said, good; and the first institucon thereof being given to all Englishemen verie rightfull, but nowe that the Yrishe have stepped in to the rowmes of the Englishe, who are nowe become so hedefull and provident to keepe them forth from thensforth, that they make no scruple of conscience to passe against them, it is good reason that either that corse of the Lawe for trialls be altered, or that other provision for juries be made.

In other words -- by all means have trials, if the guilty verdicts are assured. Otherwise, trialls must be altered. So let's have some tribunal action, or fix the juries. Otherwise Krauthammer is going to be looking for lefties under his bed. .