War Correspondents and Other Misnomers

Journalists who know as little about the science of war as those who have been reporting on the Syrian civil war today would likely never have been able to keep a job during World War II. Their ignorance would quickly have been exposed by their peers and their access to reliable sources would equally quickly have dried up. Such individuals apparently do not belong on this “beat.” Almost every report I read on the military events in Syria makes at least one more or less blatant error of this kind. I’ll give two examples in this post.

Just last week, for one example, in a report that the Taftanaz helicopter base had been taken by the opposition, a reporter expressed doubt whether it could be held because the regime continues to make air strikes on rebel positions. I suppose if the pilot of one such plane were to land and raise Bashar’s flag, he could retake the base for the regime. But no! only ground troops can take military possession of places on the ground. Possession of the air above any such space lasts only as long as aircraft are in flight there. It does not extend to the ground below. The notion of air superiority applies only to the conflict of air forces.

The Kosovo war might be considered a counterexample, but it is out of scope here for me fully to explain why it is not.

The other mistake is the repeated denomination of the war as a “stalemate.” It’s not blitzkrieg, but it’s not a stalemate ether. When all the successes are being recorded by one side, all the initiative is on one side, all the striking power is on one side, it’s not a stalemate.

Note that air strikes do not count as “striking power” for the reason explained in example #1. The fact is, the regime has so little striking power on the ground it cannot keep the roads to its garrisons open. That’s why they have had to be supplied by helicopter. But not anymore. Further, if Bashar still had an armored formation capable of taking the initiative, much less carrying out an offensive, even the journalists would have noticed by now. My guess is, whatever he’s got left is being reserved for the gotterdammerung in the capital – and not out of considerations of state, but rather personal ones.

That’s another story. Anyway, these are the two most frequent gaffes of reporters who have no real background or experience to cover a war. Maybe they suffer from not being “embedded.”

Another source of anxious handwringing, and not just among journalists, is the success in battle of the al Qaida-affiliated al Nusra Front. Two observations: one, they’re Muslims killing Muslims. Bin Laden would not approve. Two, they’re not afraid to die. That’s part of the jihadist mentality. The concentration of fire in this war is not, on either side, to all appearances very great. A little bravery goes a long way in Syria if you’re not afraid to expose yourself.

To be sure, they’re auxiliaries fighting for reasons of their own, the way auxiliaries do. But it’s hard to say whether their reasons are ideological or not, or if they are, what that ideology might be. Cyberspace is crowded with inconsistent assertions. We’ve already seen that their actions don’t align with Bin Laden’s vision for al Qaida. If they wanted to restore the Caliphate, wouldn’t they fight for Bashar? That’s his politics, but his economics are consumer, even luxury, oriented. Instead they’ve chosen the side of the freedom fighters, fighters for civil and political rights. Don’t they know that’s a tough atmosphere for al Qaida? That’s what it became in democratic Iraq. That’s the tendency in any country that has a real economy and a real petit bourgeoisie. The list of al Qaida’s temporary successes is limited to places where tribal, and not bourgeois, politics are predominant.

Maybe they just want to participate in violence. If so, that’s what they’ll do in Syria after the civil war, until they’re driven out of Syria too. The middle class is plenty strong there, and was once a bulwark of the regime, until Bashar drove them from his side by his excesses. If they stay and fight, there will be plenty of handwringing about the Muslims they kill during that process too.

For now, they’re an extremely tough, high-morale formation well able to confront and defeat Bashar’s Alawite units. Maybe it’s too bad is it considered risky for the West to arm them properly. But maybe they have been arming themselves.

Morsi shows his hand…

…it’s a revolution based on party, but in his party, class interests are submerged, or at any rate entangled, in religious interests. One can say that, in the end, he might do about as well as Cromwell did.

Which isn’t so bad because, even after the reaction in favor of the Stuart monarchy deprived the Puritans of the state, the Glorious Revolution restored or confirmed their political rights and religious freedom as Dissenters from the state religion. The political solution then reached is still the basis of the British constitutional monarchy.

