Notes

For some reason, although we read blogs, we don't often refer to them. This is sheer irresponsibility. But we want to point our readers to one blog today -- Junius -- written by Chris Bertram, a philosophy guy in Bristol, England. Bertram is a dithering dove and frankly, LI does not share his dithers. But we like Bertram's mixture of Burke-ishnesss (the very name, Junius, refers to Burke's ally in the war against Warren Hastings, Phillip Francis) and socialism.

For us, the problem with philosophy guys and war is that they immediately plunge into talk about whether a war is just or not. Now, it is interesting whether a war is just or not. But that is obviously only one consideration in deciding that one supports a war. The mix of motives that eventuate in any social act should include justice, and should also include interest, costs and benefits, honor, pertinency, past actions, context, etc. The moral issues at stake in the invasion of Iraq often smell of ether -- odorless, tasteless, and absolutely unrooted in the history and culture of Iraq or the culture and history of Britain and the U.S. -- who have left a long, dark trail in the area. For those who believe justice should override all other considerations, we urge a reading of that great tale by Heinrich Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas.

Anyway, in the spirit of Burke, we wrote Bertram a little letter (yes, the war fever is driving us crazy. We know this. We know we've gone insane) to shore up the case against the War. Here it is.

Dear Chris Bertram

I read your post on human rights and the just war approach to war in Iraq.
Surely the antiwar argument stands on strong Burkean grounds, making something like the following two points:

One, replacing an unjust order with a just order is best done by the people themselves. Why? Because replacing an unjust order with a "revolution from above" presumes a mechanical, non-representative politics alien to the organic structure of society. In Hayek's terms, it is the ultimate in central planning -- planners with no knowledge (not even tacit knowledge) of Iraqi society usurp for themselves the right to change it radically. If Burke supported war against the directorate in France, it was because the directorate had recently overthrown what he viewed as the legitimate governors of France. His model, however, seems to have been the Glorious Revolution. Although King William enjoyed the support of some foreign powers, his right to the throne was founded not only in the spirit of the English order, but in the acceptance, by the British, of his rule -- an acceptance that expressed itself in supporting and supplying King William's forces.

The second point would be: are there indications of Iraqi self-organisation on Burkean lines? I'd say yes -- in the case of Iraq, we already have a "liberated zone" that is making fractious efforts to organize itself in terms of representative government.

Given these two points, the question is: what would both instill a legitmate representative govenment in Iraq and preserve it from the kind of military dictatorship to which American allies in the Middle East (vide Pakistan) are heir? It would seem here that invasion is actually injurious to that objective. The argument against war -- at least, invasion by foreign powers -- should then countenance the preservation of the current zone in Northern Iraq, in order for the people to work out for themselves the proper structures of their order. As it becomes stronger, it will act as an attractor for the legitimate interests of the Iraqi people, which will ultimately be crowned by the internal overthrow of the Ba'athist structure. In fact, it has taken a long time for that to happen in the North -- the endemic warlordism of the middle nineties has only recently lost its grip on the countryside.

The only objection to this is that Saddam Hussein is strong enough to suppress such internal change, and that his strength hasn't changed over time. But I don't think that is a strong enough argument for invasion -- although it might be a strong argument for supporting the liberated zone in more concrete ways.

Burke was very conscious of the continuity of character, and he would certainly have found suspicious that the cabal of D.C. officials who now advocate war were once so favorable to Saddam Hussein's government that they covertly supplied it with military aid while it was gassing Kurds and Iranians. In fact, it is easy to imagine what he would have said about this. Just read the speeches in the impeachment of Warren Hastings.
Yours,
Etc.

....

We received an email from our friend T. in New York re the birthday of Kazantzakis. We liked it. Here it is, in all its crabby splendor.

"Salon was decent enough to acknowledge the anniversary of NK's birth today, and showed further decency with the selected passage from Zorba. Although NK should not be considered "minor" and I have tried and failed to make him "nomadic", to my mind, he is just not spoken of often enough when discussions move to the subject of "the novel"; hell, he wrote at least three wonderful ones - The Greek Passion, The Last Temptation of Christ and Zorba. Something like twenty years ago, those, Dead Souls, Quixote, Anna Karenina and The Bros. K brought me to a sense of what a novel is and why it is important to have such things around and why one should go to the trouble of keeping them close at all times. Perhaps he is "too ethnic" to be included in matters of the novel (?) More than Greek, he was Cretan.

Maybe its that the image of Anthony Quinn is too strong for me, but Zorba never was The One for me. No, The One has always been The Greek Passion. My esteem altogether reinforced with those extraordinarily intimate books The Saviors of God and Report to Greco. Is it twenty years ago that I first read the later? Mere sentimentality: Shortly after I had finished cluelessly turning the pages of Zarathustra, I read the Report for the first time. NK still strikes me (and herein is the sentimentality) as amongst the most passionate (exuberance, merciful sympathy) readers of FWN (heres there with Batille, Blanchot, Deleuze and Klossowski).

Unlike the others, however, his introduction to Fritz was as personal as imaginable: he was told that he looked like Nietzsche!
Also, I never fail to recall that he was excommunicated (not even Friedrich the Antichristian could pull that off).

Anyway, I'm in no position to tell his tale (I include a link to a detailed chronology of his life below), but I can at least spit out a blurb on this anniversary.

I hate the snow, and I hope that you are well and good.