If Western humanism has a preeminent advocate of the ages, it is Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1456–1536). His Adagia (1515), a collection of proverbs with commentary, was the first bestseller in history. And its most popular essay is composed on an ancient aphorism: dulce bellum inexpertis — “war is sweet to the inexperienced.”

These are fitting words on Memorial Day.

Written at a time when war had for perhaps the first time risen to rival disease and starvation — the two traditional scourges of humanity — Erasmus’ essay has been called the founding tract of pacifism. But he was not a pacifist. Rather he insisted, against the grain of his times, that war be confined to a last resort of self-defense, for the excellent reason that “even the most successful and just war,” waged by a good prince for a noble purpose, is prone to descend into unspeakable atrocities. Thus:

Man, says Erasmus, is the one creation made entirely for friendly acts, yet in war his social disposition turns him into “a brute so monstrous that no beast will be called a brute in future if compared to man.” After all, “When did anyone hear of a hundred thousand animals falling dead together after tearing each other to pieces, as men do everywhere?”

How is such perversion even possible? It is due to concerted campaigns for amnesia by which the bitter lessons of the past are unlearned. Though experience teaches that the expenses of bloodshed are ten times higher than those of peace with results much worse, the propaganda of clerics, lawyers, and princes has again made war “such a respectable thing that it is wicked — I might almost say ‘heretical’ — to disapprove of this which of all things is the most abominable and most wretched.”

Five centuries hence, another thoughtful commentator reflected on the difference between West Europeans and North Americans in this respect. William Pfaff, writing in The International Herald Tribune in January 2003, is worth quoting at length:

Pfaff adds the following observation:

Evidently, not just individuals but the whole country has ignored central lessons of “what war means for its victims.” As International Law scholar Richard Falk has put it in The Nation:

In mainstream US discourse, the unforgivable flaws of the Vietnam War are that it was (1) lost at (2) by US standards, a hefty cost in American lives (3) without clear US interests at stake. The scholars debate which was more instrumental in eroding support for the war. It is clear, however, that either dwarfs the fact that it (4) involved grave war crimes such as free fire zones; the deployment of the most poisonous chemical weapons known to science in civilian areas; and the bombing back to the stone age of Laos and Cambodia at an officially estimated cost of respectively 350,000 and 600,000 civilian lives.

Certainly the US military and political establishment had no significant qualms about (4). Anyone in doubt about this should contemplate SIOP-62, the top secret contingency plan for US nuclear first strike. Effective from 1962, this plan mandated a nuclear annihilation of not just the USSR but its enemy China in the event of suspicious Soviet troop movements. Thus it prescribed the murder of up to a hundred million innocent citizens of a non-belligerent nation posing no threat to any NATO country. Anything less, explained the head of the Strategic Air Command, General Thomas Powers, “would really screw up the plan.”

The 2004 release of these utterly sinister documents failed to cause any noticeable stir in the US public, even though they prove that America was ready, at a moment’s notice, to carry out a nuclear holocaust making every previous genocide pale in comparison. One shudders to imagine what Erasmus would have said of this ultimate deviation from his — or any — conception of justifiable warfare.

Or, to return to the current malaise, whatever would he have made of the following sermon, given at a time when only 25 percent of Americans thought the Iraq War a mistake?

Now the warmongering pundits who shilled for that bungled war are using virtually indistinguishable rhetoric to enable another “preventive” onslaught; one that might need to avail itself of nuclear weapons as a tactical necessity. The leading political commentator on America’s most trusted television network thunders: “You know in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the Earth. That would be the sane thing to do.”

Are such odious operators met with a firestorm of popular derision from the US public? Not outside of liberal blogs.

Apart from 9/11 and the events of 150 years ago, the American people still has no experience of being at the receiving end of “this which of all things is the most abominable and most wretched,” but which remains so sweet to the inexperienced.

The Independent:

Careful there, George. The real Big Brother is watching.

Besides, you’re being incoherent. Pray tell, how can the act in question both be “morally justified” and “morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq”? And if it were indeed the latter, how would it be of “a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7″?

Much more could be said about this hogwash, but life is too short. Suffice it to conclude that the insect-brained imbecile is as far removed from reason and decency as a certain “drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay.”

More from the mad little island:

News bulletins on Sri Lanka have a certain bland and repetetive character: international envoys arrive in ‘bids’ to ‘jump-start peace talks’ in the face of ‘escalating violence’. There is abundant precedent for this.

One is tempted to say: enough is enough. The Tamil Tigers (LTTE) are child-recruiting, suicide-bombing terrorists whose moral standing is somewhere between Hamas and the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. The government in Colombo consists of corrupt, craven, and benighted extremists who, to illustrate, just became the first in the world to ban The Da Vinci Code over its alleged blasphemic nature.

