Bjørn Stærk blog - Dan Simmons on "Eurabia"

Taco | 2006-04-20 23:27 | Link

Strangely enough (as a regular visitor), I somehow got here through Eric Raymond.

We've been here before: Europe is doomed, and all. But, I think you dismiss Dan's piece a bit lightly. I'm with Eric: I thought it was brilliant.

You don't give any argument as of why this was propaganda, a dumb idea or a careless use of history.

I don't know why you lift out the Syracuse-quote either, as it is not in your defence, but in Dan's:

War is an horrible thing, but once you wage it, you have to win it at any cost, otherwise it was not worth to wage it in the first place. You can argue with the reasons to go to war, but once you're in one, civilized conduct takes a back seat. Winning is the only thing that matters. There are no 'rules' in a war. If you're not willing to 'slaughter every combat-age man and boy', then you went to war for the wrong reasons.

Steven Den Beste wrote a lot about this (sorry, too lazy to come up with a link).

Bjørn Stærk | 2006-04-22 12:44 | Link

Taco: I'm with Eric: I thought it was brilliant.

It is. At a story it's fair enough, but as political propaganda it's brilliant.

You don't give any argument as of why this was propaganda, a dumb idea or a careless use of history.

It's propaganda because it's a trick. Dan Simmons doesn't know any more about our future than you and I do - which is nothing. But by telling the future as if it has already happened, he can make it sound plausible, more real. If you want to write propaganda fiction that's how you want to do it: By painting a vivid image of whatever you want the reader to believe.

It's dumb for a lot of reasons .. but that's an old debate. The point is: Anti-Islamic apocalypticism doesn't become more rational just because you write a story about it. It's the same dumb arguments as always (Islam is Evil, Muslims are here to conquer us), just told in a different way.

And making analogies to ancient Greece like that is bad history. There are too many pundits who see history as their own personal reservoir of moral lessons for our time, a great big book of anecdotes. History usually isn't as clear as that. Why does Simmons compare us to Athens, and not some other power that overstretched its military? Because they were a "democracy" and thus "good guys"? That's a stretch. And is he saying that even if Athens had not invaded Syracuse they would have lost, because their will to be brutal had somehow disappeared? One moment they're slaughtering civilians on Melos, which Simmons seem to think was a _good_ thing, then a few years later they've suddenly "grown soft"?

I don't know much about the Peleponnesian war, but from a historical point of view this sounds questionable, and even more so from a moral point of view: Assuming that the solution to Athen's problems would have been to kill and enslave more civilians, this is a moral lesson for us .. how?

There are no 'rules' in a war. If you're not willing to 'slaughter every combat-age man and boy', then you went to war for the wrong reasons.

Is that so. Tell me how you'd go about applying this lesson to our own times.

But of course there are rules in war. They were created precisely to limit civilian casualties. Aren't anyone around to enforce those rules, (except at best an unspoken agreement between two sides), but the rules are there. Maybe what you mean is that they're bad rules (why?), or that sometimes they have to be broken, but they're there, and for a _good reason_. If you want to replace them with something better, the _first_ thing you must do is get an appreciation of why they were invented in the first place. The religious wars are a good place to start.

Taco | 2006-04-23 22:47 | Link

Bjørn: Is that so. Tell me how you'd go about applying this lesson to our own times.

Exactly in the same way. If push comes to shuff we have to be willing to 'slaughter every combat-age man and boy', or face defeat. I don't say that is what we should do right now, because we shouldn't, but when the only other option is to get raped/ enslaved/ slaughtered, I definitely think we should. That's how far I'd go to protect my children.

If the USSR would have launched a nuclear strike, I think we should have retaliated. Because we were willing to do that, there was none (Mutual Assured Destruction). Because we were willing to do that, we won the cold war.

Like I said, SDB wrote a lot about this. I dug up the link to his widely discussed 'Game theory':

When a saint plays against another saint, or against tit-for-tat, the result is optimum but more important is that everyone gets the same result. When a sinner plays against another sinner, or against tit-for-tat, everyone cheats and the result is still even, though less than optimal.
But when a sinner plays against a saint, the sinner wins and the saint loses.

Which brings me back to the point of all this: Is there anything I would rule out in war? Nothing I'd care to admit to my enemies, because ruling out anything is a "saint" tactic. The Tit-for-tat tactic is to be prepared to do anything, but not to do so spontaneously. In other words, if the other guy threatens to use poison gas, you make sure you have some of your own and let him know that you'll retaliate with it. That means that he has nothing to win by using it, and he won't. (A war is a sequence game and not a single transaction because each day is a new exchange. If you gassed my guys yesterday, I can gas yours today.)

