Obama's Cairo Speech

First rate. As he admits, of course, it's much harder to actually bring about better relations. But a US President is now actually a positive force.

Sympathy for the Devil, Part II: The Case for the Reverend Jeremiah Wright

The only way to make this case is in the geekiest possible manner.

Let A represent the existence of the Reverend.
Let p represent the probability of serious bodily harm to a white person walking in the streets of South Chicago for one hour.
(p,A)<(p,~A)

If we look at matters purely from the point-of-view of white America, the basic problem black America presents is not politicization. It's lumpenization. If Reverend Wright takes a gangbanger and makes him a church-going married guy who thinks the US government planned AIDS, white America is better off. (Black America is too, of course, but I'm trying to be hard headed here.)

I get off the "conservative" bus whenever I hear complaints about identity politics. There just isn't any other kind of politics. If an issue of public policy does not seriously intersect with identity, then it isn't a political issue. If there is any merit to democracy at all, it is that it provides a framework in which identity groups can be mobilized and then compromise.

(It isn't directly relevant to this post, but where I get off the "progressive" bus is when I hear complaints about how heinous it is that groups they are opposed to engage in identity politics. Dude, if the Cree can do it, then the white Baptists can do it.)

Identity politics can either be responsible or irresponsible. There is always a bit of a dilemma here, of course. If an identity politician is too responsible, then he or she may no longer be able to represent and mobilize the base. If an identity politician isn't responsible enough, then he or she won't be able to get concessions for said base.

What is the art of statecraft? Finding ways to make the incentives to be responsible better than the incentives to be irresponsible.

"Preventive War" and Preventative Diplomacy

Daniel Larison calls out the cafeteria Catholics at First Things* for rejecting Church teaching on the immorality of "preventive war." Since all states potentially threaten their neighbours, if war could be justified on the basis of "prevention", then all aggressive wars would be preventive ones. Therefore, the Vatican's position is a necessary implication of holding on to any just war theory at all. The point is a so obvious, one despairs that Larison has to make it. But he does, and does it with his characteristic erudition, so I commend it unto you.

I also commend Matthew Yglesias's response to Dennis Ross. Ross thinks it makes sense to impose, as a precondition on negotiations with Abbas and Fatah, that they prevent any attack on Israel by their sworn enemies in Hamas. Yglesias makes the obvious point that imposing such conditions would make it trivially easy for Hamas to prevent any negotiation from occurring. The fact that Ross was Clinton's main man on the Israel-Palestine dispute and Yglesias is a snot-nosed kid may explain why the situation in the Middle East has gotten as bad as it has.

*Since they have rejected "Thou Shalt Not Kill" (Fifth by the Catholic numbering) in favour of Reagan's Eleventh Commandment.

Update After 14 comments: I think the discussion has been interesting. In the end, Andy seems (to me) to retreat from arguing that preventive war is justifiable to arguing that the war was necessary to enforce the peace terms Iraq accepted after 1991. I disagree "on the facts", but I accept that such a justification isn't in principle contrary to the just war tradition.

But while I recognize that some arguments along these lines were advanced, the Bush administration clearly did present itself as putting forward a new doctrine. Lee at Thinking Reed has the goods.

Further Update: On the Internet, you can even get a discussion by an "Independent Catholic Priest" on how Augustine's comments on the Third Punic War anticipate the arguments about Iraq. (Via Thinking Reed)