Draw your own metaphysical conclusions
... or, "the beauty of grays." Cross-reference. (Via German blog jc-log.) posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:22:00 PM -- |  

 
OK, lets call them WQMED: Weapons of quite massive enough destruction
Gregg Easterbrook, writing in The New Republic, wants us to relax about chemical and biological weapons that Hussein may own. Like an extremely, if not to say suspiciously similar earlier piece by Jim Henley ("Weapons of Some Destruction") in June of this year, Easterbrook argues that the efficacy of these weapons is low: you can't really aim them very well, they drift in the wind, disperse, and so forth, and countermeasures exist.

Both writers see the "BC" in "ABC" weapons (atomic, biological, chemical) as just scary, not militarily effective or strategically important. It's interesting that the two writers put their insight (false though I think it is) to different uses: Easterbrook wants us to winnow away the chaff arguments of biological or chemical threats so we can focus our laser beams on destroying the nuclear weapon making sites in Iraq -- yesterday if not sooner. Henley doesn't directly bring Iraq policy into his discussion, but I think it's reasonably clear from his writing over the past year that he's somewhere between firmly and vehemently opposed to a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, so that I'm guessing his piece is intended to peel away a spurious reason for supporting the attack.

But I think Easterbrook and Henley both commit a kind of "moving goalposts" fallacy in their articles. Both writers' positions are that since chemical and biological weapons are not as supremely effective at mass killing as nuclear weapons, or often any more effective than merely flying a jet into a skyscraper, they do not qualify as weapons of strategic concern. This ignores the point that these are cheap, easily concealable weapons, and ones that even in survivable doses can have lingering, crippling effects on their victims. Finally, both writers often advance arguments that are (somewhat) comforting to soldiers on the battlefield, but not at all so to civilians on the "home front." Here's Easterbrook on mustard gas:

As John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, and his son Karl, a RAND Corporation analyst, have written, "In the First World War, only some two to three percent of those gassed on the Western front died while, by contrast, wounds caused by traditional weapons were some 10 to 12 times more likely to prove fatal." American fatalities followed exactly this ratio: 2 percent of those gassed during the war died, compared with 24 percent of those struck by bullets, artillery shells, or shrapnel.

So mustard gas isn't as good at killing soldiers on battlefields right away as bullets are. I think we all knew that. On the other hand, I never knew my grandfather, a World War I veteran, who was permanently weakened by his exposure to mustard gas, and died of complications years later.

Moreover, evaluating battlefield use of such weapons has next to nothing to do with the likeliest use of such weapons for terror attacks: enclosed spaces with lots of people, such as domed stadiums, subway or train stations, malls, office buildings. This -- not Iraqi Scuds skittering through the sky like balloons at a party -- is the threat that worries me.

I'm also a bit baffled by both writers' dismissal of anthrax, now that the serial mailer of last fall appears to be on sabbatical: last year's anthrax attacks could have been much, much worse. Instead, the attacker(s) gave warning in at least two cases, and used miniscule amounts. Given the tons of anthrax produced by Iraq, the relative ease of producing more, and the well-known ease of smuggling tons of white powdery substances into the United States, I'd say it would be quite feasible and relatively trivial to position and disperse quantities of anthrax sufficient to sicken or kill most of a Sugar Bowl crowd, or the Thanksgiving rush at O'Hare airport Terminal B. Yet the attack would not announce itself until days later, and many victims would not realize they were seriously ill until it was too late for effective help. Both writers concede this, and both again resort to the remarkable device of saying that there are more effective ways of killing. Easterbrook:

Anthrax, by contrast, can be spread as a long-lived aerosol, and Iraq is known to have cultured significant amounts of this bioweapon. Israel is relatively safe from an Iraqi anthrax attack, however, because anthrax probably cannot be delivered by missile: Anthrax-loaded warheads, arriving at hundreds of miles per hour, would immolate their own contents. Anthrax could be spread from a low-flying plane, or through the ventilation systems of large buildings. But a low-flying plane could drop bombs, too, and buildings could be blown up; moreover, conventional attacks of this nature would kill people right away, whereas bioweapon attacks would leave time for physicians to save the victims.

