208. "Enlightened" and "Benighted" in Egypt

 

In Egypt, see, you've got these benighted people who don't believe in democracy or any of the other things the people of the West came up with in their Age of Enlightenment.  They still think in the religious terms — "godly"-"ungodly," "believer"-"non-believer," "good"-"evil"— people used before they became enlightened, and began to speak only of the "reasonable" and "unreasonable."  These benighted people are now in power.

"And how did they get in power?"

Oh, in the most enlightened way, through an election.  They were the majority.  But now they are doing, and threatening to do, and saying, very unenlightened things.  The enlightened people are so eager to get rid of them that they say they'll welcome a coup by the generals.

"But isn't that a very benighted thing to do, bring in the army to get rid of elected officials?"

I know.  But these people in power are really evil people.  They have killed in the name of religion.  They'll impose religion in daily life.  They'll stamp out the Enlightenment in Egypt, the few flames that are starting to rise.

"So if people are really evil you can set the benighted on them.  But you'll still be enlightened yourself?"

I know.  I've gone benighted on you.  But don't you see, I have to do that in order to defend the Enlightenment.  It's the reasonable thing to do.

"You know, your confidence in what's reasonable strikes me as almost supernatural.   You just know that these benighted people are not going to permit you to throw them out in the normal, democratic, enlightened way.  You just know that their imposition of benighted things in daily life assures their imposition of themselves as unelected rulers.  You just know that the people of Egypt can't bring off the traditional Western way of throwing rascals out.  You just know that there's something besides elections that defines democracy.  You just know you'll do less damage to democracy by turning tyrant yourself than by waiting to see if somebody else will turn tyrant.  I don't see how anybody with a reasonable, secular conception of knowledge could know those things.  Are you sure you don't believe in a higher power?"

167. What Barack Obama learned from my urologist.

 
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The President must have the same urologist I have.  He believes in watchful waiting.

Let me tell you about "watchful waiting."  It's the greatest treatment ever to rise to the top of the options-list doctors give their patients.  You know, in those waiting-room brochures. 

For prostate malignancies "watchful waiting" used to be well below the aggressive treatments — prostatectomy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy.  My first urologist, as soon as he saw the biopsy results, wanted to do major surgery.  A later one wanted to chemically castrate me.  "We've got to go right at this thing."  That fit the temperament of most of his manly patients.  This is malignant, man.  We don't want to mess around.  "OK Doc, let's roll."

This was so common in my town and in the literature that I began to think urologists all had the same mentor.  Some Edmund Burke.  "All that is needed for the triumph of prostate cancer is for good urologists to do nothing."

Well, my present urologist, the one I share with Barack Obama, didn't follow him.  He advised something pretty close to nothing.  You just keep an eye on the tumor and not until you get a reliable sign that it's going lethal do you act.

What led him to differ from his colleagues then, or what led so many of them to come over to his side since then, I don't know.  Maybe they saw so many people (like my brother) suffering so much from the aggressive treatment that they began to have doubts.  Maybe the experience of a few patients (like me, with seven years of normal life) was so happy that they thought it was a good gamble.  Whatever it was, the order on the list was reversed, no dire consequences followed, and my urologist (Eric Klein of the Cleveland Clinic) is getting praise from all over the country.

Now I want to praise Obama for the way he, ignoring the manly Republicans, has adopted "watchful waiting" as his approach to malignancies in world affairs.  Where George Bush, with nearly all of Congress behind him, wanted to roll in Iraq, Obama wanted to wait.  Where John McCain wants to roll in the Middle East Obama wants to wait.  To Bush Saddam Hussein was clearly malignant.  To John McCain Bashar al-Assad is clearly malignant. " When you've got a malignancy why mess around?"

Maybe by now the suffering caused by the roll into Iraq is changing some minds.  Maybe Congress and the electorate are ready to join the small, unmanly cohort (the French, those accordion players) who wanted to watch and wait in 2003.  They clearly seem less willing to roll against that evil monster Assad.

I use the word "evil" there because that's the word gung-ho spin-doctors use when they want to move a nation's citizens to roll with their client in international affairs.  It's the word George Bush's doctors used for the Iraqi and Iranian and North Korean malignancies.  It's the word Ronald Reagan's doctors used for the Soviet Union.  It makes watching and waiting much harder.  "This is evil, man."  But it's very effective with a religious electorate.  It makes the malignancy more "theological" — as Bush's speechwriter explained when he inserted it.

"Evil" is just one of those words that Republicans (and some Democrats — mainly out of the need to compete with them for votes) use to tap into American testosterone (see "holy testosterone" in Post #158).  And the users are nearly always vague with respect to specific action.  What do you do to stamp out evil?  What do you do to show you are not "soft on" communism?  that you are not surrendering in the "war on terrorism"?