Sorry for the long quote. Won't do it again.

Bjørn: ...They were created precisely to limit civilian casualties.

I might be a sinic, but I don't believe that. Those rules (which I think are just bubbles of hot air, because they can't be enforced) were created by people who want to influence the outcome of a war without having to fight them.

Bjørn Stærk | 2006-04-24 23:30 | Link

Taco: If push comes to shuff we have to be willing to 'slaughter every combat-age man and boy', or face defeat.

And do you believe there is even a remote chance of this becoming necessary? Of course we must be willing to defend ourselves, and if that means hand-to-hand combat between untrained civilians, I suppose I'll do my best. But why do you even consider this scenario? Doesn't sound like any modern war I've heard of. Especially not nuclear war, which is as different from ancient warfare as you can get. As you point out, MAD worked by fear of retaliation. Not killing all the men so they can't carry weapons, but threatening to kill everyone so that nobody gets killed. All that has in common is willingness to kill. (Oh, and don't forget: MAD could have failed. Don't ever forget that.)

But let's say we don't live in the modern world, let's say we're a small mediterranean state in about 400 BC, a world where losing a war may get your cities burned, and your people killed or enslaved, and not doing the same to your enemy may be interpreted as an encouragement to revolt or invade. It's rational to behave this way. So everybody does it. Now tell me how we can judge this behavior from a moral point of view. You're not of course saying that might is right. The brutality has to serve a purpose, protect something that is worth protecting. Otherwise there'd be no moral difference between the Assyrians (who were brilliant at this kind of terrorism) and for instance the Athenians. If the world forces you to be brutal, at least it should be in service of something good.

But what good would that be? The birth of democracy? "Freedom"? The Athenians kept their women locked up, they held slaves, they had a brutal little empire. And they massacred civilians to terrorize their enemies. Now maybe this was how things were done back then, maybe there was no other way to survive in that world, but I think you're a fool if you look back on this mess and say "gee, those Athenians were really swell people, I really wish they'd massacred more civilians so they could have been powerful a bit longer." If you want to admire the ideas of Socrates, or Diogenes, or Aristotle, that's great. But to cheer for one side in one of their stupid, brutal little wars..? Defend their massacres? Draw lessons from this to our own time??

Rules of war were created by people who had seen the pointless destruction of the "total" approach to war. This works in two ways: The first is by mutual agreement. We agree to treat your POW's in a certain way if you agree to treat our POW's the same. It's the tit-for-tat tactic SDB talks about, (don't confuse having rules with having ideals). The other way is by shame, instilling in everyone a sense of what's fair in war and what isn't. Especially in democracies this is important. There's a reason the Serbs deny their war crimes, instead of boasting of them. It's because to most of them, raping women and massacring unarmed men is shameful behavior. It's what the Enemy does, not us.

I'm not saying these rules (or maybe "code" is a better word) have done a lot of good. Actually some of the cleanest wars in European history were fought by mercenaries, and that's a long time ago. Things haven't gone very well since, except very recently. Sure the rhetoric of international law is full of nonsense, sure a lot of people have lost touch with the ground. But to look back at these thousands of years of bloody warfare, and look at rules of war as a mistake, not even worth trying, just throw it all aside and look to Melos? Then I think you're the one who has lost touch with the ground. Academics of international law aren't the only people who live in a privileged bubble of peace and prosperity, so do you and I, and that "screw the rules" attitude is a product of that bubble as much as any UN excesses.

Taco | 2006-04-30 01:22 | Link

Bjørn: ...And do you believe there is even a remote chance of this becoming necessary?

Yes, I do. Like you said, we don't know anything about the future. Anything is possible. We don't know if the next war will be of a 'modern' kind. We don't even know if the World we will meet tomorrow will be a 'modern' one. Maybe we don't have to go back to 400 BC. Maybe we just have to wait another day.

Bjørn:...All that has in common is willingness to kill.

That was exactly what I tried to point out. I am not talking about the possibilities of what might happen, I'm talking about the willingness to do whatever might be necessary.

Bjørn: Now tell me how we can judge this behaviour from a moral point of view. You're not of course saying that might is right.

I don't say might is right. I say brutal behaviour is justified in cases were the 'good' is at stake. If you fight evil, you don't wear silk gloves. You play 'tit-for-tat'. If you don't, evil prevails.

