Heads in the Sand

In which the Atlantic and yours truly find ourselves incorporated into the promotional machinery for Matt's book.

Comments

What's up with the Jim Beam on the book shelf?

Posted by Dave | May 5, 2008 1:31 PM

Can anyone do anything about Matt's clothes?

Posted by Brendan | May 5, 2008 1:34 PM

Mmm, Jim Beam.... What's that book about again?

Posted by Led | May 5, 2008 1:40 PM

The Raveonettes?

Posted by bend | May 5, 2008 2:50 PM

No, no, no. This won't do at all. Poor Anton Chekhov is spinning in his grave.

A bottle of Jim Beam placed on the shelf in the first act *must* be drunk before the end.

Posted by santamonicamr | May 5, 2008 4:41 PM

On Omnilateralism

I appreciated the discussion - in particular, defanging the "politicization of national security" criticism is an impressively unpartisan wisdom. This reminds me, if I remember correctly, of Yglasias's criticism of Howard Deans plain lie about "Bush's right-wing supreme court" making the Kelo decision - it shouldn't seem so fresh for a liberal to be a partisan of the truth!

I do think Yglasias's argument that the UN wasn't preventing anyone from going into Rwanda is absurd. The UN was there and they were the organization given legitimacy by the world to operate there in the humanitarian interest. It would have been truly unilateral for someone to ride in and take over! In this vein, was the UN abandonment of its position between Isreal and Egypt on Nasser's demand charachteristic of the UN's effectiveness? (and wasn't the UN in lebanon flying hezbollah's flag before the second Lebanese war for Isreal?)

Speaking of "legitimacy"... so the sunni insurgency and al queida in Iraq didn't and don't co-operate because France and Germany weren't on board with Iraq? Whatever factors into the ugliness of the Iraq occupation, the word legitimacy certainly doesn't spring to my mind. It seems even more off to argue that American or Western action is only legitimate when the totalitarian Chinese government is on board as in the first Gulf War. Further to that is the arguement that the reason H.W. Bush left Sadaam in power was the fact that his coalition was so encumbered and so I would say that so far from some kind of mystic legitimacy bonus, the UN trappings of the first Gulf War was the reason Sadaam was left free to slaughter the Shia and Kurd uprisings.

This idea that the war in Iraq with 30 some coalition counties is some kind of wild unilateralism interests me. Was Afghanistan also unilateral? If only the United States and her closest allies went in (and only five or so countries are actually fighting there) would it have been illegitimate? I would argue that Bush was excessively multilateralist - instead of the bombastic and tension creating "If you are not with us, you are against us" he should have said: America was attacked. America will defend herself. Any country that beleives it lies in its interest to lend support is very welcome.

I think that what Yglesias is advocating should not be called multilateralism but omnilateralism. That would make sense if the balance of the world was democratic and respectful of human rights. Quite an if.

Posted by Robbie Hingston | May 5, 2008 9:13 PM

good use of the raveonettes.

Posted by joshua | May 6, 2008 3:21 PM

Nice to see such an intelligent, civil discussion of an important issue.

Posted by Robert | May 7, 2008 11:36 AM