Such leadership explains why Sri Lanka ranks as the 25th most failed state in the world, between Rwanda and Ethiopia. Though the country is utterly impoverished by two decades of civil war and dependent on foreign aid, its overall rate of absorption of such aid is a humble 20 percent, according to the Institute of Policy Studies. The utilization rate of tsunami aid, according to the US Auditor General’s Office, is 13.5 percent. Think about it: in Aceh, the tsunami ended the war, whereas Lanka couldn’t even agree on how to distribute the aid! Indeed, five weeks after the disaster only 30 percent of the affected in government-controlled areas — to say nothing of the rest — had received any assistance whatsoever.

If there is a silver lining to the new flare of civil war, it is that the $4.5 billion in aid that international donors — the EU, the US, Japan, and Norway — have made conditional on peace may soon be put to better use elsewhere than on dysfunctional and perhaps forever hopeless Sri Lanka.

The Guardian reports that Sir Simon Rattle — whom I like as a conductor, notwithstanding that he reminds me of the chap who had him knighted — is falling from grace with the patrons of the august Berlin Philharmonic:

The critic said that the novelty of having Rattle as conductor had worn off. “We are well acquainted with his dashing gestures, we’ve seen through his permanent expression of ecstasy, which has curdled in the meantime into a mask,” he said. “We know his tricks and mannerisms.” He went on: “There are no real challenges and no genuinely expanded horizons.”

Did I mention that he reminds me of Blair? Anyway, it’s the following that raised my eyebrows in this article (emphasis added):

The article goes on to paraphrase the BPO chairman Jan Dieselhorst thus:

On behalf of the world’s Brucknerians, I have to ask: Excuse me, but what the hell? Are the Germans plotting to avenge the Austrian appropriation of Beethoven and Brahms by taking off with Bruckner now?

Oh Jesus fuck. Excuse the language, but this is just too much.

That’s it. I hereby officially abandon all attempts at restraint in discussing the Bush regime. The picture below says it all.

Today is the centennial of Henrik Ibsen’s death. My modest — and no doubt idiosyncratic — contribution to the commemoration of this immortal playwright is the below translation of a short essay by Peter W. Zapffe, the great philosopher of tragedy whom Ibsen’s work inspired and strongly influenced. In this succint meditation on the human condition, Zapffe puts forth for the first time the existentialist philosophy he developed at length in his 1941 magnum opus, On the Tragic.

The piece originally appeared in Morgenbladet on September 21, 1932. As with my other renderings of Zapffe, available in the Philosophy category, I have used British spelling for this likely first translation into English.

Ibsen aficionados may note that the term ‘hobgoblin thoughts’ alludes to Act Five, Scene Five of Peer Gynt.

We must presume that humans are the only species on Earth with a capacity for self-consideration, the ability to reflect on its particular circumstances and assess them in relation to those of other beings. By virtue of our spiritual endowment we not only can adapt to this given environment, but by means of techical remedies even survive changes of environment that would mean death for all other creation. If equipped with the bare capacity for reflection, we would however soon see through the repetitions of nature and know them as a mounting nightmare; and a sober comparison of the benefits and the costs of existence would swiftly lead to life’s voluntary surrender. Serving as a check on this danger is the relentless yearning that has no particular object and is independent of fulfillment, persisting as a static condition of variable magnitude. The toothache offers a metaphor of this. Working in tandem with our yearning is the imagination, which incessantly presents new singular goals, diverting from the hopelessness of the necessary conclusion that our yearning is unfounded in reality, that all speculations are but paper money without security in gold.
    Our form of existence is thus not conducive to bliss. Simpler organisms are more fortunate in this regard. The human being is, as an organic experiment, so highly driven as to approach an oscillation, an inner explosion. Cognition hands us more than we can carry. We suffer from the constant tension, the back-and-forth undulating battle between what drains the will to live and what builds it up. This is the pain of living. In certain moments we can immediately experience what it means to be of human birth, what it involves to be a thinking and feeling being, forged into an organism that follows alien laws. When exposed without mediation to those certainties and possibilities that the range of our faculties makes us liable to, when lonesome and naked under the cosmos — then we call it Weltschmertz. It is the purest form of suffering, the profoundest, truest and strongest emotion a human being can have. Popular it is not. It is often mentioned with a tentative irony to camouflage the horror. One is led to think of passengers joking about the breaker between their ears. Perhaps only those have fully felt this who were rendered unfit for life. The ancients called it to see Jehova.
    The struggle for existence, then, is only in its outward respect a fight for the daily bread. The real battle rages over the ghost of life within ourselves — where we ourselves are both the warriors, the battleground, and the strife.
    From the great bewilderment, the panic of living, has the theater, as well as cultural life in general, emerged. There is something eerie about a type of being sitting down to watch its own mode of existence and characteristics. But the idea is clear. In the theater, the battleground is moved from the mind onto the stage. We become mere spectators, relieved for a time of the burden of existence. Our own secret distress is seen to be borne by others and brought to solutions that comfort and soothe us, be it direct or indirect ones, elementary or involving high ideas, familiar or new. We look for a web of meaning and context that may isolate and shelter us from the hobgoblin thoughts. The theater is to some what mass is to others. Katharsis, said the Greeks, meaning thereby a moral purification. But the notion can be extended to signify cosmic hygiene. At worst we are led from despair to uncertainty, induced to think: Maybe still. Will and faith can be passed from spirit to spirit, especially when the donor is in command of form. The play is the most effective form there is.
    Thus the theater is directly enrolled in the service of struggling life. It stretches a bridge of purpose over the abyss, pushing with dynamic élan whenever it creaks. By cultivating the joys of experience it becomes a greenhouse for life-affirming values. The social prestige, the artistic strength, the architectonic power, the confidence of the stage machinery, and the insuperability of the entire task to any one individual endow the voice of the theater with a persuasive authority that the words by themselves might lack.
    Even in tragedy the idea, more or less manifest, should survive the disaster. There is in society a tacit understanding that the natural shall not be tolerated. A man who weeps on the street is removed, not for his own sake, but for others. The raiment of the minds is taboo.
    The state has a direct interest in this effect of the theater’s activity. Like a log driver on his logs, life jumps from creed to creed. It is imperative that the current one not be allowed to sink before the next one is within reach.