Bjørn: But what good would that be? The birth of democracy? "Freedom"?

Exactly. The Athenians might not have reached the standards we have today, but did you look at the alternatives around those days. I'd rather be an Athenian any of those days. Like you said: it was not what we call democracy or freedom. It was there birth. I'd say it was worth fighting for. And those ideas of Socrates, Diogenes or Aristotle, they thrived because of what? Just because they were good ideas? Did you consider that it might also have something to do with the fact that there were brutal people to protect them and that there was a society to support them.

Again. You point out the brutality of war. No one disagrees. But because one wages a brutal war, you can not conclude that their society wasn't any good in the first place. Slavery was legal in the West only until recently and it is still practiced here today on a large scale. Many men here beat there wives every day. Does that mean that our ideas and our society are not worth defending? Of course not. It means we still have a long way to go.

Or, should we conclude that we have so many flaws that we should consider to give the Iranian-model a chance? Who knows, North-Korea might be an Utopia after all.

Bjørn: Rules of war were created by people who had seen the pointless destruction of the "total" approach to war.

I still don't believe that. If you think that the 'International Community' is made up out of idealists then you lost touch with the ground.

One more thing about those 'rules' of war. How can you have rules that don't apply to all people? Rules of war only apply to those that lose a war. It will always be the Milosevitses that end up in court. You'll never see Henry Kissinger there. No amount of idealism will overcome that flaw.

Bjørn Stærk | 2006-04-30 09:47 | Link

Taco: Yes, I do. Like you said, we don't know anything about the future. Anything is possible.

That's an evasive answer. Of course anything is possible. But if you look at the direction war has taken in the last centuries, it doesn't seem likely, and it certainly isn't right now. So why bring up this "slaughter everyone"-approach to war as an example for us to follow today? Unless it's because it sounds all heroic and tough, "here we draw the line"?

I am not talking about the possibilities of what might happen, I'm talking about the willingness to do whatever might be necessary.

As a general theory that's fine. But when you - or at least Dan Simmons - hold up massive civilian massacres as an example of behavior that might be necessary for us today, then I get worried. Then I think maybe you're a little too eager to have people killed.

The Athenians might not have reached the standards we have today, but did you look at the alternatives around those days. I'd rather be an Athenian any of those days.

There are basically four ways to hold moral judgment over the past. The first is to see ourselves in their place, as we would have been, born and raised in their culture. Right and wrong becomes right and wrong for their society, right and wrong by their standards. This is the cultural relativist approach.

The second is to hold them to our own standards, see ourselves - as we are today - in their place. Right and wrong is right and wrong for us, by our standards. This is the approach I used above to describe Athens.

The third is to hold them to a sized-down-version of our own standards. What matters is not if they behaved right, but if they behaved well relative to the common standards of the time. In a world of slave-owners, admire those who treated their slaves well. In a world of brutal empires, admire those who experimented a little bit with democracy. This is the approach you use towards Athens.

The fourth is not to hold the past to any standards, but merely to describe it as it was. Describe how they thought and lived, describe their ethics, not to judge but to understand. This is the objective historical approach.

I prefer a combination of the second and fourth approach. I want to understand the past, understand where we came from. If we are to judge the past at all, or if we are to search for moral lessons in it, we have to do it by our standards. Anything else doesn't make sense. How does seeing the Athenians as "relatively good" by the standards of their time teach us anything? Dan Simmons wants us to look at the past and learn. But if "relatively good" is good enough, why look to ancient Greece? Let's go back even further. Let us study the world of 2000 B.C., find out who the relative good guys were, and imitate them. Or 500 A.D., who were the relative good guys then? Or 1600. But wait, now we have four different moral lessons. Which one should we pay attention to?

The Greek thinkers were protected by Greek soldiers. But Socrates was also sentenced to death by the Athenians. Following your approach, this doesn't change anything. Athens was still the relative good guys of their time, so we should admire and learn from them. So maybe they killed a philosopher, but others would have done more and worse. In fact, let's cheer them for it. It was right to kill Socrates, he was undermining his own society. Encouraging doubt, forcing people to think, subverting the religion that held Athens together. He symptomized the very problem that Dan Simmons points to as the cause of Athens' downfall.

