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A couple days ago, commenter Pococurante took me to task, as he has in the past, for not banging the table against Hamas and Hezbollah when I write about Israel. And it kind of pissed me off, as I thought it was a dodge from the criticisms I offer of Israeli strategy. But now I’m having second thoughts.
During an unrelated email discussion with some friends, my pal Lindsay Beyerstein gave this a really great conceptual framework that I’m going to share with her permission. The specific subject we were discussing was whether the left in general is too quick to brush off criticism of some of the more illiberal practices in certain Islamic countries. Lindsay contended: “I think the left simply takes a lot of the most obvious criticisms as read. At a certain point, it feels gratuitous to spend much time badmouthing the Taliban’s version of Islam. Everyone already knows that they banned kites and gynecological exams and succored al Qaeda. What else is there to say? Nobody wastes time writing long nuanced critiques of Nazism, because it’s a self-evidently awful ideology.”
On the merits, I think Lindsay is right. But what if that’s because Lindsay and I generally agree on most things? How will this read to someone who doesn’t share a lot of our premises? That occurred to me after Josh Mull responded in comments to my Afghan-civilian-casualties post with the argument that he was taking the insurgency’s responsibility for killing civilians as a given — a given that I considered undue emphasis to a salient point.
The truth is, we all mark certain arguments or premises as-read, since it’s hard to write anything if you have to be explicit about all your given assumptions. But I want to thank Pococurante and Josh here, because they’ve pushed me to remember that not reader is going to share all of those premises; that not everyone who’s not persuaded as a result is unpersuadable; and that part — not all, not even most, but part — of a writer’s job is to persuade. I will try to write in the future with greater care against to falling into the rut that Pococurante highlighted, as it can only improve my work, and that’s a lesson that can benefit all of us, no matter what we believe.
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Context matters. Everyone has their own assumptions, their own set of things they expect everyone to simply get. And for the most part, our friends share our assumptions–either because we choose our friends to fit our expectations or because of shared experience. On the internet you have the opposite level of common context.
This specific instance concerns me more. Like a lot of Americans, Israel-concerns are by far the biggest lever for tinkering with your politics…attacking you over anything Israel-related is as much about adjusting your views as it is about the attacker actually caring about Israel. It happens with other issues too, but if anyone ever cracks you it’ll be with Israel.
It’s hard to conflate discussions about Palestine issues with discussions about Afghanistan issues. America has chosen to involve herself in a war in South Asia. Nobody truly believes that America will be at risk if she chose to walk away from participation in that conflict.
Israel/Palestine is harder. In the case of Israel, it’s more about proportionality, and how one might interpret that in terms of modern regional warfare and diplomacy. My outrage at Israel is not over her entirely justified self defense, but what seems obviously to me to be textbook collective punishment. As an aside, a conversation I had at a primarily jewish event last weekend led me to wonder at the racism of those who shouted “antisemitism” the loudest.
Afghanistan is CLEARLY a war of choice. We might disagree to the extent that it makes Americans ‘safer’, but there can be no doubt that we could walk away and not suffer greatly for it. Israel does not have that luxury. They live where they live. And the Israeli leadership has to make decisions every day about their best course. The fact that I think it’s obvious that they are making counterproductive decisions that could reasonably lead to the end of Israel as we know it in fifteen years is important, but it’s by far not the same conversation.
The resistance of Hamas and Hezbollah, no matter your ideology, are understandable. If you were occupied and kept stateless and held for hours at checkpoints, I suspect you’d be at least considering reaching for your weapons. There is a portion of the Afghani insurgency that says “if you’d leave us alone, we’d stop fighting you”. All these decisions result in decisions from the other side. The act of engaging in warfare creates warfare, and to whatever extent that you can live with the concept of other nations determining their own political path and regional alliances, you might learn something about de-escalating conflict. The only logical thing bin Laden ever said was when he pointed out “you’ll notice we’re not attacking Sweden”….
mikey
Hear ya loud and clear. I take it as a given, but more exploration is required. I’ll see what I can do.
I’d agree, in general and in principle, with the minor caveat that I’d revoke the privilege of pointing out the brushing off of criticism for certain illiberal practices by others for anyone who has previously used the term “shake and bake” with a knowing wink.