Well, one thing about my urologist, he was not vague.  And he made sure you knew what he meant. "Watchful waiting" did not mean "gentle acting."  If the threat was lethal there would be no limit to his aggressiveness.  He was ready to cut, plant, and castrate.  All in substantive action.  Nothing symbolic. 

OK, here's where I see President Obama, listening to a physician who didn't just say "malignancy!" but asked right away, "How fast is it growing?  What can it do to change this patient's life, in comparison with the other options?  Is it a lethal threat?"  All are specific and precise questions whose parallels I see in the questions I think Obama is asking about the malignancies his countrymen urge him to treat around the world.

162. Looking On

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By now we ought to be accustomed to "standing there looking on" while an atrocity is committed.  We stood and looked at Rwanda and Darfur and the Congo, as earlier we had looked at Biafra and Bangladesh.  I see, by Googling "atrocities 'while the world looks on'," that we have also recently looked on at atrocities in Lebanon, Algeria, Mali, the Kachin State in Burma, and the Congo again.  We looked on for a while in the Balkans.

We did not look on in Somalia (warlords stopping food shipments) or Iraq (Saddam Hussein gassing his own people).  We stopped looking on in Bosnia and needed only a glance in Kosovo.

We ought also be accustomed to reproach.  We got it in nearly all those cases.  Some was ignorant (what could anybody expect the U.S. to do in Bangladesh?), some came from too great a distance (the Kachin State in Burma), and some came from people with no constituency in the U. S. (the Tuareg in Mali — not at all like the Christians in Darfur).

Some cases taught us to re-evaluate reproach.  We couldn't stand being reproached for looking on in Somalia then we couldn't stand looking at our getting in.  We couldn't stand looking on as Saddam Hussein gassed his own people then we couldn't stand looking at what his own people, left to themselves, did to their own hospitals, schools, museums, and each other.

Now we are looking on as Bashar al-Assad commits more and more "atrocities against his people."   We can hear the reproaches coming.  And we know our government is ready to do things that will head them off.  In May General Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said "that military options are being crafted" (Fox News, 5-28-12) and in July White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that further atrocities in Syria by President Bashar al-Assad's forces should eliminate any doubt that a coordinated international response was necessary at the United Nations (Reuters).

What will the response be?  A calibrated, quagmire-avoiding response worked in Libya but can it work here?  If it doesn't, where are we?  That's hard to say but we know there's a good chance that we'd be looking at Syrian civilians, left to themselves, doing terrible things to each other.  Already the breakdown of authority in Syria is looking like the breakdown in Iraq — theft, kidnappings, inactive police stations, general lawlessness (NYT 8-10-12).

OK, but that's in our imaginations, struggling to construct the future.  These pictures are right in front of us, there, the broken bodies of five-year-olds.  Our hearts cry for action.

Yes, and so did our grandparents' hearts when the British showed us Belgian babies with their hands cut off by Germans, and so did our parents' hearts when the Kuwaitis told us how Iraqi soldiers were taking babies out of incubators and leaving them to die.  The world is full of heart-users.  If you don't believe it look at that Iraqi story.  It was told by a poor Kuwaiti "eye witness" who turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, acting on the advice of a hired American public relations firm, Hill and Knowlton.

All right, so you know that and the next atrocity you see or hear about you say, "OK which PR outfit is managing this one?  Which group is behind it?"  After a while your first question is a cui bono:  "Who stands to gain from the pounding of my heart?"

That's where you could end, in action-stopping cynicism, until you ask, "Who stood to gain from the heart-pounding over Hitler's first atrocities?  A lot of near-sighted, imperialist victors of World War I who produced that stupid, vindictive Versailles Treaty we'd have to force Hitler to abide by.  Act in their interest?  Not on your life."  And there you are, unleashing Hitler on Europe.

So you can't always hold off just because somebody bad is going to profit.  Sometimes you're facing an atrocity-generator you have to stop early, if you're going to stop it at all.  Decide to look on then and somebody is sure to remind you of the Big Looking On of the twentieth century, 1933-1939.  Reproach, reproach.

It's all so terribly uncertain.  Even your right to use the word "atrocity" is in doubt.  There's an 18-year-old soldier, drafted to fight in a war he didn't believe in, bleeding to death before our eyes.  But we can't call what we're seeing an "atrocity."  He's wearing a uniform and his body is 13 years older than the bodies that just moved us to tears.  So what do you call him?  What do you call war?

126. "Facts on the ground"

The expression "facts on the ground" was apparently first used by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the 70s. He was describing the new settlements in the Occupied Territories. By adding "on the ground" to a word that was already sufficient he suggested something to future statesmen: this is something solidly based, stuck in the earth, and you are not going to change it easily.

