Lord Byron, The Dream

“A people who conceive life to be the pursuit of happiness must be chronically unhappy.”

Marshall Sahlins, anthropologist

That we are all capable of sustained happiness is a lie. Moreover, it is a lie that makes those whose personalities have never been described as “bubbling” feel guilty for not belonging to Club Happiness.

Who in our society are more hated than the unhappy? After all, in a culture obsessed with happiness, the unhappy are ultimately considered failures. No one wants to be perceived as, or associated with, les misérables. They are such a drag, and who knows, they may be contagious. After all, melancholia, known by its vapid clinical designation “depression,” (William Styron said the word has “a bland tonality and lacking any magisterial presence, used indifferently to describe an economic decline or a rut in the ground, a true wimp of a word for such a major illness [...] for over seventy-five years the word has slithered innocuously through the language like a slug, leaving little trace of its intrinsic malevolence and preventing, by its very insipidity, a general awareness of the horrible intensity of the disease when out of control.”) is classified as a mental disorder, and now they even want to pathologize grief.

When did our obsession with happiness and its evil step-sister, “positivity,” begin?

Once upon a time, our collective ideal was to be “good,” not happy. Throughout most of humanity’s existence, we were so focused upon questions of survival that we simply didn’t have time to think of such luxuries as happiness. The Ancient Greeks used to say, “Call no man happy until he is dead.”

Were the horrors of the twentieth century simply too much to bear? After humanity experienced the nightmares of world war, genocide, totalitarianism, famine, and plague, perhaps its capacity for misery was simply exhausted, and we collectively proclaimed, “Enough is enough. Now, happiness.”

This is understandable. However, this collective determination to be happy mated with our escapist entertainment-based culture to create a Cult of Positivity.

The Cult of Positivity

Unemployed? Single? Poor? “Failing” in some other way? “Positive thinking” is the solution, say the happyists. Motivational speakers talk about the “evil” of negative thoughts, and encourage their peons to expunge “negative people” from their lives, because they are “committed to lose.” Companies force their employees to watch ridiculous self-help DVDs, peddled by snake-oil salesmen, teaching them that positive thinking can bring them health, wealth, and happiness. FedEx, Adobe and IBM are among the many companies that have hired “happiness coaches” to work with employees, and even the U.S. army is incorporating “positive psychology” (which one psychologist calls ”saccharine terrorism”) into its training program.

Cancer victims are told they can beat the disease with positive thinking (they can’t), leading patients to blame themselves when their self-treatment of positivity fails.

Creepy happiness movements insist that “happiness is a decision” (those 121 million people with depression are clearly not “deciding” hard enough).

In the UK, a Happiness Czar was created (perhaps someone noticed that depressed people are less economically productive), and ”happiness centres” administering courses of cognitive behavioural therapy have been established. Sounds a little like something out of Brave New World.

President Obama is castigated for being a “pessimist,” while former president Reagan is worshipped as an optimist. Optimistic presidential candidates are more likely to win presidential elections (though the presidents who gave more pessimistic inaugural speeches are more likely to go down in history as being great).

Critical thinkers and writers are derided as being “negative” or “pessimistic,” to the delight of those whose questionable actions they criticize. In being labelled negative, they are equated with being unhappy, and thus as failures. People demand that journalists write happier stories about fluffy kittens to cheer them up. God forbid the news of famine, war, and disease upset the poor first worlders.

As author Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote a book about our cult-like obsession with positivity, writes, “what is truly sinister about the positivity cult is that it seems to reduce our tolerance of other people’s suffering [...] creating an empathy deficit that pushes ever more people into a harsh insistence on positivity in others.”

Psychologist Barbara Held, agrees. “The tyranny of the positive attitude lies in its adding insult to injury: If people feel bad about life’s many difficulties and they cannot manage to transcend their pain no matter how hard they try (to learn optimism), they could end up feeling even worse; they could feel guilty or defective for not having the right (positive) attitude, in addition to whatever was ailing them in the first place.” She says that “I believe that we would be better off if we let everyone be themselves — positive, negative, or even somewhere in-between.”

Psychiatrist Andrew Thomson believes that, “as a society, we’ve come to see depression as something that must always be avoided or medicated away. We’ve been so eager to remove the stigma from depression that we’ve ended up stigmatizing sadness.”

Psychotherapist and writer Adam Phillips says that “There is a presumption that there is a weakness in the people who are depressed,” and points out that “The reason that there are so many depressed people is that life is so depressing for many people.” He thinks that happiness is “a cruel demand,” because “happiness and the right to pursue it are sometimes wildly unrealistic as ideals.” He calls this form of thinking “a version of fundamentalism,” and says that “anyone who could maintain a state of happiness, given the state of the world, is living in a delusion.”

Ehrenreich talks about how people in the corporate world are brainwashed into believing that all they have to do to be successful in their career is be positive. This kind of thinking, among other things, helps prevent negative reactions towards mass lay-offs. “What could be cleverer as a way of quelling dissent, than to tell people who are in some kind of trouble – poverty, unemployment, etc. – that it’s all their attitude,” Ehrenreich says. “It’s a brilliant form of social control.”

Ehrenreich talks about the Cult of Positivity

This delusional positive thinking also contributed to the Financial Crisis, when negative voices in finance or real estate were quieted or fired.

Perhaps this unhealthy infatuation with all things positive and happy is a product of our present age, or perhaps they are peculiar to our own culture.

Mark Ames, an American who lived and worked as a journalist in Russia for a long time, writes about his first visit to St. Petersburg in 1991, and how liberating it was to not have to be happy all the time:

“They didn’t oppress you with their pod-people smiles and affected self-confidence the way they did in California. In fact, they looked every bit as miserable as I’d felt inside for, oh, as long as I could remember. And yet, oddly, they were so much more alive than, say, the neighbours in our cul-de-sac on Sand Hill Court.”

One can’t help but occasionally feel that, in the West (minus the passionate peoples of the Mediterranean), any display of unbridled passion in a social setting immediately results in shock, terror, and indignation. At the very least it is a substantial faux pas. As author Jonathan Franzen puts it, “anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool.”

The Value of Sadness

No one would ever call happiness a bad thing, but perhaps it is not the only thing. Don’t the emotions at the other side of the spectrum have some value too? Why don’t we value the so-called “negative” emotions? Isn’t our vast spectrum of complex emotions, awarded to us by our uniquely oversized cerebellums, and our capacity for sadness, one of the things which make us human? Many famous thinkers have pointed out how human an emotion sadness is.

John Stuart Mill recognized the value of the full spectrum of human emotions, saying that “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” Friedrich Nietzsche recognized that our suffering is one of the things that make us unique as a species, postulating in The Will to Power that “Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.” Franz Kafka once wrote in his diary, “I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “the natural state of the sentient adult is a qualified unhappiness.”

Jonathan Franzen writes that pain should be embraced because it is “the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived.” He believes that “the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.”

“Misery Loves Company” by Open, N.Y.  

Before the Cult took over, sadness was given its due respect. Melancholia has traditionally been associated with genius and creativity. Aristotle stated well over 2,000 years ago that “all men who have attained excellence in philosophy, in poetry, in art and in politics, even Socrates and Plato had a melancholic habitus; indeed some suffered even from melancholic disease.”

This association of gloom and genius was revived during the Renaissance, leading John Milton to exclaim, in his poem Il Penseroso: “Hail, divinest melancholy/whose saintly visage is too bright/to hit the sense of human sight.” The romantic poets praised suffering as a process which adds insight and depth to a person’s character. As Keats wrote, “Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

Indeed, various studies have shown that writers and artists have a much higher rate of depression. Just look at all of the artists and writers who have taken their own lives: Vincent Van Gogh, Jack London, Sergei Esenin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Hart Crane, Virginia Woolf, Arshile Gorky, Cesare Pavese, Tadeusz Borowski, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Mark Rothko, Paul Celan, Yukio Mishima, Diane Arbus, John Berryman, Anne Sexton, Romain Gary, and Primo Levi to name but a few.

Researchers have shown that sadness can actually increase artistic creativity. Other studies have shown that sadness can improve memory, mathematical skills, and observational skills, and that sad people are less likely to stereotype strangers and are better at judging the accuracy of rumours. Psychologists Lyn Abramson and Lauren Alloy have concluded that “when they are not depressed, people are highly vulnerable to illusions, including unrealistic optimism, overestimation of themselves, and an exaggerated sense of their capacity to control events. The same research indicates that depressed people’s perceptions and judgments are often less biased.” Depressed people experience increased activity in their left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain which is responsible for intense focus, and delivers extremely analytical thinking.

