On the Egyptian putsch

Following the ouster of Mohammed Morsi on Thursday there have been quite a few people who, without necessarily supporting the putsch, have helpfully pointed out that it takes more than 'mere elections' to make a democracy.  A list of features required to stop an elected politician dismantling democracy from within is often added to this uncontroversial observation, which include institutions that protect minority rights, an independent judiciary, a free media and so on.

There's nothing to disagree with there but in all the lists I've seen so far, there's a rather glaring omission: one characteristic of a country's government that hitherto has generally been considered essential for the proper functioning of anything that deserves the name 'democracy' is civilian control of the military.  That Egypt does not have this anymore is a point so obvious that one would not have thought it needed making, but apparently it does.  The constitution has been suspended, the elected president has been overthrown and put under arrest, as have the leadership of the party he represents.  Now some of those who have taken to the streets to protest about this have been shot dead.  It is naive in the extreme to claim that this does not constitute a coup simply because it was preceded by really big demonstrations.

The ambivalence that some are clearly feeling with regards to Morsi's ouster obviously has to do with hostility to the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood.  It is a feeling I share but if one rejects the claims of 'democratic uniqueness' being made for this coup d'etat, there does not seem to be any reason to think this one will not end up like all the rest.

The observation that military governments have a tendency to degenerate into oppression and violence is a point that has been well-made in various places but another which could do with more emphasis is that, even if one can overlook the illegal and violent way they come to power, military regimes rarely achieve what they set out to do.  Try telling them in Pakistan that military government brings about stability - and try telling people just about anywhere that it is likely to deal with their Islamist problem.  In the case of Egypt it is unlikely to do so, not least because of the nature of Morsi's departure.  Elections alone don't make a democracy - but on the other hand, it doesn't do to understate their importance.  After all, the final test of whether elected politicians have succeeded in dismantling democracy from within is if it becomes clear that future competitive elections are impossible.  Egypt may have ended up like this but I don't think it is reasonable to suggest that it was far enough down that road to justify this 'intervention'.

As it is, Muslim Brotherhood supporters have seen their elected president ejected at gunpoint after only a year in office and in the future it is going to be rather more difficult to persuade them that democratic participation rather than violence is the best way to pursue their interests.  I wish opponents of political Islamism who have made vaguely supportive noises about this coup would realise something very important has been lost, which was the prospect of a religious government collapsing under the weight of its own incompetence and being rejected at the ballot box by the people they claimed to represent.  Instead, what has happened seems likely only to preserve and strengthen the narrative that it is external enemies and not their own internal problems that are behind the failure of political Islamism.

 

On the Syrian civil war

That civil wars, understood as those which take place within the borders of a single country, never remain like that for long is a point well made by the criminally under-read Peter Ryley.  With Syria, as with any number you care to mention, it's not so much a question of whether but rather which countries will intervene.  It goes without saying that another way that a civil war can never be considered solely a matter for the country hosting it is the inevitable displacement of refugees, which in the case of this one is of appalling proportions.

This civil war like others before it has brought insistent demands that one should take sides.  I decline to do so on the grounds that I am insufficiently familiar with the situation - but I would say that making the observation 'non-intervention has costs', while perfectly valid, is one that only those who are perhaps pacifists or the kind that see any Western military action on foreign soil as 'imperialist' need persuading of.  For those of us that are neither, who witnessed the incarnation of this in Rwanda and Bosnia, it is accepted but it is not enough in itself to convince that intervention in this case is the 'no-brainer' that some apparently think.

During the bloodiest years of post-Saddam Iraq, some of us were dismissive of those leftist factionalists who gave their support for the insurgency, seeming to have at its base the weird notion that the 'Al-Qaeda in Iraq' fundamentalist head-choppers bore some kind of resemblance to the French Resistance during the Second World War.  What those favouring intervention have conspicuously failed to do is to explain why this situation is so different?  We have Hezbollah on one side, and some extremely unsavoury Sunni fanatics on the other.  Quoting the appalling civilian casualties is all very well - what the pro-intervention side has failed to do is to persuade that arming the latter would do anything to reduce these.  Put plainly, one arms the side you want to win.  Even if we could assume such an action would not merely extend the duration of this conflict but hand the rebels a decisive advantage, is there any reason to think this would be desirable, that it would reduce the death toll in Syria?  There may well be one, in which case it would be nice of those calling for intervention could take a rest from being certain about everything and share it with us.

On the genealogy of conspiracy theories

"The conspiracy theory of society", Karl Popper said, "comes from not believing in God and then asking: what it in His place?"  I prefer a Manichean modification where God is replaced with the devil because at their heart conspiracy theories always and everywhere claim to have identified a malevolent force that is manipulating world events.

Like most people who are generally dismissive of the conspiracy theory of history, I am sceptical of the competence of human beings that said theories impute to them.  Simple arithmetic seems to rule it out: the bigger the conspiracy, the more people need to be involved, which by definition increases the probability that it will be discovered.  Or as Gore Vidal put it in relation to the JFK assassination (I paraphrase):  "I dare say there was a conspiracy - but on the other hand, how come the shooter on the grassy knoll hasn't appeared on Oprah yet?"