All hail Lordi, the winners of yesterday’s 2006 Eurovision Song Contest! Capturing the protest vote in the 51st europop kitschfest, the creatures from the vast Finnish forests rocked to sensational victory with their performance of the Alice Cooper-inspired “Hard Rock Hallelujah.” Their all-time record score ended a national trauma for Finland, whose strongest showing in the dreaded competition was heretofore a sixth spot in 1973.

Lordi — the burly lead vocalist whom the press has dubbed “the Bat out of Helsinki” — welcomes the uplifting lack of prejudice against those with fangs, horns, red eyes, and retractable wings. The other band members are Amen the Unstoppable Mummy, Enary the Manipulative Valkyrie, Kalma the Biker Zombie from Hell, and Kita the Alien Manbeast with the Combined Strengths of All the Beasts Known to Man.

Asked by a reporter if the band will ever take off the masks, Lordi replied: “What masks?”

Here is the music video for the winning entry, featuring a commendable turning of cheerleaders into zombies: Hard Rock Hallelujah.

Hyva Suomi — and long live the will to be different!

PS. Equally, if less deliberately, monstrous and entertaining is this Finnish 1980s music video with a dance routine suggesting the Heaven’s Gate sect doing aeorobics on LSD. A must-see!

In Salon, Garrison Keillor has a long overdue apology to make:

As well he should. Not even the cadres of the GOP are into hurting kitties.

War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography, quipped Ambrose Bierce.

Memo to God: it isn’t working.

In 2002 a National Geographic-Roper study found 83 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 unable to locate Afghanistan — the country whence the 9/11 attack originated and which the US had just invaded — when presented with four alternatives.

Now a new such test reveals that nearly two-thirds of young adults cannot find Iraq on a map even after three years of war and more than 2,400 US deaths, at an estimated cost of $1-2 trillion.

Incidentally, other studies suggest that a majority of US servicemembers in Iraq conflate salient characteristics of Iraq and Afghanistan, with 85 percent contending the US mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks” and 77 percent thinking a major reason for the invasion was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.” In other words, most young Americans don’t know where their troops are fighting; most of the latter don’t know why.

Domestic natural disasters fare no better as teaching tools. Carried out in December 2005, the new National Geographic-Roper study shows that, five months after Hurricane Katrina — which wrecked a world-famous city and killed hundreds of their fellow citizens — one-third of young American adults were unable to find Louisiana on a map of the USA.

Forty-seven percent of young adults could not find Israel, the recipient of a fifth of official US aid; a stunning 75 percent could not locate India, home to nearly one in five human beings. More than 40 percent did not know that Pakistan, in which Osama bin Laden may be hiding, is located in Asia.

Fewer than three in ten even considered it important to know the location of countries in the news. (What’s the thought process here? “What the heck, the President knows?” I wouldn’t count on that; nor would the “Grecians,” “Kosovarians” or “East Timorians.”) Presumably these attitudes reflect the same provincial mindset that, in a January 2000 Gallup poll, ranked the US role in world affairs the 20th most important issue of the presidential campaign. But one might be excused for hoping that certain subsequent developments had made an impression.

In other news, as Booman notes, the most trusted news source in the US is also the most systematically misleading, by far.

I like America despite its flaws. But this is chilling.