Abraham Lincoln, whose “melancholy dripped from him as he walked,” often wept in public, fell into deep depressions for months at a time, constantly thought of suicide, and described himself as “the most miserable man living.” Yet Lincoln’s chronic sadness ”spurred him, painfully, to examine the core of his soul” and forged “a spirit of humble determination.” His “hard work to stay alive helped him develop crucial skills and capacities,” and his “inimitable character took great strength from the piercing insights of depression.” As Lincoln expert Joshua Wolf Shenk opines, “Lincoln didn’t do great work because he solved the problem of his melancholy; the problem of his melancholy was all the more fuel for the fire of his great work.”

Adam Phillips talks about the value of unhappiness, as counter-intuitive as it may initially sound. “We don’t talk of the right to be unhappy, when we should. Unhappiness can, after all, among many other things, be the registration of injustice or loss.”

Fyodor Dostoevksy wrote in The Possessed, ”Do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness?” Jonathan Franzen similarly writes that depression is a “successful adaptation to ceaseless pain and hardship,” and that “There is after all a kind of happiness in unhappiness, if it’s the right unhappiness.”

Happiness is not a choice. Many psychologists contend that the most important determinant of happiness is a “set point,” a genetic baseline happiness level. The behavioral geneticist David Lykken, after conducting extensive research on twins, concluded that “trying to be happier is like trying to be taller.” Psychology professor and author Jonathan Haidt says that “in the long run, it doesn’t much matter what happens to you,” in regards to how happy you will be.

Evolutionary psychologists say that we’re actually “hardwired to emphasize the negative,” for survival purposes. For the last million years or so, “it has made good adaptive sense to be fearful, cautious, [and] timid” because such things as “a sniffle, a graze, or a bad piece of meat,” could have been fatal. Therefore it’s made more sense to prudently assume the worst.

Conclusion

The celebrated American writer and sufferer of severe depression William Styron once wrote that the “veritable howling tempest in the brain” that is depression ”is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it,” and that “calling “Chin up!” from the safety of the shore to a drowning person is tantamount to insult.”

If it’s true that the severely sad suffer in a way unimaginable to others, and cannot simply “choose” to be happy, then perhaps we should be a little easier on them. If it’s true that sadness is one of the things that makes us human, adds depth to the soul, and helps us appreciate happiness, then perhaps we shouldn’t pejoratively label it as a “negative” emotion. If positivity has become like a cult, then perhaps we shouldn’t automatically assume that everything “positive” is good and everything “negative” is bad.

On September 24, 2011, it was announced that Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, who served as president from 2000 – 2008, and has been prime minister since 2008, would once again run for president in March of 2012, with current president Dmitri Medvedev to serve as his prospective prime minister. This effectively meant that Russians would be faced with 12 more years of Putin, since there are no viable contenders for president. To add insult to injury, Putin also added that this arrangement had been the plan all along, and was decided “several years back.”

Following this announcement, an unprecedented series of anti-government ‘booings‘ occurred throughout the massive country.

On November 3, 2011 a spokesperson for the ruling United Russia political party was booed off stage at a rock concert  in the Siberian coal mining town of Kemerovo when he thanked the band on behalf of the party.

On November 20, in an extraordinary display, Putin himself was booed when he made an appearance at a mixed martial arts match in Moscow. This had never happened before, and made international news headlines. Russia’s state-controlled T.V. news censored out the booing, but the incident was captured on amateur video, and quickly went viral across Russia via YouTube.

Putin is booed in Moscow. The audience only applauds when the victorious Russian fighter’s name is mentioned (his competitor was American).

Also in late November, United Russia was booed in Chelyabinsk, an industrial city in the Urals, and in St. Petersburg.

Prior to the December 4 parliamentary elections, the Russian government, perhaps fearing that this new rise in resentment would manifest into less votes for United Russia, began harassing election monitors and many websites for political and media organizations. LiveJournal, the most popular blogging site in Russia, also came under attack on election day.

Many election violations occurred, and were officially documented by the monitoring organization Golos. Many more were caught on video and posted on YouTube. The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said the polls were slanted in favour of United Russia, and reported voting fraud. The voter fraud wasn’t in of itself abnormal, but it was worse than normal, and much better documented.

One of the many examples of election fraud captured and posted on YouTube. An election official fills out ballets for United Russia.

Despite the intimidation and fraud, and indeed in part because of it, many angry Russians came out to cast their ballots, and many also volunteered to be election monitors. Maria Lipman, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center describes the “unprecedented outbreak of antigovernment mobilization:”

Suddenly, the generally depoliticized younger constituencies rushed to take part in the vote—with the sole purpose of undermining the party of swindlers and thieves. Anything went—taking the ballot home, tearing it up right there at the precinct, writing something funny or insulting on it as a way of making it invalid, or voting for any party included on the ballot regardless of what it stood for.

The result was that United Russia went from occupying 64% of the seats in the Duma to just under half.

Immediately after the election, on December 5 and 6, there were small demonstrations in protest of the fraud, numbering 5,000 – 6,000 people, chanting “Putin is a thief!” and “Russia without Putin!” Nearly 1,000 were arrested (including the popular dissident blogger Alexey Navalny).

On December 10, an astonished world watched as a much larger protest of 50,000 people took form on Bolotnaya Square in the centre of Moscow,  making international headlines (but were completely ignored by Russian state-controlled television for at least a week). Smaller protests took place in St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Irkutsk, and Tomsk, among other cities. Nothing even close to this large had been seen anywhere in Russia since at least the 1993 constitutional crisis.

December 10 protest in Moscow. Photo credit Ridus.ru

Two weeks later, on December 24, an even larger protest, with perhaps 100,000 participants, was staged on Sakharov Avenue in Moscow, showing that a political movement had in fact started, and it had legs.

December 24 protest in Moscow. Photo credit Ilya Varlamov.

Journalist Julia Ioffe describes how the second protest became more sophisticated: ”The opposition has banded into various squabbling organizational committees; it has learned how to handle negotiations with the mayor’s office; how to raise money for sound equipment; how to give people a say in the lineup of who will address them at the protest; and how to better harness social networks into disseminating information.”

The protesters actually passed a resolution calling for a new election under reformed electoral laws and the dismissal and investigation of election commission chief Vladimir Churov, among other things. Putin rejected the call to review the election results, and accused the opposition of having unclear goals.

Moscow was flooded with tens of thousands of extra Interior Ministry troops, but they wisely chose not to use violence to put down the demonstrators.

Putin blamed the United States for instigating the protests and even accused them of paying the protesters (However, in reality, the Kremlin actually paid pro-Kremlin counter-protesters to stage their own demonstrations). He also ridiculed them by comparing them to the lawless Bandar-log monkeys from The Jungle Book, and said their white ribbons looked like condoms.

Protesters use Putin’s mocking comments against him

Opposition leaders such as Boris Nemtsov, Gennady Gudkov, and Alexey Navalny have been victims of smear campaigns, possibly orchestrated by Russian security services.

Medvedev initially downplayed the scale of electoral fraud, calling Vladimir Churov, the chairman of the Federal Election Commission widely blamed for electoral violations, a “wizard.”

However, upon re-evaluation, Medvedev, in an effort to appease the protesters, announced the prospect of a modest set of reforms on December 22. These included a return to direct election of regional governors, a loosening of rules for registration of political parties, and the introduction of an independent public television channel.

On January 16, Medvedev introduced a bill to the Duma that could restore direct gubernatorial elections in Russia as soon as May of this year. However, the Kremlin would likely still be able to approve the elected candidates, so this “reform” is mostly cosmetic, designed to appease Putin’s critics, with very little substantial effect.

The Kremlin’s political mastermind and spin doctor Vladislav Surkov, hated by the protesters, was removed from his position on December 26. Surkov was the architect of Russia’s “managed democracy,” and believed that the unique immensity of Russia demands highly centralized power. His removal is seen by many as a concession to the protesters (though he has been appointed to a less influential position as one of Russia’s seven deputy prime ministers). However, Surkov was replaced with a senior United Russia member and Putin loyalist, who may actually be even worse.

Former leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev advised Putin to step down on the liberal radio station Ekho Moskvy on December 24.

On Orthodox Christmas day (January 7), the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, publicly advised the Kremlin not to ignore the protesters, and to change state policies according to their desires.

The presidential election will be on March 4. According to the latest poll, 45% of Russians would vote for Putin. If he receives less than 50% of the vote in the election, he’ll be forced into a runoff with the candidate who receives the next highest votes, which will further hurt his credibility and his image of invincibility. His approval rating has dropped from a spectacularly high 81% in 2007, to 68% at the beginning of 2011, to 61% last November, to 51% in December.

The next protest is scheduled for February 4 on Moscow’s downtown Garden Ring Road, and over 20,000 people have already signed up on the protest’s Facebook page. However, city officials announced on January 20 that they won’t allow such a large of a protest in central Moscow because of “security concerns.”