Henley:

Biological weapons are not so easy to dismiss. But one of the agents it looks like we can knock off the list of weapons of mass destruction is anthrax... I've seen people suggest that terrorists could pump anthrax (or chemicals) into the ventilation system of a single building, infecting almost everyone within. Well, probably, yes. As we know all too well, there are other ways to kill people in buildings, however.

So bad guys could use anthrax, or they could use something else. This is not comforting. (And is Easterbrook absolutely sure he didn't read Henley's "Unqualified Offerings" blog first?). A not altogether minor point about anthrax is that many survivors may never fully recover (St. Petersburg Times): survivors are suffering from fatigue, memory loss, and shortness of breath.

My own take is that it's very reasonable indeed to worry about chemical and biological weapons. Calling them "the poor man's atomic bomb" may be hyperbole, but not by much. Hussein's active pursuit and production of both kinds of weapons adds to the foreboding I feel about his pursuit of nuclear weapons. But I also tally their possible use against us in any future conflict as a substantial expected cost, the formula for which could be "deaths in the hundreds to thousands times a likely small, but not that small, probability of their effective use." We can either be deterred by this, or motivated to attack for the very same reason. Either way, these are serious weapons which deserve the attention they receive. Let's not let one effect of either 9/11 or Hiroshima be to desensitize us to "smaller" or "merely equal" future catastrophes, and let's not let our limited experience with these weapons in the past tempt us to ignore the risks they present in capable, murderous hands.

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Update, 9/29, ca. 8:30pm, for readers here via Instapundit: Henley responded earlier today. We continue to have a difference of perspective: "But I think both of them are confusing an argument that "These are not inordinately effective" with "These are not effective at all." No, that's not it. My argument is that I think these are -- or at least could be -- inordinately effective weapons. I don't dispute there are others as well. Finally, I consider Jim a friend, and recommend you read his blog "Unqualified Offerings" regularly. (--Also, a minor edit: I inserted "many victims" above so that sentence would make sense.) posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:45:00 PM -- |  

 

Cairo, Egypt

posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:38:00 PM -- |  

 

Well, don't do that
Donald Rumsfeld, according to the Washington Times, about Al Qaeda in Iraq:

"We have what we consider to be credible contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities."

posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:03:00 PM -- |  

 
German election results considered
Via Germany's Federal Statistics Agency (Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland), here are the preliminary official results of the election:

	1998		2002		change
Party	% vote	seats	%vote	seats	%	seats
SPD	40.9	298	38.5	251	-2.4	-47
Green	6.7	47	8.6	55	+1.9	8
CDU/CSU	35.1	245	38.5	248	+3.4	3
FDP	6.2	43	7.4	47	+1.2	4
PDS	5.1	20	4.0	0	-1.1	-20
other<5	5.9		3.0		-2.9
Total	99.9	653	100	601		-52

An analysis of the election in Der Spiegel shows a couple of very interesting maps showing where the SPD (Schroeder) and CDU/CSU (Stoiber) gained or lost voter share since the last election; one of them, for the SPD, is displayed at the right. Red districts are where the SPD picked up 3 or more percent, charcoal gray where they lost 3 or more percent. You don't need a political science degree to see a pretty clear pattern.

Given that the SPD lost strength in the national tally, their improved showing in ex-Communist east Germany could be fairly credited with winning them the election. Interestingly, the corresponding map for the CDU/CSU shows them also slightly gaining voter share in east Germany, although generally by considerably less than the SPD. Indeed, many of east German districts show gains for all four major parties that are not completely explained by the losses for the PDS. This net effect is obviously due to the withering of splinter party fortunes.

I don't know why the PDS chairman, Gregor Gysi, stepped down, but it seems quite fortunate for the SPD that he did; discouraged PDS supporters who didn't want to waste their votes were low hanging fruit for Schroeder, and he went after them. The PDS had been claiming the mantle of the "new peace party," claiming the Greens under Fischer had forfeited that role with their support for Germany's role in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Had they been competitive with the well-spoken and well-regarded Gysi playing the same role Joschka Fischer did for the Greens -- personal popularity overshadowing the party platform -- the SPD might have been forced or strongly tempted to seek a coalition with them, depending on how they saw center-left type voters responding to overt or suspected moves in that direction.