It has come to my attention that Richard Perle, in a keynote address to the American Enterprise Institute on September 22 2003, had this to say about the convicted conman and alleged Iranian agent, Ahmad Chalabi:

“I can’t imagine a leader who more fully embodies the values that caused the Americans to believe we should liberate Iraq.”

Neither can I.

The description also lends itself well to other colorful characters who have been pushing for this tragic disaster. Substitute “writer” for “leader” in the quote, and it fits Chris Hitchens — that duplicitous fellow-traveler of the American warmongering far right — like Scotch fits into a glass.

At this point, Hitchens has more in common with Chalabi than with his own professed greatest hero; a man whose name I won’t besmirch by even mentioning alongside those of such disgraceful frauds.

Crossposted from Booman Tribune, Daily Kos, and European Tribune.

Three years ago, the US President co-piloted a fighter aircraft onto the deck of the USS Lincoln to declare “the end of major hostilities” in Iraq. Above him a banner proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished.” Today, a humble 9 percent of Americans believe that the mission has really been such.

Though I respect the majority view, I have to say that it is, in fact, mistaken.

It is true that the Iraq War has been far from flawless in its conception and execution. The war:

• was justified to the Congress and public with tailor-made and strongly counter-indicated reports of an ultimately non-existent threat to the US homeland — reports in large part supplied by a wanted criminal;
• was prepared in the face of warnings by numerous experts and international statesmen, including President Bush sr. and his senior foreign policy staff;
• triggered an international diplomatic crisis pitting the US against major allies including Germany and France, as well as against Russia, China, and other important countries;
• was blatantly illegal according to most qualified observers, including the International Commission of Jurists and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, thus undermining the authority of the UN Security Council;
• was conducted even though the Iraqi President offered to step down and go into exile;
• precipitated a costly, graft-ridden and utterly bungled reconstruction program of which only 30 percent of Iraqis are even aware, as exemplified by the miserable failure to build a health infrastructure;
• was marred by titanic tactical and strategic blunders such as allowing the looting of 250,000 tons of heavy ordnance from unguarded dumps, which is enough for several hundred years of attacks, and the decision to disband Iraq’s police force and 300,000 strong army overnight, thus offering the budding insurgency vast numbers of professional fighters as well as 1769 miles of unsecured border to exploit;
• has deteriorated to a brutal counter-insurgency involving the use of chemical weapons in cities; systematic torture by US troops, implicating hundreds of US service members and extending in some cases to rape of women and children, alienating even close US allies; and death squads manned by US-trained police;
• was based on planning which severely underestimated the required troop strength, against the advise of the US Army and US Air Force chiefs of staff and that of the Secretary of State, himself a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff;
• involves an effective occupation that keeps 132,000 US service members and thousands of others — many on their second or third deployments — away from home, but which nonetheless only 1 percent of Iraqis trust for their personal protection;
• depends for military morale on fantastic misconceptions among US troops, with 85 percent believing the US mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks” and 77 percent that a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq”; while even with such false beliefs at work, 72 percent of troops on the ground hold that the US should exit Iraq within this year whether it is needed there or not;
• in fact diverted key special operations forces and intelligence resources away from the hunt for al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan, and by depleting the US presence there, has enabled their allies the Taliban to reclaim most of that country and parts of Pakistan;
• has generally served the strategic interests of the USA’s principal enemy while likely also spurring it to develop nuclear weapons;
• has claimed an estimated 200,000 Iraqi lives, of which 120,000 directly by violence;
• has spawned a major civil war even by the most stringent definitions (pdf), forcing up to 100,000 families into internal displacement at present and threatening to destabilize the region;
• has not only caused enduring distrust and resentment of the US in Arab countries, including Iraq, but also become a rallying cry for international terrorism even by the administration’s own admission, as well as the main source of US civilian deaths in terrorist strikes;
• may within a matter of months have claimed as many American lives as the terrorist attack of 9/11 2001, preventing whose repetition was used to justify the war in the first place;
• will soon have seen 18,000 US service members wounded in combat, though actual numbers must be much higher considering that 144,424 veterans have sought treatment from the swamped and underfunded VA system since returning from Iraq (and Afghanistan), not counting those hospitalized in military hospitals; and considering that 35 percent of Iraq veterans have already sought treatment for emotional problems;
• has already cost more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the ten-plus-year war in Vietnam, and will, according to estimates by two world-class economists, cost current and future US taxpayers $1-2 trillion when such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for injured troops as well as the impact on the US economy are factored in.

How, then, is the war a success? Well, do you have to ask?

The Iraq War allowed George W. Bush — who, to dedicate himself more fully to his primary interests, the joys of prostitutes, booze, and cocaine, deserted from the stateside posting his dad had secured for him to keep him out of combat in Vietnam — to at long last fly a fighter jet in war.

That mission, I submit, was accomplished to his satisfaction on May 1, 2003.