It is yet to be seen whether these large protests will continue, dissipate, or evolve, and how Russians will react when Putin inevitably wins the presidential election in March.

Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, who opposes a war with Iran, said that “I decided to speak out because, when I was in office, Diskin, Ashkenazi and I could block any dangerous adventure. Now I am afraid that there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak.”

Parts of the American media establishment have already begun an advocacy campaign urging war with Iran. Foreign Affairs recently published articles with titles such as “Time to Attack Iran” and “Why Obama Should Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Program.”

Salon.com blogger and lawyer Glenn Greenwald notes how the media evidently didn’t learn their lesson after the invasion of Iraq not to rely upon “anonymous government sources” to disseminate “unverified fear-mongering accusations.” He points out how the Washington Post is doing exactly that, which they’ve been criticized for in the past. The New York Times is often no better. As Greenwald writes, “there is a concerted campaign underway in Washington to demonize the Iranians and to blame them for almost every world evil, real and imagined.” The utterly ridiculous ”Iranian Plot” is a perfect example of this.

Many other articles have been published recently, arguing that a “covert” attack on Iran has in fact already begun.

Timeline of the Covert War

In the winter of 2010, Iran’s Natanz nuclear facilities were attacked by the American-Israeli designed Stuxnet worm, “the most sophisticated cyber weapon ever deployed,” which destroyed about one-third of Iran’s centrifuges. Israel’s role was privately confirmed by Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi.

Last July, an Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated, which marked the fourth such attack. Writes Haaretz, “The attacks seem to be focused on taking out key people involved in the last and most important step on the road to nuclear weapons – the group known as the weapons group.” An article in Der Spiegel claims that “There is little doubt in the shadowy world of intelligence agencies that Israel is behind the assassination.”

On November 12, a Revolutionary Guard ballistic missile base in Iran’s Isfahan province was bombed, which killed 17 people, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, who was a pioneer of missile development in the Islamic Republic. A western intelligence source said Israel was behind the attack. On the 28th, another mysterious explosion in Isfahan was reported.

On November 13, Ahmad Rezai, the son of Mohsen Rezai, the secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, a former Revolutionary Guards commander and a presidential contender, was found dead at a hotel in Dubai. The death was described as suspicious and reportedly caused by electric shocks.

Also in November, the U.S., U.K., E.U., and Canada each announced they were imposing more (futile) sanctions on Iran. In response, Iranian protesters stormed the British Embassy in Tehran. The U.K. then expelled all Iranian diplomats from Britain.

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Bahrain have all urged the U.S. to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

Seymour Hersh writes that “Israeli fighter pilots have been training for years at the Hatzerim airbase, in the Negev, and at a foreign site, for a potential raid on known and suspected nuclear-weapons facilities in Iran.”

Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, says that ”[The Americans] are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.  U.S. bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.”

Roger Cohen, at the New York Times, writes that ”It would take tremendous naïveté to believe these events are not the result of a covert American-Israeli drive to sabotage Iran’s efforts to develop a military nuclear capacity.”

Jordan Michael Smith, at Salon.com, warns that ”A full-scale war is inevitable if things don’t change.”

International relations theorist Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy asks, “What will happen if Iran tries to fight back against these covert strikes? They’ll be accused of starting it.”

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Many have been saying for decades that Iran is on the brink of having nuclear weapons. In 1992, Netanyahu claimed Iran would have nuclear weapons in 3-5 years.  Shimon Peres insisted Iran would have nukes by 1999. In 1995, the New York Times claimed Iran was only 5 years away from obtaining them.

Secretary of state Hillary Clinton told Iran that “You do not have a right to obtain a nuclear weapon. You do not have the right to have the full enrichment and reprocessing cycle under your control.” However, the U.S., as well as Britain and France, are all in violation of the 1995 UN nuclear non-proliferation treaty that mandated eliminating all nuclear weapons within five years.

On November 8, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report that is being used by many hawks in the U.S. and Israel to call for war. The report says that Iran has carried out activities “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device,” but does not explicitly state that Iran is currently trying to build nuclear weapons.

Journalist Gwynne Dyer points out the political nature of the report, writing that it’s based on information from western intelligence sources: “The same intelligence agencies are producing the same sort of reports about Iran that we heard eight years ago about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions, and interpreting the information in the same highly prejudiced way.” He also points out the hypocrisy that “[IAEA head Yukiya] Amano will never publish a report about America’s nuclear weapons [...] He hasn’t said anything about Israel’s, Britain’s and France’s weapons of mass destruction either.”

Wikileaks documents reveal that Amano is extremely pro-American, and is “solidly in the U.S. court” when it comes to “the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”

Journalist Eric Margolis points out that the U.S. pays a quarter of the costs of the IAEA and has put its own people in positions of influence in the agency.

There is indeed ample reason to believe that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program, but there’s also reason to believe they’re not, and the latter is receiving almost no media exposure, thus warranting an examination.

Academic Fareed Zakaria points out that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest political and religious authority in the country, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral, and later said that ”developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam.” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were “un-Islamic.” Zakaria acknowledges that they could simply be lying but ponders how “it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop reminding people of Khomeini’s statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes.”

The two most recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimates both concluded that there is no conclusive evidence that Iran has been pursuing a nuclear bomb since 2003. The Defense Intelligence Agency said that when Iran did have a nuclear weapons program before 2003, it was aimed at Iraq, not Israel, the U.S., or Europe.

The Iranian enrichment program is monitored by the IAEA, and Natanz and all of Iran’s major nuclear installations are under extensive video surveillance. Inspectors “have been unable to find any evidence that enriched uranium has been diverted to an illicit weapons program.”

Seymour Hersh writes that ”Despite years of covert operations inside Iran, extensive satellite imagery, and the recruitment of many Iranian intelligence assets, the United States and its allies, including Israel, have been unable to find irrefutable evidence of an ongoing hidden nuclear-weapons program in Iran.”

Seymour Hersh talks about Iran’s nuclear program on Democracy Now!

A More Likely Goal

Some more thoughtful commentators have reached a different conclusion about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, saying that Iran actually probably wants a “latent” nuclear capability. In other words, Iran wants the capability to quickly produce nuclear weapons without actually building them. This would create a powerful deterrent against an attack, and would also be cheaper than actually producing the bomb.

Gwynne Dyer postulates that “Iran wants the knowledge and equipment that would let it build a nuclear weapon very quickly if necessary: an Israeli nuclear threat, a military coup in nuclear-armed Pakistan that brings young Shia-hating officers to power, whatever.” Dyer also points out that this is entirely legal under IAEA rules.

Stephen Walt writes that Iran could do this “while making it clear to others that it had not crossed the line,” so as to avoid an arms race or sanctions.

The Rationality of Iranian Actions

Even if Iran is developing nuclear weapons, many would say this is a very rational policy for a state in Iran’s position. Despite its constant vitriolic, anti-Semitic rhetoric, which is used to pander to domestic voters, and its incredibly oppressive domestic policies, Iran’s international actions are actually quite rational and not particularly aggressive.

U.S. military bases in the Middle East

As Stephen Walt writes, “[the U.S. and Israel] ramp up sanctions, talk openly of regime change, conduct various acts of sabotage and/or covert action against them [...] and basically behave in ways that we would regard as acts of war if anyone did them to us. And then we wonder why Iran’s leaders are so reluctant to end their nuclear program.”

Journalist Mehdi Hasan explains the perspective of the Iranians:

On your eastern border, the United States has 100,000 troops serving in Afghanistan. On your western border, the US has been occupying Iraq since 2003 and plans to retain a small force of military contractors and CIA operatives even after its official withdrawal next month. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, is to the south-east; Turkey, America’s Nato ally, to the north-west; Turkmenistan, which has acted as a refuelling base for US military transport planes since 2002, to the north-east. To the south, across the Persian Gulf, you see a cluster of US client states: Bahrain, home to the US Fifth Fleet; Qatar, host to a forward headquarters of US Central Command; Saudi Arabia, whose king has exhorted America to “attack Iran” and “cut off the head of the snake.”

Then, of course, less than a thousand miles to the west, there is Israel, your mortal enemy, in possession of over a hundred nuclear warheads and with a history of pre-emptive aggression against its opponents.

According to the Global Peace Index, a list of the most peaceful countries in the world published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, Iran (ranked 119) actually scores quite a bit higher than Israel (145).

Glenn Greenwald points out that ”In the past decade, the U.S. and/or Israel have invaded, air attacked, and/or occupied Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.” During this same time period, Iran hasn’t invaded, occupied or attacked anyone. In fact, Iran hasn’t invaded anyone in over 200 years, and the current regime has absolutely no history of attacking its neighbours. As one scholar writes, “Iran’s foreign policy has been fairly risk-averse since the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989.”