He also implied a distinction from facts of another sort, I think, the facts you might call "facts in the heart," facts that are hard to see and, some say, easy to change. Disapproval of the settlements is a fact in the heart of many Americans and Israelis. It is certainly a fact in the heart of Tzaly Reshef, one of the founders of Peace Now, who last week wondered (NYT, 3-25) whether the Israeli Supreme Court would be able to get Benjamin Netanyahu to change the old "facts on the ground."

But Reshef and his fellows in Peace Now, and, more distantly, in the United Sates, are dismissed as idealists. Understandably. None of their talk has had any effect. The settlements have continued to expand during the regimes of every Israeli prime minister, liberal or conservative, hawk or dove.

"What do you expect, idealists? That facts on the ground will give way before your heart's desire? Get used to them." That's what I hear the realists, the ones Menachem Begin counted on, saying now.

The tough-ground-soft-heart distinction is not as firm as it looks, though.  Facts on the ground come from human intention — which is to say, the human heart. There is a logical connection (effect to cause) between a settler's hut and a Likud prime minister's heart. Bend your eyes to that and you can raise them to the larger connections — to future needs, to American support, to peace in the Middle East. No, you're not looking at the sky; you're trying to see future facts on the ground.

Imaginative statesmen raise their eyes. Realistic statesmen don't blink at what they see. Tough statesmen don't hesitate to ask questions about them. They're determined to know what, on the ground, their country is going to have to live with. So imaginative, tough, realistic American presidents would have asked each of the Israeli prime ministers who expanded the settlements this idealistic-sounding but very realistic question, "Tell me, Menachem (or Yitzhak or Benjamin), do you, in your heart, want all of the West Bank for your people?"

And all tough, imaginative Americans wanting a realistic foreign policy for their country, would ask all the Jewish groups supporting those prime ministers the same question.

Ah, but is that realistic? Can anybody actually picture any American President putting that question to any Israeli Prime Minister? No, it has suited everybody politically, and has suited everybody politically for 35 years, to keep that question locked up, which is to say, it suits them, linguistically, to keep "facts on the ground" separate from "facts in the heart." Let us, says the Israeli, just look at what's there, now, and leave what will be there out of the discussion. Let us, says the American Congressman, let us not upset the Christian constituency that supports the Israeli moves. You can talk about the heart, but do it in some other context.

I can't help thinking that they will have church in mind. Church is where the idealists gather, isn't it? It is certainly where Christians will hear a lot of talk about the heart. That's where, according to Jesus, you look to find sin.

Yes, church is the perfect place to put Americans who want to talk about the heart. They're accustomed to talking about the facts there before they get back to the facts on the ground during the business week.

But I wonder how much compartmentalizers really know about American churches. Do they know that some congregations pay close attention to world affairs? And some preachers use extreme language? I have known some, and I can hear them now: 'Whoso looketh at the West Bank to lust hath already committed aggression in his heart.'"

And I've heard there are some rabbis who say the same kind of thing. It's not true that all the heart talk comes out of the New Testament. There's "Thou shalt not covet" from Moses. I think we could have a rabbi in the pulpit right next to our preacher, shouting across the water, though I'm not sure about his speech. I hear, "Hey, you. You know you can't covet your neighbor's ox or ass or wife. So what's this you're coveting the West Bank?"

So you can't even count on keeping facts on the ground separate from facts in the heart in church. Some people there are very good at reading the truth in your heart from the facts you put on the ground.

121. Power Sucks

The trouble with power is that as soon as people know you have it they're running to you to settle their quarrels. You arrive in a nice valley full of farmers, kill the big man in the castle, and right away you've got a bunch of farmers in your courtyard boo-hooing about other farmers.

Say you want to be a big man in the Old Testament. You beat up on this tribe and that tribe and take all the crescents off the necks of their camels. You've done more with the sword than any Hebrew hero in years. And where do they put your story? In the book of Judges. You're a damned quarrel-settler.

Go beyond your valley or your county and it gets worse. Build the biggest navy in the world, bombard your way into a few continents for their minerals, and what do you get? Not just minerals. Not just an empire. You get countries running to you to for quarrel-settlement. You decide on boundaries, you make rules, you prescribe systems. When the world's geography needs ordering you give it latitude and longitude.

I know, the assignment is inevitable. People go to the big power because no matter what judgment they get from the little power it can be overturned, smack, by the big power. So even if he's just a dumb jock (like Samson) the big man has to put on the robes, do the assizes, be the judge.

"But isn't being the big world power worth it? Getting all those minerals? Getting to make your place zero longitude?"

Only if you can stand all the names people call you. "Imperialist." "Aggressor." Besides, the payoff in minerals changes. In the old days you could just march in and take somebody's oil. Now there's a world organization with a court and a publicity system. You'd have the whole universe yelling at you. That's what it is to be the big power now. All quarrel-settling and damn few minerals.

"I think if I had the power I'd just sit there and not use it. Except for my own safety. At least I'd have nobody yelling at me."