As it is, the PDS was effectively swallowed up by the SPD (and likely the Greens) on Sunday. I won't write their obituary yet, given how wrong I was about the Greens last year. Given that they barely missed the 5% threshold needed to get into the Bundestag, Schroeder may have some excuse for waging the campaign he did. Look for massive state subsidies and plenty of SPD political patronage in east Germany. (There have been rumors that Gysi will switch parties and may attain high rank within the SPD.) Whether any of that will do either the SPD or east Germany any long term good is an open question. The SPD may become over-identified with east Germany and risks becoming a CSU-like regional party if the CDU, FDP, or Greens can "break out" at their expense; the wildly overambitious "Project 18" (percent) FDP initiative was a stab in that direction. On the other hand, the Daeubler-Gmelin "gaffe" is said to have cost the SPD 1-2 percentage points nationwide, points they may regain the next election barring renewed ill-timed outbursts.

Beyond the simple fact that the governing coalition won, it seems significant to me that both the Greens and the FDP did quite well at the polls. I was apparently also wrong about the benefit Moellemann's anti-Israelism conferred on the FDP; current conventional wisdom has that hurting the FDP. Together, the FDP and the Greens are the least status quo oriented major parties, seeking tax cuts (FDP) and reduced government subsidies to agriculture, coal mining, and the transportation industry (Greens campaign platform, p.52, Acrobat software required). Whichever of the two major parties finds a way to make these changes palatable to its base may be the one that can gain dominance if voters become increasingly dissatisfied with the German status quo. The other significant, unreported, and welcome development is how very poorly splinter parties (read often "neo-Nazi" for "splinter") did everywhere. I'm guessing the CDU/CSU soaked up some of those votes in east Germany to account for its slight vote share gains there.

But look for future posts recalling how wrong I was about all of this, too. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:16:00 PM -- |  

 
Some thoughts on translations
I can't reconstruct exactly how I came across the article "translate this" on Aziz Poonawalla's blog unmedia, but it's likely that it's because Jim Henley mentioned him as well worth a read, which is true. In this article, Mr. Poonawalla's central assertion is that translations of the Qur'an (the transliteration of "Koran" preferred -- undogmatically -- by Mr. Poonawalla) are doomed to failure. But to introduce this idea, he resorts to a kind of "Straw Man" technique of running the Declaration of Independence through an online translation service, Babelfish, twice (English to French to English) to demonstrate that losses of readability and meaning occur in translation:

The general gist is sort of preserved, but consider someone trying to decipher it without benefit of access to or any knowledge of the original text. "All people are the equal which creates" - means what? that People are God? And how would you interpret "government being to institute among man" ?

But this is merely an empirical example of why translations are fundamentally flawed. Trying to apply them to religious texts like the Qur'an is Sisyphean. Shi'a muslims like myself believe in a depth of meaning beyond the literal, which are obliterated in any attempt at translation.

Mr. Poonawalla goes on to cite an unnamed authority on Shi'a Islam:

The bulk of the information of the Qur'an is in its multitude of allegorical and esoteric interpretations. Another level of information is in its numerical usage of words and letters, another in the numerical values attached to each letter, another in its order, another in the letters opening certain chapters, another in its captivating sounds, another in the way each verse was revealed - the list is almost unending.

He goes on to write:

The very choice of the language of Arabic was no accident either. The richness of Arabic poetry in the pre-Islam arabian culture had no equal, and in fact the Qur'an itself is poetry on a scale that completely overwhelmed the pagan worshippers. The power of Qur'anic revelation was confirmation of the divine origin. None of this is even remotely describable to an english audience.

To some extent, these are tautological assertions of faith that can't help but be true: if what is critical about a sentence or verse in the Qur'an is not "merely" the substance of the sentence, but the numbers of words and letters, then the task of faithfully translating those details as well becomes herculean and likely impossible. But Mr. Poonawalla seemed to be implying more by his Declaration of Independence example: that the even the substance of the message itself can not be transmitted without error to another language.