Greenwald asks his readers to ”just imagine the massive retaliatory response that would be triggered if Iran were found to be flying drones over American soil, let alone simultaneously killing U.S. scientists, causing explosions on U.S. soil, backing U.S. Terrorist groups, and launching cyber attacks on U.S. nuclear facilities, all while occupying Canada and Mexico with more than 150,000 troops.” No wonder Iran wants to protect itself.

Even the Council on Foreign Relations, composed largely of U.S. government officials, says that it’s entirely reasonable for Iran to want nukes:

now that Washington has proved willing to put its provocative doctrine of military pre-emption into practice, Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons makes strategic sense. And Tehran cannot be entirely faulted for rushing to acquire them. When the Bush administration invaded Iraq, which was not yet nuclearized, and avoided using force against North Korea, which already was, Iranians came to see nuclear weapons as the only viable deterrent to U.S. military action.

Even Israel’s defence minister Ehud Barak himself recently said that if he were an Iranian leader he would want nuclear weapons.

Would a Nuclear Iran Be the End of the World?

If Iran did obtain nuclear weapons, it would not necessarily lead to an arms race. When Israel got their bomb, it didn’t lead to an arms race, and neither did North Korea’s nukes. The nuclear domino myth could also become a self-fulfilling prophesy if simply taken at face value as being self-evident.

It’s also worth pointing out that nuclear arms are defensive weapons, not offensive. As Stephen Walt tells us, Iran “could not use a bomb against us or against Israel without triggering its own destruction, and there is no sign that Iran’s leadership is suicidal. Quite the contrary, in fact: the clerics seem more concerned with staying alive and staying in power than anything else.” He also explains that “Nuclear weapons are good for deterring attacks on one’s own territory (and perhaps the territory of very close allies), but that’s about it. They are not good for blackmail, coercive diplomacy, or anything else.”

Another scholar writes that Iran “is unlikely to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon because Israel’s atomic arsenal is orders of magnitude larger than whatever infant capability Iran could muster in the foreseeable future. Moreover, Israel is believed to possess a secure submarine-based second-strike capability that could devastate Iran” even in the impossibly unlikely event that Iran could destroy all of Israel’s nukes on the ground.

According to an April 2010 report to Congress from the Defense Intelligence Agency, Iranian military doctrine is strictly “defensive, designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities,” and Iran has only “a limited capability to project force beyond its borders.” In regards to their nuclear strategy, “Iran’s nuclear programme and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy” [emphasis added].

It’s also baseless to conclude that Iran would hand over a nuclear bomb to a terrorist group such as Hezbollah. As one scholar writes in Foreign Affairs, “No nuclear state has ever turned over its most prized military asset to a subsidiary actor or surrendered its exclusive control over a weapon that it worked so hard to obtain. More important, if Hezbollah were to acquire and use a nuclear weapon against Israel, there would be no doubt about the weapon’s provenance and Iran would immediately face devastating retaliation.” Another writes that ”it is hard to think of a scenario in which Iran would benefit from a terrorist client possessing a bomb.”

The Perils of an Attack on Iran

Many experts agree that an attack on Iran would not be a simple matter of a few quick airstrikes, and would have devastating consequences.

Stratfor predicts that an Israeli airstrike would result in Iran mining the Strait of Hormuz, where almost 20 percent of oil traded worldwide passes through. The U.S. would have to get involved, because only they could engage the Iranian navy and de-mine the Strait.

Journalist and Middle East expert Robert Dreyfuss at The Nation writes about what an attack on Iran would likely look like:

an Israeli attack would lead to a regional conflagration, in which Iran would use its proxies and allies and, most likely, terrorist units against US and Israeli targets across the region and even worldwide. Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon, would strike Israel, leading to what would end up being an Israeli war against both Syria and Lebanon. Iran’s allies in Iraq and Afghanistan could launch attacks against US and NATO forces there, and there’s a strong likelihood that Iran would try to attack the oil facilities of the Arab countries across the Persian Gulf. The ripples would spread from there, including soaring oil prices (in the range of $150 to $200 per barrel). For all these reasons, without definitive proof that Iran has actually acquired a bomb and that Iran is planning to use it, an attack by either the United States or Israel makes no strategic sense, especially since many analysts believe that even a sustained attack might not succeed in doing anything more than delaying Iran’s program while convincing Tehran to accelerate it and to move its facilities underground into hardened sites, as it appears to be doing in its new facility outside Qom.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said attacking Iran would set back an alleged nuclear program only a year or two, and would garner Iran much-needed regional support, as well as having devastating economic effects on an already weak global economy.

Meir Dagan, the recently retired head of the Mossad, said last January that an attack on Iran was “the stupidest idea” he had ever heard, and that it would set off a “regional war.”

Stephen Walt writes that a military strike against Iran would “solidify support for the regime, give it even more incentive to get a nuclear deterrent, and unleash all sorts of unpredictable forces within the region.”

Middle East scholar Juan Cole also points out that “an Israeli attack on Iran would willy-nilly push Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki into the arms of Tehran.”

Eurasia Group president and political scientist Ian Bremmer said “It is extremely unlikely that Iran’s nuclear program could be destroyed” with air strikes alone.

Conclusion

If Iran obtained nuclear weapons, it would have much the same effect as every other country that has gone nuclear, which is to say, very little. The North Koreans haven’t used theirs, and neither has any other nuclear power, except of course the United States. That is because they are not offensive weapons, and no one would be foolish enough to compel a nuclear power to use their nukes defensively.

Besides, conventional weapons can be just as destructive as nukes, and no one is getting rid of those. Iran’s ability to exert any pressure internationally comes from its conventional forces, just like Israel, and would be little changed with a few nuclear weapons. It is war that’s destructive, not weapons, and therefore it is war that should be avoided at all costs, through robust diplomacy and engagement. If such diplomacy is perceived domestically as ‘being weak’ and loses a few votes at home, so be it.

This diplomacy can’t be done with condescension – it would be political suicide for the Iranian regime to negotiate with the already unpopular and mistrusted (The Iranians still remember the overthrow of Mosaddegh, to say nothing of incredibly unpopular ongoing U.S. policies in the Middle East) Americans who tell them they “aren’t allowed” to have nuclear weapons, and who hypocritically criticize their domestic policies while remaining silent about allies such as Saudi Arabia. They would simply lose too much political capital. Negotiations should be done through Turkey, who is a close U.S. ally that has an amicable relationship with Iran as well. Military strikes must be avoided at all costs.

I smile as they cringe when they see you. You are my samurai sword. You have the power to save lives and dispel lies, to end wars and help the poor, to shed light unto injustice, and to conjure fear into the hearts of the corrupt. You are my badge, signifying who I am. You are my License to Ask, my affirmation of identity, and my legitimacy. You are an umbrella against a downpour of doubt. You are my compass, my lantern, and my map, guiding me towards the Truth. You are the birthplace of ideas and the incubator of thoughts. You are my faithful sidekick, going where I go. You give me herculean memory, seamlessly receiving my thoughts and diligently recalling them on command, knowing that each entry brings you closer to your end. You give me the resolve to go where I need to go, and to do what I must. You are an impetus to turn curiosity into questions, questions into answers, and answers into ideas. You give me courage and remind me of who and what I am, and where I want to go. You are not simply a notepad. You are self-empowerment. You are identity.

How ironic that a former Harvard professor of constitutional law so egregiously and openly defied the U.S. Constitution. The Fifth Amendment explicitly states that “no person shall be [...] deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Sixth Amendment dictates that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State.”

The action may be defended under the controversial Authorization to Use Military Force Against Terrorists, passed right after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but this resolution is irrelevant in this case, since it only works against people who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attacks. There is no evidence that Awlaki was involved with 9/11, and his organization, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), did not even exist yet in 2001.

And if the justification for the lack of trial is the fact that Awlaki wasn’t in the country, and could not have been extradited, then why not at least have a trial in absentia? He could have been indicted, and if he refused to appear in court, he would have waived his right to habeas corpus.

According to Marjorie Cohn, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, “Targeted assassinations violate international law [...] even in armed conflict.” The United Nations prohibits intentional, premeditated targeted killings during peacetime. Even during wartime a targeted killing is only legal when it is “militarily necessary,” and directed against a fighter who “directly participates in hostilities.” There is absolutely no evidence that Awlaki has ever participated in or planned any military operations whatsoever.

Top Yemen scholar Gregory Johnsen wrote that “Contrary to what the Obama administration would have you believe, [Awlaki] has always been a minor figure in Al Qaeda,” and is merely “a midlevel religious functionary who happens to have American citizenship and speak English.” Johnsen also wrote that “no one should remain under the mistaken assumption that killing Mr. Awlaki will somehow make us safer” and that he doesn’t think that Awlaki’s death “will in any way be debilitating for the organization.”

