The other day Weiss did a post criticizing a piece about the Arab Spring by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley published by the New York Review of Books and titled, “This Is Not a Revolution.” David Bromwich had a response to it. A dialogue ensued.
Bromwich:
We disagree about the Agha-Malley article on the Arab Spring. Their first
few paragraphs (it’s true) are written in an impressionistic, excited manner,
piecing together unorganized images–a style they haven’t properly mastered.
Plainly it’s intended to show how little the events interpret themselves; but
the result conveys a bristling uncertainty and fear, perhaps at odds with what
was intended.
Still the message seems to me simple. This is something new in the world,
they are saying. We don’t know yet what it is. Let’s not either denounce or
celebrate prematurely. It will be hard to enough to look closely; hard enough
to think before we act.
You and I differed on the NATO bombing and drone attacks that gave Libya to
the rebels against Gaddafi. A very mixed force, as we now realize (we still
don’t know a lot about them). Enormous uncertainty–“guarded optimism” shaded
by real anxiety–was the tenor of a description I recently heard from an Arab
friend visiting from another of the revolutionized countries. This person was
brought up Muslim and has become secular. Was it phobic of him to express his
doubts? and to caution a young religious friend who sat with us (a Christian),
“Religion is a drug!” However you judge such wariness, evangelical Islamism is
a strong element in all these revolutions. When Texas rebelled against Mexico,
the rebels were also revolutionists. So, too, are the settlers who have been
taking one outpost after another from the Palestinians on the West Bank. Is it
Judeophobic of you to express reservations about the Jewish evangelists?
Revolutions are a strange thing. They can be great and good, or great and
terrible; sometimes both. What then dictates the imperative to “root for” them
simply because one of the strains we hear at a distance speaks of liberation in
a language we find familiar? The familiarity may be an illusion.
Other differences lie under this, of course. But (allowing for the misfire of
those opening paragraphs) why not grant to Agha-Malley that their published
doubts may carry a certain benefit? Among other things, they mean to cool the
sort of unearned enthusiasm that might induce us to support killing in a cause
we’ve haven’t yet understood.
Burke wrote in the opening paragraphs of his book on the French Revolution,
in 1790:
“When I see the spirit of liberty in action, I see a strong principle at work; and this, for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgment until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of a troubled and frothy surface. I must be tolerably sure, before I venture publicly to congratulate men on a blessing, that they have really received one. Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings. I should therefore suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France, until I was informed how it had been combined with government; with
public force; with the discipline and obedience of armies; with the collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue; with morality and religion; with the solidity of property; with peace and order; with civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things too; and, without them, liberty is not a benefit while it lasts, and is not likely to continue long. The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please. We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risque congratulations, which may soon be turned into complaints. Prudence would dictate this in the case of separate insulated private men; but liberty, when men act in bodies, is power. Considerate people, before they declare themselves, will observe the use which is made of power; and particularly of so trying a thing as new power in new persons, of whose principles, tempers, and dispositions, they have little or no experience, and in situations where those who appear the most stirring in the scene may possibly not be the real movers.”
Do you disagree with the prudence Burke recommends as a general stance? Or,
are there particular facts about the Arab Spring that you believe give grounds
for supporting those who attack the existing governments?–notwithstanding the
disorganization of the rebel parties. (If so, what are those facts?) On the
whole, I think Burke’s prudential warning stands up well. Zhou Enlai, whose
politics were remote from Burke’s, was asked late in life whether he thought
the French Revolution had been a success. He replied “It’s too soon to tell.”
Are Agha and Malley suggesting anything more uncharitable than the posture of
watching and waiting? What do we we know, thus far, about Tunisia, Egypt, Libya,
Syria, or any other country of that region which would suggest that we already
know enough, that it’s not too soon to tell, and that we should assist any of
the revolutions accordingly?