There's also the genealogy of conspiracy theories, which is decidedly sinister.  Again, like many I see the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as the prototype, having as it does most of the ingredients of those which have followed.  At its core it has the idea that a small, malevolent, clandestine cabal is controlling world events in such a manner that the human race is heading for slavery and catastrophe.  It emerged in Tsarist Russia, was picked up by the Nazis and, such is the depressing longevity of this piece of Jew-baiting, has re-appeared in recent years in the Middle East.

In this history there are reasons to be dismissive of conspiracy theories while at the same time acknowledging that lower-order misdeeds of subterfuge by secretive organisations are a factor in human affairs.  After all, it is part of the paradox of the historical trajectory of the 'Protocols' that they were a forgery distributed by the Tsarist secret police.  I was reminded of this while reading about the revelations in the Guardian from former NSA operative Edward Snowden  What struck me was the way in which the story is already being filtered through preconceived interpretations, which probably do not bode well for this young man.  The story seems significant to me but I'm getting the impression that already a majority of people from both sides of the political divide are shrugging their shoulders.  For the paranoid Chomskyite left, who already seem to imagine we're living in the equivalent of occupied Poland circa 1940, these revelations form part of an eye-rolling narrative that finds any dismay at governmental misdeeds so painfully naive.  There's no point in trying to reason people out of a position they did not arrive at though reason in the first place - but there's a fair bit of that on the other side as well.  Dan Hodges seems fairly representative of this "Oh you limp-wristed liberals just aren't up for the fight, are you?", strand, as far as one can tell at this early stage:

"On September 11, 2001, 3,000 innocent people were killed in the worst terrorist massacre in history. [...] Then Guantánamo was opened. And that was of course opposed."

Yeah, and here's why: without meaning any disrespect to the victims of this atrocity, during WWII the Blitz on British cities was the equivalent of a 9/11 very month for a year. I know it wasn't always respected but we got through this experience while generally holding to the principle that a captured enemy combatant would be incarcerated without being subjected to torture and only being obliged to surrender his name, rank and serial number. Surrendering this convention seems of no account to some, so what chance has the right to privacy have among those who would have found the qualms expressed by bleeding heart liberals like Winston Churchill and Baroness Thatcher over matters of liberty and law so painfully antiquarian?  This is why I feel so very sorry for Edward Snowden; I think he's about to fall into the chasm between his conception of liberty and that shared by the people whom he imagines he's defending.

D-Day

Four out of five of the Wehrmacht troops killed during the Second World War perished on the Eastern Front in Hitler's 'war of annihilation'.  But the average losses per division on both sides in an equivalent period were to exceed that during the Normandy landings. Like most people, I admire bravery because I lack this quality myself.  I have no doubt that had I taken part in something like the Omaha invasion, I would be numbered with those who were quite useless, immobilised with fear.

Others showed extraordinary bravery.  In the British landing at Sword, which fortunately did not enter legend for all of the wrong reasons that the American landing at Omaha did, young French women risked their lives to help the wounded:

"Purely by chance, a student nurse who had left her bathing dress in a beach hut the day before had arrived on a bicycle to retrieve it.  She ignored the wolf whistles of the amazed squaddies and set to work bandaging wounds.  Her work lasted two days and during the course of it she met her future husband, a young English officer." - (from D-Day, Anthony Beevor.)   

Tomorrow, or by the time you read it, this day in 1944.

Knowledge vs skills

I don't want to say too much about the debate currently going on in England about education, partly because it doesn't apply to me and also because I'm increasingly of the view that one would be more likely to get a balanced and reasoned discussion if you were to raise some of the thornier issues relating to the Middle East, such is the apparent English disposition to identify enemies over this matter.  Just one narrow point, which has to do with the suggestion that history should be taught in chronological order.

This relates to the broader issue raised by the title of this post.  I can't see why anyone would think arranging the curriculum like this would be a good idea.  Gove likes to cite the support of various 'eminent historians', by which he means famous ones.  Some of them I like, others less so - but I'm wondering why their opinion is being sought in the first place?  What do any of them know about teaching history to children?  Why does David Starkey give his approval to a mode of teaching that would mean his pet subject would never be taught to senior pupils?  Do Beevor and Ferguson really think it is better to teach the causes of the Great War before those behind WWII to younger pupils for the sole reason they happened first?  Because surely no-one could disagree about which was more complicated?

It doesn't make any sense.  The distinction that is currently being made between 'skills' and 'knowledge' is entirely phoney, so I really wish people would stop this.  Putting historical events in their correct chronological order is, to use that word which causes traditionalists to recoil in horror, a skill.  It is not particularly difficult but nevertheless one that is impossible to manage unless you have knowledge, specifically knowledge about when stuff happened.  If there is evidence that students are unable to do this which has not been gathered from unrepresentative surveys from hotel chains, I would agree that this is a cause for concern - but I would take issue with the notion that it is any kind of remedy that they should have this done for them.