Before Awlaki was assassinated, leading Middle East scholar Fawaz Gerges wrote that he “has few followers in Yemen and the wider Arab world,” and that “killing him, in addition to the moral and legal questions involved, would not substantially disrupt Al Qaeda. In fact, it would transform the fugitive preacher into a martyr and would likely further poison Yemeni public opinion against the U.S.”

NYU Law professor and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions Philip Alston said in August, 2010 that the U.S. “has claimed a broad and novel theory that there is a ‘law of 9/11′ that enables it to legally use force in the territory of other States as part of its inherent right to self-defence” and that this “does grave damage to the international legal frameworks designed to protect the right to life” and “threatens to destroy the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the UN Charter.” Alston points out that “If other states were to claim the broad-based authority that the United States does, to kill people anywhere, anytime, the result would be chaos.“

Journalist and lawyer Scott Horton similarly asks the question: “if it’s okay for the United States to kill al-Awlaki in Yemen, then why wouldn’t it be okay for the Russians to plant a car bomb in a vehicle used by a Chechen leader in London or Vienna, or for the Chinese to drop a bomb on a Uighur in Istanbul or Athens?”

Since there’s no evidence that Awlaki had any sort of operational role within AQAP, he was presumably targeted for his recruitment role. However, as journalist and constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald points out, the incredibly robust First Amendment actually gives Awlaki the right to speak out against the United States government, and even to call for violence against Americans. As he writes, “the First Amendment not only protects the mere ‘attending’ of a speech ‘promoting the violent overthrow of our government,’ but also the giving of such a speech.  The government is absolutely barred by the Free Speech clause from punishing people even for advocating violence.” A 1969 judicial decision concluded that free speech was allowed unless it calls for “imminent lawless action,” or in other words, giving a specific date and time in the near future, such as inciting a mob to attack a nearby building right then and there. Since none of Awlaki’s distributed videos called for specific, imminent attacks, he was in fact protected by the First Amendment.

Another sad irony is that President Obama, who promised to create “an unprecedented level of openness in Government,” and who campaigned against Bush’s expansion of executive power during the War on Terror, has created a secret panel which clandestinely, exclusively, and without public scrutiny decides which American citizens will be assassinated for their alleged role in terrorism. He has also refused to disclose an alleged Justice Department legal opinion that justifies the killing of Awlaki based on the fact that he had assumed an operational role in AQAP. If there is such robust evidence to justify such an unlawful act, why aren’t they releasing it?

And why are Obama’s so-called “progressive” supporters turning a blind eye to his complete disregard for due process? Didn’t these same people decry the Bush Administration for their expansion of executive power and lack of transparency and accountability? Don’t they turn their noses up and cluck their tongues when Rick Perry brags about how many prisoners he’s executed? Why is this particular disregard for both domestic and international law so different? Would we like to see a President Perry able to exercise such overarching powers, able to kill any American citizen that he and a few advisors deem to be enemies? It’s certainly something to think about.

CARTOON BY JOHN DARKOW, COLUMBIA DAILY TRIBUNE, MISSOURI, UNITED STATES

I do not wish to demonstrate the audacity required to say that I could explain such a decision, since I’ve never been in a situation where such a decision needed to be made. However, I think a short thought experiment would be useful to at least attempt to put oneself in the mindset of desperation required to turn to such a method. I won’t draw any parallels to any specific group or country, in order to keep the concept as universal and objective as possible.

I ask you to imagine the following: You and your people are living under the oppression of a political grievance which is so incredibly egregious that continuing on in such a circumstance is simply not an option. You appeal to whichever body exerts power over your people in an attempt to amend the grievance.

First you and your compatriots write letters to the relevant authorities, and they are ignored. Then you turn to the press, and they either ignore you, or write articles about your plight which are also ignored. Then you stage peaceful demonstrations, which no one pays attention to. Next, you stage much larger peaceful demonstrations, and the government now uses force to quash them, injuring, arresting, and even killing many of your people. You simply do not have enough people or a high enough level of organization to bring about any kind of change with these peaceful demonstrations. You appeal to the international community, and some countries and organizations express sympathy for your cause, but are unable to amend your political grievance for you. Several years and even decades pass as you try one after another failed attempt at ending the Horrible Thing.

With a heavy heart, you come to the conclusion that the only thing which might enact change, which might end this injustice that has long oppressed your people, is the use of force. Engaging the governing body on the battlefield would be impossible, since their armies are nearly invincible and you and your compatriots are desperately poor.

In such a situation, what would you do? Doing nothing is not an option. All peaceful avenues of rectification have been exhausted. You are not Gandhi, with millions of highly organized supporters, fighting against a liberal democracy which is highly vulnerable to public opinion. You are not William Wallace, with an army capable of engaging the enemy on the battlefield. This is not to imply that adopting terrorist tactics is the only option, or that it is necessarily morally justifiable. It is merely a question: What would you do?

Apart from being ontologically inconsistent, this definition seemingly ignores the paramount point of this article, which is: the intentional targeting of civilians has long been a central feature of modern inter-state warfare. 

Intentional State Targeting of Civilians

One study by George Washington University professor Alexander B. Downes found that in the post-Napoleonic era, participants in interstate wars used strategies that intentionally targeted civilians approximately one-third of the time (and no wonder, because it was also found that a policy of targeting civilians increases the probability of winning by 23 percent.)       

Another study concluded that “far from the unintended but inevitable side effects of combat, the killing of civilians in times of war [fifty million in the entire twentieth century from "war-related causes"] is often part of a deliberate policy of mass killing against non-combatant populations.”

Over the past three hundred years, civilians have constituted approximately half of all deaths caused by war (69 percent for civil wars). This increases to 60 percent when looking at only the past one hundred years, and rises to 75 percent in the 1980s, and 90 percent in the 1990s. In World War II, 67 percent of casualties were civilian. In Korea this increased to as much as 84 percent (though estimates widely vary, as accurate data is very difficult to obtain), and in Vietnam, estimates reach as high as 90 percent.

But surely, all of this intentional killing of non-combatants has been done by non-democratic (and non-Western) states, right? Not so. Professor Downes concludes in a book on the subject that there exists “little support for the view that democracies treat civilians better in interstate wars.” His study of all interstate wars between 1816 and 2003 found that “the vast civilian death toll in modern wars indicates that governments frequently ignore normative and legal injunctions against targeting non-combatants,” and that “regime type by itself has little effect on the probability of [intentional] civilian victimization.” The study postulated that democracies are in fact in some circumstances more likely to target non-combatants. Liberal democracies targeted civilians 81 percent of the time during wars of attrition, compared with 54 percent for non-democracies.

Having a democratic regime also makes mass killing (over 50,000 dead) over eight times more likely in the period from 1900 to 2003. Another study found that “when faced with powerful and popular guerrilla insurgencies, even highly democratic states are likely to resort to mass killing” of civilians. Professor Downes writes that “Although democratic states have fought few costly international wars since 1945, democracies not only targeted civilians in most of them – the Dutch in Indonesia (1945-49), France-Madagascar (1947-48), France-Indochina (1945-54), U.S. in Korea (1950-53), France-Algeria (1954-62), U.S. in Vietnam (1965-73), and Israel-Lebanon (1982) – they often committed mass killing (in all but the Dutch and Israeli cases) as well.”

The reason for this is theorized as being due to the fact that the vulnerability of democratic leaders to public opinion “makes them wary of incurring heavy costs on the battlefield for fear of losing support at home.” This fear could compel democratic elites to target non-combatants to avoid costs or to win the war quickly. Furthermore, civilian victimization at the hand of a liberal democracy can also result from “the belief that one is fighting an uncivilized enemy,” or in other words, “the laws of war apply only in wars against ‘civilized’ opponents, not ‘barbarians’ [or 'insurgents,' 'terrorists,' 'unlawful combatants,' and 'militants'].”

Examples from Modern History

There are countless examples in modern history of democracies deliberately attacking civilian non-combatants.

The U.S.  conquest of the Philippines from 1899 to 1902 killed 200,000 to 400,000 Filipinos, most of them civilians.

During World War I (which, in historical terms was not that long ago), the liberal democracy of Great Britain decided to target civilians in the form of a naval blockade which was, in the words of Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defense, designed to “starve Germany out.” The starvation blockade, which both the British and American publics supported, led to about one million excess civilian deaths in Germany and Austria-Hungary. As one scholar notes “there is little evidence that liberal norms acted as a restraint on British blockade policy. On the contrary, the Parliamentary opposition and the press routinely pilloried the Balfour and Lloyd George governments for being too soft on Germany and on the neutral countries supplying the Germans with foodstuffs.” The blockade even continued after the armistice was signed, in order to compel Germany to sign the crippling Versailles Treaty.