Weiss:
We differ. I was for the Libyan intervention, I’m still for it. Leaders have to decide, and I think Obama’s decisions vis-a-vis Libya and Egypt were the right ones. (In Egypt he might have saved that country from Syria’s fate.) There is absolutely no question that Salafis are empowered by all this, but I am progressive in my outlook: This needs to work its way out, but it will be a step forward. This is my temperamental prejudice.
As to your question, Yes, I disagree with Burke’s recommendation of prudence; inasmuch as, these moments represent stark choices, and when the fat is already in the fire, as it was in Egypt and Libya (and Syria too), I will choose revolution. I tend to favor these releases of human liberty, I recognize the tremendous dislocation they bring about, but I’m on the side of the dislocation. I think the French revolution was in the end a good and vital thing, and that even the Iranian revolution had some positive results, though it is impossible to view that revolution outside the context of an imperial relation, which we have the power to modify.
Your response makes the issue plain. You are a liberationist of a sort. In me, the anti-war principle outranks almost every other; support no war except in self-defense–and it has to be really myself and really defense. We agree in wanting to discourage and work to stop oppression.
Update: Thanks to commenter Gamal for correcting Zhou Enlai reference, which we had as Ho Chi Minh earlier.
Frankly, I’ve never seen how it is possible to react to someone who “supports” wars they have no intention of fighting, nor even the possibility of being endangered by, (let alone any conception of paying for) with anything but the most complete contempt.
Wow, somebody brave enough to bear the images of a far-away war in the media, what a frickin’ hero.
You guys can agree or disagree on non-intervention all day, but this is a separate discussion from the one about the flavor of Malley & Agha’s article. Bromwich says something similar, but ascribes to M&A simple “watching and waiting.” Wrong. This dynamic duo would alter US foreign policy to punish Islamists wherever they are to be found, no matter whether democratically-elected. Using Burke to justify skepticism of any new democratically-elected government would also call Israel’s relatively new form of ethnocracy into question — or for that matter, a new aggressive Capitalism, should Romney win tomorrow. One can apply this petty little rule as one sees fit. This also ignores the fact that practically any elected government is better than a dictatorship or monarchy. Thus, Morsi is to be congratulated. If he turns out to be a dictator, we can change our minds later.
RE: “I was for the Libyan intervention, I’m still for it. Leaders have to decide, and I think Obama’s decisions vis-a-vis Libya and Egypt were the right ones.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: I initially supported it as well, but very soon afterwards I began to very much regret it after seeing the way the U.S. and its allies flagrantly, grotesquely, and shamelessly abused the UN Security Council resolution on Libya (authorizing member states to establish and enforce a no-fly zone) in order to instead pursue their own “regime change” agenda.
Frankly, it was disturbingly reminiscent of Israel’s “intervention” in Lebanon in the summer of 1982.*
Consequently, as I see it, the U.S. and its NATO allies absolutely cannot be trusted to intervene in Syria in a responsible manner.
Because the U.S and its NATO allies so badly abused “responsibility to protect” (R2P or RtoP) in regards to Libya (much like they abused the right to defend themselves by invading Iraq), I simply cannot support any intervention under any circumstances on their part no matter how seemingly deserving the purported beneficiaries of such intervention might be.
* FROM WIKIPEDIA [Lebanese Civil War]:
SOURCE – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War
P.S. “FREE DON” SIEGELMAN PETITION – http://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-please-restore-justice-and-pardon-my-dad
And I thought “speaking truth to power” was a Quaker aphorism. Perhaps it is, even as the idea seems to have arisen independently with Muhammad:
If Burke’s prudence had been applied by the US (and the world community) to Israel in 1948, we wouldn’t have the untenable situation we have now. We could have taught the revolutionaries from Bialystock what it means to create a nation; in fact, insisted upon it instead of allowing them to slide like mercury over other people’s lives and land, with no borders, no constitution, then claim the gall to call it a democracy because the benefactor liked the word.
The anti-war principle outranks almost every other with me as well, but then I like Sun-Tzu.