I know from translating German to English -- admittedly less daunting than Arabic to English translations are likely to be -- that some sentences and thoughts are very difficult indeed to translate from one language to another. But some are not, e.g., "I am eating beans and rice." (Babelfish does just fine with this, by the way.) Surely this has an exact or at least an "adequately exact" translation in Arabic. Obviously, many and perhaps most of the verses of the Qur'an, are obviously not at the "I am eating beans and rice" level of complexity. But some are, and even more complex thoughts can surely be translated with very high fidelity.

Indeed, I think it's at least a worthwhile assertion that any thought expressed in one natural* language can be translated with perfect fidelity to another, where the signal or substance of the message is concerned. Consider the ability of non-Arabs to learn Arabic as a second language. There must be translation and understanding of the Arabic sentences happening inside the head; this translation can be expressed in principle, I think.

What may well not be translatable is the poetry of the Arabic language or indeed any language: the particular way that the same thought can be distilled to a pleasing combination of words. What makes that combination "pleasing" will also vary from place to place and over time, as poetic tastes change. But the operative phrase above to me is "the same thought". That thought can be translated, as can the subtle implications of the choice of words or punctuation, although probably not in as few words or in as pleasing (or unpleasant**) a manner as the original message in the original language.

It just seems to me something of an abdication to say, "You can't understand this text that is important to me and millions unless you speak a particular language." It would, for one thing, also imply "Those of us who speak only that particular language are barred from fully understanding texts originally written in other languages," in my view. That is, if you proceed from the premise that some thoughts can only be expressed in Language A, you admit the possibility that some, say the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, or any given book of the Old Testament, can only be expressed in Language B, unless of course you arrogate super-language status to Language A: "this is the only language in which all possible thoughts can be expressed."

Interestingly, this is just the assertion some make. In a responding article by H. D. Miller titled "The Allusiveness of Arabic", Miller cites the following:

The possibilities in Arabic for the use of figurative language are endless; its allusiveness, tropes and figures of speech place it far beyond the reach of any other language... Arabic loses on translation but all other languages gain on being translated into Arabic. (Joel Carmichael)

This seems almost imperialistic to me, in some ways eclipsing assertions of mere national, racial, or religious superiority. But there's enough trouble brewing already, and it may be just Joel who feels this way, so I'll leave this off my to-worry list.


Postscript, 9/24: I initially left off the fact that Mr. Poonawalla and I corresponded a bit before I posted this piece. He says he mainly meant to use the Babelfish translations to demonstrate the limitations of a single type of translations, simple vocabulary switches (sometimes enhanced with a bit of grammar in Babelfish's case, I think). He stuck to his claim that the Qur'an could not be translated adequately -- although he added "unless you are willing to burden each page with three pages of footnotes". He also added that some other examples of highly allusive literature -- the Bible, some French literature -- share this trait as well.

===
*I say "natural" because it occurs to me that one could easily concoct "languages" that artificially contradict the assertion. For example, if one "language" was English using only the words starting with the letter "B", and another was English starting with only the letter "X", there might well be thoughts that could be expressed in one but not both "languages", but the example is too artificial to disprove the assertion.

** At least one reaction to the HDG (Herta Daumler-Gmelin) spat chronicled below provides an amusing example of the importance of good translation -- at least if you consider Jonah Goldberg of National Review somewhat important. He presumably earned an hour or two of pay for his comments last Friday excoriating HDG and the German's on the basis of her notorious statement about Bush and Hitler -- and was especially scathing about this part: "'That's a popular method," she noted. 'Even Hitler did that.'". Except she didn't say that. The word "even" would be "sogar", while "schon" -- the word HDG used -- translates to "already". My own translation below fails slightly on this score as well; a better version would be "...That's a favored method. That's something Hitler was already doing."That is, this "foreign policy distraction tactic" came into use around or just before Hitler, he either created, perfected it or was the first to use it a lot. Which was idiotic on many levels, too, but simply isn't what Goldberg spent time foaming about. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:46:00 AM -- |  

 

So what happened to me?
Jim Henley left a comment below and mentioned I was writing again in his own blog, "Unqualified Offerings." I appreciate both. He understandably proposed that the DC blogfest of mid March might have precipitated my long downtime; as you can read below, that get-together featured some spirited discussion about drug policy with me in the minority viewpoint.