According to internal military documents from 1943 and 1944, the U.S. aim in using incendiary bombs against Japanese civilian population centers during the Second World War was to destroy Japan’s industrial production and to generate a labour shortage by killing civilian workers (though studies have shown that only 25 percent of workers in an industrialized country actually work in war-related industries). A single incendiary bomb attack on Tokyo on March 9 – 10, 1945 destroyed twenty-six square kilometers of the city, rendered one million people homeless, and killed between eighty and one hundred thousand civilians. General Curtis LeMay, who directed the bombing campaign against Japan, told an aide, “If the U.S. lost the war, we would be prosecuted as war criminals.”

The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which were conducted despite intelligence intercepts indicating that Japan was already willing to surrender) are perhaps the most egregious single cases of democracies intentionally targeting civilians in modern times. Hiroshima did have one military base, but the bomb was in fact aimed at the very center of the city of 350,000, and the Americans knew very well that the residual effects of the radiation on civilians would be deadly. Only four of the thirty targets within Hiroshima were of a military nature, and the neighbourhoods which bore the brunt of the damage were in fact residential. Nagasaki was a purely civilian target, and only 250 Japanese soldiers died, compared to approximately 85,000 civilians. Of the 370,000 deaths attributed to the two atomic attacks, 85 percent were civilians. 

In World War II, the United States, in collaboration with Great Britain, intentionally slaughtered between 300,000 and 600,000 German civilians in strategic aerial bombardment of civilian population centers. Winston Churchill’s scientific advisor Lord Cherwell drafted the “dehousing” memo, which became the basis for British urban area bombing. In it, he argued that relentless bombing of cities would destroy German morale by rendering the population homeless. For example, in February of 1945, the city of Dresden, Germany was bombed four times over the course of two days by wave after wave of thousands of British and American aircraft. The city’s historic center, rather than any military or even industrial targets, was attacked, which was at the time absolutely filled with refugees – mostly women, children, and the elderly. Forty square kilometers (ninety percent) of the city center were destroyed in the ensuing firestorm, which created hurricane-strength winds, and 35,000 civilians were killed.

The deadly strategy of strategic aerial bombardment of cities continued to kill massive amounts of non-combatants during the American wars in Korea and Vietnam (an estimated 182,000 North Vietnamese civilians perished in Operation Rolling Thunder alone, and the North Vietnamese government estimates that two million Vietnamese civilians from both sides died in the conflict, though various estimates hugely vary). The use of Agent Orange by the U.S. military in Vietnam has resulted in one million people suffering serious medical problems.

In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.S. air strikes attempted to put pressure on Iraqi civilians by incapacitating Iraq’s electrical power grid, thus eliminating the country’s ability to process sewage and purify water. This resulted in 100,000 civilian deaths. The economic sanctions put on Iraq throughout the 1990s resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. American pilots are also known to have killed hundreds, and perhaps thousands of retreating Iraqi soldiers on the infamous Highway of Death.

The ongoing U.S. targeted killing program in Pakistan using drone strikes results in huge numbers of civilian fatalities. The most in-depth study on this subject concludes that between 385 and 775 civilians have died in 291 attacks since 2004. According to the Brookings Institution, the death toll of civilians to soldiers in this undeclared war could be as high as ten to one.

In fact, at the risk of sounding provocative, I would postulate that the majority of Americans in fact support the intentional targeting of even mass numbers of civilians when there is seen to be a ‘just’ cause. The reason for this ‘provocative’ postulation is that according to a recent opinion poll 61 percent of Americans (including 72 percent of men, 73 percent of seniors, and 74 percent of Republicans) still believe that the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (both civilian targets) were justified. In 1945, 85 percent of Americans supported the bombings.

One commentator points out that “The allied air raids [of Germany and Japan] were widely accepted as just retribution [though the incendiary attacks on Japan and the bombing of civilian population centers in general were planned by the Americans and British before Pearl Harbor] as well as sound strategic policy, and the few critics who raised ethical and humanitarian questions about the heavy bombing of German cities were usually denounced as hopeless idealists, fools, or traitors.”

The Power of Labelling

The danger with labelling one side pejoratively as terrorists is that it automatically assumes that there is a bad side and hence a good side, instead of two sides both implementing violence in pursuit of a political goal, with one side using asymmetric warfare due to conventional inferiority.

This is not to say there is no right and wrong, but it is dangerous to assume any one side in a conflict has a monopoly on either. As Columbia professor and philosopher Virginia Held writes, “terrorism is not uniquely atrocious but is on a continuum with many other forms of political violence,” and “wars, even ‘good wars’ are often morally far worse.” Rather than proclaiming terrorists as always categorically wrong and liberal democratic states as incapable of evil on a level with terrorism, we should compare the goals of each side, the effectiveness in achieving those goals, and how many civilians are killed. Professor Held further points out that “The distinction between deliberately killing civilians and “unintentionally” but entirely predictably doing so is of very limited moral significance.” A drunk driver who kills a pedestrian has very little credibility in claiming that he or she “didn’t mean to do it.” Tell that to the victim’s family. And this example is actually not quite apt, since a drunk driver doesn’t know if they will end up killing an innocent person, while states do know they will kill civilians. Can something really be called an accident if you know that it will happen?

The Orwellian term ‘Collateral damage’ is not so much civilians who have been killed by ‘mistake,’ as it is the result of careful cost benefit analysis by military planners of civilian deaths versus strategic goals and friendly soldier casualties. For example, when U.S. daylight precision bombing of Germany in World War II became unsustainably costly in the fall of 1943, American airmen adopted radar techniques that radically reduced accuracy and increased non-combatant casualties, but drastically lowered U.S. bomber losses. Air strikes are often favoured over ground troops because they result in fewer casualties for the side using them, despite the fact that they also result in more civilian casualties (for example, air strikes have killed four to ten times more Afghan civilians than ground attacks). The more precise smart bombs become, the more overconfidently they are deployed, in civilian-dense target zones, and thus high levels of civilian deaths continue.

States’ (or at least western liberal democracies) military actions , even when they are questioned and criticized, are never put on the same level of uniquely grotesque Pure Evil as those of terrorist organizations, yet democratic states kill just as many, and usually far more innocent civilians than terrorist groups (for example, Israel has killed about 6,500 Palestinian civilians since 1987, whereas the Palestinians have killed only about 1,500 Israeli civilians), and their goals are often just as dubious and unfulfilled.

Is a state’s response to a heinous terrorist attack justified if it results in far more civilian casualties than the terrorist attack itself? The wars and military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan provoked by the 9/11 attacks have reportedly resulted in (at a very bare minimum) 150,000 dead civilians (one million casualties if combining military and civilian dead and injured), which is fifty times more than died on 9/11. If commentators compare (western) state actions to those of a terrorist group, they are immediately relegated to the fringe, and decreed by both the Left and Right of the political and media Establishment as being ‘disrespectful,’ ‘radical,’ and, perhaps most condescending of all, ‘not serious.’

Mainstream society consistently justifies the killing of innocents, so long as it is done by a western liberal democracy in pursuit of a ‘noble’ goal. Wars which result in high (foreign) civilian casualties are regularly supported by the public. But why are the goals of terrorist groups any less legitimate? Part of the definition of a terrorist is that they pursue political goals, and are not guided by profit, such as bank robbers, or compelled by insanity, such as a serial murderer. Wanting political autonomy, to expel a foreign military invader, or to establish a different kind of political regime are all perfectly legitimate, and many would even say ethical goals.

The Hypocrisy of ‘Legitimacy’

One could perhaps argue that state actions are ‘legitimate’ if conducted by a democracy, because huge numbers of people support their actions, but this is irrelevant when it comes to foreign policy, since those affected by the state’s actions abroad are not citizens of their country and therefore cannot vote, or have any say in the matter whatsoever. Terrorist groups are also often supported just as widely as states, and in many cases, more so.

Perhaps we feel that states are more legitimate because they ‘follow the rules’ (which they themselves made). The problem with that assumption is that, as most realist international relations theorists point out, powerful states generally only follow the rules when it’s in their interest to do so, but ignore them when they get in the way, particularly when it comes to security affairs.

The United Nation’s Goldstone Report, which was simply “rejected” by Israel, found that Israel had committed war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the Gaza War. The Report claimed that Israel’s attack on Gaza was designed to “terrorize a civilian population,” and that they deliberately and repeatedly targeted civilians. NATO’s intervention in Kosovo was a violation of international law since it was not mandated by the UN Security Council, and Amnesty International found that NATO committed war crimes during that conflict by intentionally targeting a civilian TV/radio station, killing 16 non-combatants. The U.S. has opposed the International Criminal Court and has refused to sign a treaty to ban landmines and many other human rights treaties. The U.S. also regularly violates international law, such as the illegal invasion of Iraq, illegal military tribunals for ‘unlawful combatants’ captured in the War on Terror, and illegal extraordinary renditions. Even U.S. military participation in Libya can be said to be illegal under the War Powers Act, since it wasn’t approved by Congress. 