Or maybe we should let Socrates live, but Diogenes? He and his followers despised society. And Epicurus taught his followers to abandon it. How could any society possibly thrive in such a cutt-throat world with such subversives stabbing it in the back? In fact, throughout the history of philosophers and thinkers, you'll find that a great many of them attacked the common standards of their time. By the standard of "relatively good", that makes them, what .. evil? At least dangerous.

If you want to walk that road, go ahead, but you leave me behind. Or maybe you're saying that because the eventual effect of Greek thought was good, this justifies the actions of the society that enabled them. So we don't judge their behavior by our standards, we judge the final effect of their behavior by our standards. But what is the final effect, where do we stop? If we stop with us, then everything that has happened in history was right, or at least much of it, because it lead to us. Change even a small event, and what follows could have been entirely different. Change a big one, like the black death .. I don't want to think about it.

I don't know about you, but me I'm left with using my own moral standards, if any at all, to judge and learn from the past. And the only way I can do that is by taking the past apart into pieces, and evaluate them one by one. The democratic idea was good, as was some of the philosophical ideas, but slavery and imperialism and massacres and oppression of women was not. To see all this as a whole, and call it "good" or "bad" or "relatively good" or "relatively bad", I just can't do it. I can only try to understand that whole as best I can. I understand the massacres. But we have nothing to learn from them.

If you think that the 'International Community' is made up out of idealists then you lost touch with the ground.

Huh? Our "international community" is a recent thing, a product of the UN. Rules of war are older than that. The first Geneva convention was ratified in the 1860's. And I think it's safe to say that the Red Cross are idealists. All "international community" members are obviously not idealists, but idealists have often been the driving force behind creating rules for war. For instance Lemkin's work with the genocide convention, (which you'll probably want to overturn if you want to repeat Melos.)

Taco | 2006-04-30 22:33 | Link

Bjørn: As a general theory that's fine. But when you - or at least Dan Simmons - hold up massive civilian massacres as an example of behaviour that might be necessary for us today, then I get worried. Then I think maybe you're a little too eager to have people killed.

I don't think Dan meant 'today'. I sure didn't. But, you should be worried. So am I. I do not understand why you think this scenario is so unlikely to unfold in the near future. What do you think Americans should do if New York gets hit by a nuclear device tomorrow, LA next week and Chicago a week later? What if they find proof that the Syrians are involved? I bet that there would be a nuclear retaliation which would mean a massive civilian massacre. I could think of other scenarios were Israel ends up with it's back against the wall. What do you think they would do (with Auschwitz in mind)? What do you think they should do?

You're missing my point if you think that I'm eager to kill people. I'm not. I stretched that before. I'm not advocating any massacre whatsoever. We have not come to that point. I hope we never will. I'm very much in favour of the approach that was laid out by the 'neo-cons' before the war. I don't think it is executed very well, but I still think that there is hope their plan might work. If it doesn't, I fear the worse.

This "slaughter everyone"-approach to war is not an example for us to follow, it is something that might ultimately be necessary in any war. You should be prepared for that or surrender preemptive.

I don't like war. But we're in one and I think we should be prepared and willing to fight it to the end. Come what may. I thought that was Dan's point too.

Bjørn: And I think it's safe to say that the Red Cross are idealists.

That would make Jonas Gahr Støre an idealist. Nah, still don't buy it.

PS: This will be my last comment in this thread.

Bjørn Stærk | 2006-05-01 09:20 | Link

Taco: What do you think Americans should do if New York gets hit by a nuclear device tomorrow, LA next week and Chicago a week later? What if they find proof that the Syrians are involved?

And what if there's a plague of locusts? Or the sky begins to fall? If three cities get nuked, without any warning, and the evidence points to the Syrian government, then I would suspect the evidence. Syria is not governed by idealists or utopians. Such an attack would mean the end of their regime, so they would not do it. Even if they had nukes. Next question?

You're missing my point if you think that I'm eager to kill people. I'm not.

No, you're just eager to imagine hypothetical situations were you'll feel forced to support the murder of millions.

But we're in one and I think we should be prepared and willing to fight it to the end. Come what may. I thought that was Dan's point too.

Dan Simmons's point would seem to be that the Athenian massacre of Melos teaches us the kind of ruthlessness we'll need if we want to escape Eurabia in the 21st century. Like I said, that kind of bloodthirstyness gets me worried. I don't recognize the world he thinks we live in, but I sure recognize that eagerness to imagine the need for extreme violence.

That would make Jonas Gahr Støre an idealist. Nah, still don't buy it.

I expect that's a joke, but it's hard to tell these days.