The drug discussion itself had absolutely nothing to do with the long sabbatical from blogging. What happened was that I was letting both home responsibilities and my work suffer more than I should have allowed. Also I had a sense of near-addiction to the whole thing, (scanning for comments, tracing linkbacks or whatever they’re called via sitemeter, tracking hits). Finally, I just felt exhausted and repetitive; all in all, the costs were way overshadowing the benefits.

So I just quit. I not only quit writing my blog, but reading anyone else’s: Den Beste, Welch, Hayden, Henley's, anyone’s; just monitoring all of it seemed a fulltime job. So I have little idea how or whether people’s views have evolved since I dropped out.

I should have explained myself to those of you returning to this site. But it was never even that much of a plan: I kept thinking I’d pick it up again “soon.” But then I’d get a combination of cold feet and writer’s block, or rather a feeling I’d just be repeating myself and/or entrenching myself. Plus I felt I had less to say, and oddly guilty about what felt like and was a failure.

Obviously, I should have put up some sort of “Gone Fishing” message after a couple of days. I will in the future. I'm going to shoot for relatively brief posts every other day or so, and renew my sense that I'm writing to express myself and clarify my thoughts, not for traffic or notoriety of some sort. I've really appreciated people's inquiries in the interim; I hope you'll all drop by now and then to read what I think and discuss it with me via comment or e-mail. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:21:00 PM -- |  

 

Entire German political spectrum shoots self in foot
Incredible. Der Spiegel's Markus Deggerich chronicles ("Wenn sie doch geschwiegen hätten": "If only they had shut up") the final days of an election campaign where most of the major parties spared no effort in either self-destructing or really changing the German-American relationship for the worse.

The SPD's justice minister, Herta Däubler-Gmelin, who equated Bush's and Hitler's political methods on Thursday, continued to claim that she "simply didn't say that" - without being very clear what she means by "that." She wouldn't rule out suing the "Schwaebisches Tagblatt" -- even though it's hard for me to see exactly what the difference is between the newspaper's account and her own explanations.*

So much for the final campaign message from the German left. Meanwhile, in the "center", the FDP's chairman Westerwelle has been unable or -- in view of the FDP's rising poll numbers -- unwilling to force his repugnant Jew-baiting lieutenant, Moellemann, out of the limelight or the party. While the SPD is eager to make the German election about Iraq, FDP vice-chair Moellemann seems to want it to be about Israel and Palestine. After an ostensible cease-fire with the German Jewish community and his own party on the subject earlier in the year, Moellemann released a flyer reviving what might be called the "Israel question" as an issue in the German campaign. The current German tendency towards loud opinions about nominal friends' life and death issues seems to be a winner for the FDP, too: the party appears poised to take a distinctly larger share of the vote this election than in the last one.

Meanwhile, on the right, Herr Stoiber showed a keen sense of timing by surprising everyone with the declaration that the US would not be allowed to use its German NATO bases for an attack on Iraq if it weren't sanctioned by the UN. His prior position had been merely that German troops wouldn't participate in the event of a solo US attack.

So Germany appears poised for warm relations with Palestine and Iraq after this election is over, and grudging cooperation at best with the United States. Apparently the plights of suicide bombers and nerve gas wielding dictators count for more in the German scheme of things than the rights to survival and self-protection of their country's greatest protectors and victims, respectively. How we got here will be worth reflecting on over the next few months.

As of last weekend, a Spiegel poll put the SPD and Greens at 38.5 and 8%, respectively, and the CDU/CSU and FDP at 36 and 8.5%, respectively. This would be a win for the ruling coalition, but with an even smaller majority in the Bundestag than they currently enjoy. From this American Democrat's point of view, there's little to recommend any of the German alternatives. Prost!

===
* No wonder I couldn't see the difference: the newspaper says she dictated her quote to them over the phone in an apparent inept attempt at spin control:

Our editor ... asked how she recalled having said it, and that he would publish that as a quasi final authorized version. And that's how she recalled what was said - [the editor] wrote it down word for word and read it back to her slowly: "Bush wants to distract..." (see below)

posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:58:00 AM -- |