Conclusion

Within the context of this argument, the defining characteristic of both states and terrorist groups is the decision to kill in order to achieve political goals. Whether or not this decision is immoral or not is subject to debate, but regardless, it (at least in a moral sense) defines both types of organization, and distinguishes both of them from other types of groups . States tend to target soldiers more than civilians, since they have large armies and can afford to do so, but they also kill far more civilians than terrorist groups, and they do it deliberately, whether by directly targeting civilians, or by proceeding with attacks that they know will result in sizeable civilian ‘losses.’

All political organizations that kill people to achieve their goals should be judged by the same criteria, whether they can afford to use conventional warfare, or are forced to use unconventional asymmetric tactics. The difference between states and terrorist groups is tactical, not moral.

Journalists have always held a special place in my heart – noble pursuers of truth, keeping the electorate informed and providing a sense of community; thankless guardians of democracy, holding any and every holder of power accountable for their actions; a voice for the voiceless, providing the last best hope for countless victims of tyranny and injustice; the Fourth Estate, of no less value than the legal system.

Journalism does not merely entail the recollection of what has happened that day. The journalist bears witness as the eyes and ears of society. Good journalism is about truth and justice. An effective press is not polite – it is robust, sceptical, and combative. The writer Finley Peter Dunne once said that “the business of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

To whom does one turn when injustice runs rampant, when no one listens or cares, when one’s political, legal, and law enforcement systems are crippled with corruption and inertia? To the journalist. Yet journalists are often victims themselves – Anna Politkovskaya, Daniel Pearl, Hrant Dink, and countless others, in places such as Iraq, the Philippines, Mexico, Russia, and Colombia. Journalists run towards the monsters that others run away from.

These journalists understand the risks, the difficulties, and the low pay, but they also know the underappreciated, yet crucial role that they play in society. They know that the news is not Coca-Cola – journalism is not merely a consumer good, but a public good. They watch with weary eyes the new challenges of their profession – the public’s deteriorating attention span and declining trust in journalists, the rise of infotainment and corporate ownership of an increasingly profit-driven news media, and the prevalence of “news” stories about celebrity and political gossip, sex scandals, and weight-loss tips.

Yet they realize that the sacred role of the press remains the same, as always – a commitment to the truth, a monitor of power, a forum for public debate, and the sentinel of freedom, justice, and democracy. They understand that truth means more than mere neutrality, balance, factual accuracy, or fairness. It is perhaps impossible for a person to be objective, which is why one’s method must be. The daily bombardment of news that we are all afflicted with renders the role of journalists even more important, as those who provide order, clarity, and verification to this nebulous typhoon of information.

My hero has long been the journalist. The critical polemic of George Orwell; the philosophical critical thinking and progressivism of Walter Lippmann; the beautiful literary style of Ruszard Kapuscinski; the bold investigative journalism of Seymour Hersh; the angry, cynical passion of Robert Fisk. I have always looked up to such figures. I can only humbly dream of one day joining their ranks as a fellow unsung hero.

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

There are vampires amongst us. Those who have had their hearts broken, and have therefore become heart-breakers themselves; those who have imprisoned themselves in a fortress of defence mechanisms originally designed for protection; those whose jaded spirits have been drained of innocence and trust; those who have foolishly convinced themselves that love is a cage and that they can be happy alone forever. Our first impulse upon encountering one of these sufferers of syphilis of the soul is to ‘save’ them, which is a dangerous game indeed, for in so doing, we put ourselves at risk of infection. Love is a two-way street, and only allows you in when both ends are open. The Mexican poet Octavio Paz advises us that “Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.”

One wonders what gave birth to such vampiric monsters? They are the inevitable casualties of the romantic massacres that have plagued humanity since our brains tragically evolved to such a level to grant us the ability to experience such absurd pain. They have fallen flat on their faces chasing that first indicator of love – butterflies. The euphoric feeling of butterflies in your stomach is caused by a release of adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol, which are themselves released when one experiences anxiety and stress. Therefore we fall for people who produce these traumatic emotional states. No wonder then, that we so often give our hearts to those who hurt us! The Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges beautifully observes that, “To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.”

Researchers tell us that love is not an emotion, but an evolutionary drive, a mental addiction to another human being arising from primitive regions of the mammalian brain, and is characterized by “focused attention on the preferred individual, rearrangement of priorities, increased energy, mood swings, sympathetic nervous system responses including sweating and a pounding heart, emotional dependence, elevated sexual desire, sexual possessiveness, obsessive thinking about him or her, craving for emotional union with this preferred individual, affiliative gestures, goal oriented behaviors, and intense motivation to obtain and retain this particular mating partner.” But for all that we know about this drive, which has been the almost obsessive focus of our novels, plays, poems, operas, ballets, songs, films, and conversations throughout history, we cannot seem to protect ourselves from its adverse effects. As Shakespeare plainly put it, love “pricks like a thorn.”

The English expression to fall in love is one of the most poetically accurate in our language. The defining characteristic of falling is a lack of control, as in falling down, falling ill, or falling apart. Perhaps what makes love and romance so difficult is the lack of control we feel. In falling in love, we truly do give our heart to another in faith, never really knowing what they will do with it.

In no other sphere of life do we have such little control. Work hard at your job, and you won’t be fired, unless you are laid off, in which case you will at least receive a positive reference, crucial work-experience on your resume, and even a compensation package. If we get sick, or are hurt in an accident, we have doctors, hospitals, and an endless variety of modern medications. If someone wrongs us in any other aspect of our lives, we have recourse via the police, the judicial system, social services, or the press. However, when we are hurt in love, we have no recourse. Breaking someone’s heart is quite legal. There are no love police to bring cheaters to justice, no compensation packages or positive references after a breakup, no love doctors, and no unrequited love insurance.

All we are left with is pain, a silent telephone, a cold, empty bed, and a memory stuck on repeat. First, we usually experience denial, then anger, and then depression. Some of us rebound, desperately trying to fill the gaping void with someone else. Others try to fill it with alcohol, drugs, sex, work, or even travel. Emily Dickinson wrote that “Parting is all we need to know of hell.” The feeling of loss can be even more difficult to overcome than that experienced from death. Perhaps this seems an exaggeration, but speak to someone at the end of their life, ask them about the hardest, most enduringly painful experience they have ever had, and they will likely tell a tale of a broken heart.

As one of the world’s foremost experts on love, the biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher writes, “Being rejected in love is among the most painful experiences a human being can endure.” Indeed, it sometimes even results in death via stroke, heart attack, or suicide. The reason for this difficulty in coping is that the particular pain felt from the rejection of a loved one not only comes from the feelings of loss, but it also damages and often obliterates that which is most dear to us – our self-love. Rejection from the one person whose opinion means more than everyone else’s combined can deal nearly irreparable damage to our self-esteem. When a relationship ends, it can be accurately described as akin to losing a limb, since the amount of time we spend with our romantic partners is disproportionately higher than that which we spend with anyone else; going from seeing someone nearly every day to perhaps never seeing them again is a powerful, life-changing transition. And then begins the long, arduous process of moving on. As Pablo Neruda wrote, “Love is so short, and forgetting is so long.”

In closing, I would invite you to consider the following: Suppose we meet someone who we could potentially fall in love with, with whom we feel that special connection, about once a year. For those of us in our late twenties and older, further suppose that approximately two-thirds of these people are unavailable. That is now one available person with whom we may fall in love every three years. And now let us realistically assume that about half of those people would simply not feel that same connection with us. So that is now one available person who we have the potential of falling in love with, and who may fall in love with us, every six years. And even then it’s just a chance, frought with obstacles. It is a daunting thought, no?

The implication derived from such a hypothesis is to never take such a thing for granted when it does happen, especially in this current unromantic era of unapologetic individualism, careers being cherished above all else, and the commoditization of romance. It is naive to think that romantic love alone is enough for happiness, but no less naive to believe that we can be happy forever without it. As Jonathan Swift once said, “As love without esteem is capricious and volatile, esteem without love is languid and cold.” When we are children, we believe in true love, and often this belief is robbed from us later on in life, but beware, for caution in love can be fatal for true happiness. Some of us fall into the trap of believing that success in a career is incompatible with falling in love, but what is the point of success if we have no one to share it with? If you are lucky enough to find true love, make it work any way you can. And hold on for dear life.

