Critical Theory & Postmodernism - Tools for Contextualizing Morality-Free Strategy

Submitted by Ludvikus (United States), Jun 13, 2014 at 11:36

Dear Daniel Pipes,

Regarding your distinction between

"Strategy" [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/strategy],

i.e., "the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war" [emphasis added]

as oppose to

"Advocacy" [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/advocacy],

i.e., "the act or process of supporting a cause or proposal : the act or process of advocating something" [emphasis added] as you can see, the former includes the latter. So it's not possible to use your rule when posting a Comment on your Middle East Forum.

However, in the making your the distinction, you oppose "Morality" [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morality] arguments, which involve beliefs as to what is Right or Wrong, or Good or Bad.

In that regard, I wish to mere point out here that the Western World abandoned the Religious justification of Moral behavior with the Historical developments of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the 1776 American, and 1789 French, Revolutions, and subsequently the failed European 1848 Revolutions; in particular, these - selected, incomplete - "publishing" historical events are relevant:

1) the August 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen;

2) the 1791 (American) Bill of Rights (amended as an after-thought to the 1789 USA Constitution);

3) the 1791 Rights of Man by Thomas Paine;

4) the 1848 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx;

Skipping the intermediary history I come down to our Contemporary World which involves, the substantial European German, Critical Theory [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-theory/], and, the substantially European French, Postmodernism [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/]

Now I suspect that this may be at best "distasteful," to you, personally; however, in my view, it isn't possible to implement Strategy outside the historically prevalent "ways" of Western "intelligentsia."

I want to conclude this Commentary with a reference to you implicit understanding of what's required in your excellent article, here, on your Forum with your Critic, perhaps somewhat Postmodern, of "Saidism" [http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2651409?uid=3739832&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21103852046431] of Edward Said's "work" on Orientalism: [http://www.danielpipes.org/7957/orientalism]

In light of the overwhelming successes of this work, and what it has done to the Middle East, or Oriental, studies departments in the USA, and in Europe (less so), I do not agree with your conclusion - that the "work" should be ignored; I rather recommend that this "Palestinian" intellectual should be emulated regarding his adoption of the most current prevalent tools of the time - then it was Deconstruction [http://www.iep.utm.edu/deconst/].

And I know you have the means to do to Islamism what was done to Soviet Communism in part by your wonderful scholarly American Polish Jewish father, Richard Pipes [http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Pipes_Richard].

Regarding your opposition to Moralizing it's certainly useful to observe the arguably still Critical, and Postmodern valid view: "Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests." - Lord Palmerston.

Regarding the anti-Edward Said "Orientalism" view(s) relating to the existence of the "Middle East" its also useful to point out that it was the American "Imperialist" Alfred Thayer Mahan who coined the term in 1902 in his article, "The Persian Gulf and International Relations", published in September in the in the serial, National Review;

and that there are seventeen (17) Wikipedia-listed Middle East Countries which are the subject of your Forum.:

• Bahrain
• Cyprus
• Egypt
• Iran
• Iraq
• Israel
• Jordan
• Kuwait
• Lebanon
• Northern Cyprus
• Oman
• Palestine
• Qatar
• Saudi Arabia
• Syria
• Turkey^[19]
• United Arab Emirates
• Yemen

---

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".