A lot you know. People know you have the power. They know you can smack anybody you want to. And they don't care how dumb a jock you are. They'll want you to come in and settle quarrels a genius couldn't figure out.

"You mean it takes a genius to see that innocent people are dying, that a dictator is making war on his own people, that death by gas is horrible?"

No, it's easy to see those horrors. So easy that you can't help seeing them on both sides. That's where it gets tough.  Which side is committing the most horrors?  The worst?  How much worse to count against how many close-to-worst?  Suppose you have thirty pretty bad horrors and two downright awful.  Sometimes you've got to be a genius. You're not a genius, you don't go in to end the horrors, and everybody calls you bad names.  "Inhumane."  "Immoral." You're in as much pain not using your power as you were when you used it and got called "an imperialist."

"Sounds like the only way to avoid pain is to give up power. But then you'd never have the satisfaction of seeing a success, a nation with its own quarrel-settling system, democracy, set up and functioning. That will never happen unless you go in."

Don't talk to me about satisfaction. I may not be smart but I've lived. I know you can set up a democratic system that finally, after centuries, gives a people the power their majority calls for and then, if they're like the Iraqi Shi'ites, they'll throw their shoes at you. If satisfaction depends on gratitude, forget it.

"So you'll never use your power to help any Middle Eastern nation set up a democratic government?"

Not unless I get a lot smarter. Smart enough, anyway, to tell which side in a quarrel has a chance of doing democracy long term. Smart enough to see a semi- revolution, rather than a revolution, coming up. The trouble with revolutions, as Robert Frost pointed out, is that they bring the same kind of people back on top. The trouble with going in and helping revolutionaries is that you don't know how far they're going to revolve.

"And if you don't get that smart you'll what? Give up power? Go back to farming?"

No, I'll go for the power of example. The greater success our people have in managing their own quarrels the more the quarreling people of the world will be moved to the same kind of management in their countries. The power to invade isn't the only kind of power the United States can use. Think of the number of countries we didn't invade that became democracies.

102. How Should We Speak the Word "Democracy"?

"You don't really believe in democracy, you English-speakers, you believe in it only when the right guys are going to win." Try to answer that and you're hit with the names of the democratically elected wrong guys our guys moved out of office, Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, Salvadore Allende in Chile. Or, worse, a quote from Dwight Eisenhower backing Ngo Dinh Diem's cancellation of elections in Viet Nam: "80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh." Hold on, Vietnamese, you're not going to get any support from us for democracy.

So, if we state, "America is a democracy" proudly we're going to get a lot of noise. Can we quiet it down by making the statement doggedly? "We know, we know, but everybody has to compromise their ideals sometimes. In those times that you mention national self-interest trumped the democratic ideal, sure. But we had a good reason for that: serving our interest served the interest of democracy. The nation keeping democracy alive around the world has to keep itself alive, doesn't it? The Soviets used the same argument about communism and their country."

Say that, and then point out that we still have an election every four years, don't we? Peaceful transfer of power, that's our big claim. Democracy gives "power to the people most likely to be troublesome if deprived of it, the majority" (Post 39). We've got the essentials.

Clearly doggedness in that line can buy us some peace and quiet. But will it ever last? Aren't there always going to be some bad guys we want to keep out of power? And aren't there always going to be people of our own, maybe a majority, crying, "Bad! Bad! Keep them out! Keep them out!" Right now we've got Islamists threatening to win elections all over the Middle East. In Egypt there are some generals ready to keep them out. If we say, "Go ahead, generals, deprive them of power," how dogged can we be about those essentials? That's just what the generals will be violating. "Oh no," they'll hear us saying, "those people aren't going to be troublesome. They're just the majority." Yes, and we're the voice of democracy.

We don't know whether we'll talk like that yet but we know that if we do the word "democracy" is going to stick in our throats. And dogged repetition isn't going to help.

So, how will we speak the word? Should we maybe not use it? Find some other word for what we represent? No, we are still doing many things that only the word "democracy" identifies. And some of these are the ones that get us into the deepest trouble. Why do our leaders listen to those voices crying simply, "Bad! Bad!" — over communists in Viet Nam, or tyrants in Mesopotamia, or Islamists in Egypt? They know that the situations in those places are, or were, very complicated, and simple good-bad calls are very dangerous. They must know that. Educated people know that. Ah, but these educated people must, to stay in power, have the votes of the majority, which has never, in any country yet, had time (or inclination) to educate itself. So there you are. Democracy. There's no other word for it.

All right, we just have to find a becoming way of saying the word "democracy." It's tough. Luckily, though, we have some pretty good guides. Winston Churchill, after admitting that democracy was a terrible form of government, once added that it was "just better than all the others." There's our cue. Say it resignedly, or wryly. "Ah me, America is a democracy." In a store full of trash you've got to make the best of a bad bargain.