On July 13, 2010 the French National Assembly overwhelmingly voted in favour of a bill prohibiting the wearing in public of clothing which conceals the face, with 335 votes for the bill and one against (most of the opposition boycotted it). In the following September, the bill easily passed through the Senate by 246 to one, and the Council of State ratified the law in October, despite previously warning the government that it could not find any legal basis in support of the ban, and that it would likely violate both the French constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. On April 11, 2011, the ban came into effect. Violations of the ban incur the penalty of €150 or the humiliating attendance of French citizenship classes. This ban has nothing to do with secularism, and nothing to do with clothing. It is about politicians catering to voters who have been infected with a growing epidemic of Islamophobia. It is unjust, prejudicial, and dangerous.

President Sarkozy declared the Islamic veil “not welcome” in France, and said it was a sign of “subservience.” French Justice Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie claimed that “democracy thrives when it is open-faced.” French Interior Minister Claude Guéant recently called France’s growing Muslim population a problem and said that such things as prayers in the streets “shock a certain number of people,” and negatively affect them. He also whined that the French “no longer felt at home” due to the Muslim minority. One cannot help but wonder whether he would still have a job, had he said such a thing about the Jewish minority.

According to a recent poll, forty-two percent of French people consider the presence of Muslim communities a “threat” to their (evidently remarkably fragile) national identity. In 2008, a Pew poll found that thirty-eight percent of French people had an “unfavorable” view of Muslims, which is actually quite tolerant compared to such European neighbours as Spain, Germany, and Poland. A 2010 study found that French Muslims face “massive discrimination,” and are 2.5 times less likely on average than Christians to receive a positive response to a job application.

Thankfully, not everyone submits to the current Islamophobic trends. When France’s ruling conservative party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) recently held a public forum on the issue of the place of Islam in society, Prime Minister Francois Fillon refused to attend, voicing his concern that the party was drifting too far to the right. Furthermore, the leaders of France’s Roman Catholic, Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Orthodox, and Buddhist faiths all voiced their opposition to the debate, claiming that it would add fuel to the steadily growing fire of racism and Islamophobia throughout France.

The ban was designed by the UMP to appeal to anti-immigrant, Islamophobic voters whom they have lost to the even more right-winged National Front, which wants to stop all non-European immigration to France. Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the populist National Front, who has compared Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation of France, and claims that there is no such thing as Islamophobia, is currently enjoying higher popularity ratings in France than any other leader, including Sarkozy.

At the risk of stating the (hopefully) obvious, supporters of this ban (Over 80% of the French public support it) are guilty of the very thing which they purport to be against – the enforcement of a dress code. This is a textbook example of ‘forced tolerance.’ This amounts to imposing one’s own subjective values upon others, essentially ‘forcing’ them to be free. This is in direct violation to John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which states that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s expert on discrimination in Europe says, “a complete ban on the covering of the face would violate the rights to freedom of expression and religion of those women who wear the burqa or the niqab as an expression of their identity or beliefs.”

One could argue that most governments also forbid public nudity, but this is a straw man argument which ignores the fact that the primary reason why this law is seen by many as unjust is that it specifically targets one identifiable group, one coherent segment of society, and for no legitimate reason. The Islamic veil does not disrupt society the way that public nudity may. It certainly does not fall under any classification of hate speech, the way that wearing a shirt with a racist slogan or symbol does (although even most forms of hate speech are protected under freedom of expression laws in some countries, such as under America’s incredibly robust First Amendment). In those cases where women are forced by someone else to wear the veil, it is of course illegal, which no one argues against, because it infringes upon their freedom to dress the way they choose. Hence the irony of this new French law.

Another straw man is that there are certain situations in any society when it is necessary to see an individual’s face, such as when entering airport security or having your photo taken for various forms of official identification, and therefore this law is justified. As interviews and opinion polls have shown, most, if not all veil-wearers have absolutely no problem removing their niqabs or burqas in such situations, especially if done in a respectful manner where only women are present, which is a small request such as the one for halal or kosher meal options.

The idea that this law has anything to do with secularism is wholly erroneous, as secularism means a divide between religion and politics. What exactly does how one dresses in public have to do with politics? Are crosses, kippahs, turbans and kirpans, habits and vestments, prayer beads, tilakas, and religious slogans written on clothing also to be banned?

This law will also accomplish precisely the opposite of what its creators have presumably attempted to achieve, namely combating the isolation experienced by veil-wearers. Rather than (in their interpretation of Islam) forsake their religion, the vast majority of wearers will instead opt to remain trapped in the safety of their own homes, thus unable to participate in the civil society that republican France is so defensive of.

 © Malcolm Evans

Why exactly do members of an open society need to see each other’s faces in order to trust them? We are not offended at the sight of someone in a winter scarf, balaclava, Halloween or surgical mask, or motorcycle helmet. We do not feel uncomfortable when talking to someone over the phone, or online. And even if we were, would we have a right to forbid it? If this religious practice is seen as harmful to its practitioners, then why are there not bills being passed in European parliaments for the banning of Catholic self-flagellation, which is still practised in Mediterranean countries during penitential processions during Lent’s Holy Week? If religious expressions in public threaten secularism (which they do not), then shouldn’t all religious symbols be banned in public? This law is designed specifically to target Muslims.

Some have also argued that the niqab and burqa are symbols of oppression or male suppremacy, which they have every right to opine. However, as contemporary philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues:

“[these people] typically don’t know much about Islam and would have a hard time saying what symbolizes what in that religion. But the more glaring flaw in the argument is that society is suffused with symbols of male supremacy that treat women as objects. Sex magazines, nude photos, tight jeans — all of these products, arguably, treat women as objects, as do so many aspects of our media culture. Every time I undress in the locker room of my gym, I see women bearing the scars of liposuction, tummy tucks, breast implants. Isn’t much of this done in order to conform to a male norm of female beauty that casts women as sex objects? Proponents of the burqa ban do not propose to ban all these objectifying practices. Indeed, they often participate in them.” 

One could easily argue that high heels are symbols, and even instruments of oppression, since they are painful and difficult to wear, and the only purpose they serve is to objectify women. Both sides have every right to have and express their opinions, and to do whatever they like themselves, so long as they are not hurting anyone else, but neither side has any right to forbid someone else to do something based on their own personal values.

Fewer than two thousand of five to six million Muslims in ferociously secular France (home to the European Union’s largest Muslim minority) even wear the niqab or burqa, representing about 0.003 percent of the population. Half of the population of France actually report never having even seen the veil. The new law “is a solution to a problem that does not exist,” as journalist Gwynne Dyer puts it.

The western public’s tiny, self-affirming knowledge of Islamic culture, taught to us, for us, and by us, rarely lets Islam (the terms “western public” and “Islam” admittedly have little ontological stability) speak for itself. Rather than embarrassingly attempting to explain another culture to ourselves, why not invite them to speak for themselves? Thankfully, on this specific issue, some inquisitive minds have done just that, though the results are predictably being largely ignored by most media outlets.

The recent study by the At Home in Europe project of the Open Society Foundation interviewed thirty-two French Muslim women who wear the full face veil. The results show that not a single one of them has ever been forced to wear it. On the contrary, most women independently chose to wear the veil to the protests of their parents and husbands (only one of the women had been encouraged by her husband to wear it). So why did these women make such a decision, which is so hard for most non-Muslims and Muslims alike to understand? The women revealed that they chose to don the veil as part of a “spiritual journey,” and to deepen their relationship with god. Many of them decided to start wearing it as a form of protest against the rising tide of Islamophobia in France.

Almost all of the women have faced some form of verbal abuse from bystanders on the street, and some have been attacked by both non-Muslims and fellow Muslims. All of the women stated that they would gladly remove the veil when asked by some sort of official.

As prominent American feminist Naomi Wolf writes, contrary to the limited western interpretation of the veil, most wearers actually feel liberated for various reasons that most western commentators have simply not considered. For example, not being constantly immersed in sexual imagery renders actual sexual experiences more powerful, and wearing a veil can make a woman feel like men actually talk to her as an individual, rather than a sexual object.

We ourselves in the West are hardly a moral authority when it comes to women’s apparel, espousing an incredibly schizophrenic and inconsistent ideology ranging from “Dress provocatively if you want to win your man/get that promotion/exercise your sexual liberation,” to “If you dress provocatively, then you’re a slut and just asking to be raped.” Nearly ninety percent of American teenaged girls now feel pressured by a predatory fashion industry to be thin, and one third have starved themselves in order to lose weight. Should we also ban the provocative western clothing, magazines, and advertising which facilitates such egregious outcomes? Of course not. We should simply keep our eyes on them and be free to engage in constructive, critical dialogue.

Ironically, France has now joined a very small club of countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran, in enforcing a strict dress code, utterly violating the freedom that most French citizens hold so dear, and setting a very nasty precedent which other European countries are bound to follow.

 © Jimmy Margulies

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