Other than Cromwell’s, it’s difficult to find examples of revolutions by or in favor of religious parties. Does Lutheranism count? No, because the German princes adopted Lutheranism, really on behalf of their states – it gave them independence from the papacy.

The Huguenots didn’t start as a revolutionary party, but rather as a legitimate party in the Estates-General of France. Though they became involved in a struggle for the state, a struggle that gained them for a time the control of some of the provinces, its grounds were mainly dynastic and factional rather than revolutionary. Yet they, like the Dissenters, numbered many petit bourgeoisie among their faithful.

Other instances match up even less well. The first establishment of the Caliphate was more in the nature of conquest than revolution. It was no more revolution than the Israelites establishing themselves in the Holy Land. Anyhow it’s hard to see how you could have a revolution in favor of anything resembling the Caliphate. Neither did the first Xians aim at control of the state through revolution but rather gained it much later, and not at revolutionary speed but through conversion.

So there’s little guidance from history on the question about the fate of a revolution conducted by a religious party. Now, to show that that is what we are dealing with, I have to show that Morsi has left the path of revolution based on objective class interests. It may also be possible to show that the interests of a religious party as such are not objective in the same sense, if at all – but that would be for another post.

The move to claim vacant or vacated powers was necessary, as I claimed in a post some time ago, to forestall the judiciary, the armed forces already having withdrawn their opposition to the Brotherhood’s revolution and their claim to control of the state. Morsi offered this particular explanation of his action in approximately these terms at one subsequent point. At another point, I seem to recall, he expressed regrets at the appearance of impropriety the appropriation of power gave. Yet the judiciary were prevented from dissolving the constitutional convention in the way they’d dissolved parliament. I believe this, not absolutism, was Morsi’s primary, even his only, aim.

It was not necessary use the appropriated powers to forestall the secular parties, as they had already absented themselves, perhaps not entirely, but sufficient to the purpose, from the process. To the extent Morsi named the Brotherhood and its allies to fill vacant seats and offices, to the extent his original or acquired powers as president were used to stack the convention and control its outcomes, then, he was carrying out the revolution of a religious party, and not a revolution more broadly based on objective class interests.

Nobody ever reported whether Salafists were named to any such vacant seats, the journalists apparently preferring to lump them with the Brotherhood. I have argued that failing to make distinctions on this point is a mistake, and probably an item of Western prejudice, and I am still wondering whether any Salafists had a hand in drafting or approving the constitution, and if so, which if any of their positions were incorporated to it.

So the instrument was hurriedly approved through a process the seculars could not interfere with. And the seculars, having read it, at last found unity, but too late. It’s like what Lenin did to the Kerensky government. It’s like what the German kings did while the German parliament argued with itself after 1848, until the counter-revolution reestablished its state. If the Founding Fathers had conducted themselves the way the secular parties in Egypt have….

Maybe you get my point. There’s a time for talk, but if you’re still talking while another party is taking concrete steps to gain the state, then…you’re free to continue talking after that party becomes the state – maybe. I suppose in this case, since Morsi let them vote, he will also let them talk, if not agitate. The decisive actions have already been taken and the result is what the Brotherhood wanted it to be.

So now the seculars are united, even if only negatively, and they have begun another round of revolutionary agitation. Meanwhile steps are being taken to implement the constitution the people – some of them – voted to adopt. The Shura Council seems to have been given and to be exercising some of the vacant legislative powers, either permanently or during the interim until a new parliament is elected. And they were substantially reappointed by Morsi from his party and in preference both to the minions of the former regime and the seculars – more evidence that the Egyptian revolution has lately been appropriated to the agenda of that religious party.

The seculars thus face an unpleasant choice between trying to get themselves elected under an Islamist constitution, or sitting out the election and trying to make a revolution against the revolution. I guess the French did this a few times during their revolution, but only because it was able, in addition to obliterating the previous regime, to consume itself. I don’t detect that kind of ruthlessness in El Baradei or the people he represents – but who can say?