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SINISTER WISDOM

Carl Schmitt was one of those brilliant German intellectuals who, in the anti-democratic traditions of elite European authoritarianism and illiberalism, lent their prestige and moral authority to Fascism. Like his contemporary, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, Schmitt became an enthusiastic Nazi and an academic bully. Unlike Heidegger, who in his malice or dotage fellated the radical New Left, Schmitt never recanted his National Socialist past.

That being said, Schmitt’s deep learning and insights about the state, the struggle for power and war should not be ignored lightly because of his wicked politics any more than we should eschew learning from the writings of Mao ZeDong, Franz Fanon or Sayyid Qtub. Only a fool ignores the ideas of the enemy.

With that caveat, I recommend Schmitt’s “ The Theory of The Partisan“.

A major hat tip to my friend and fellow blogger Marc Schulman who I suspect unearthed this link in his own research into Alexandre Kojeve.

RECOMMENDED READING

Sunday…Sunday…Sunday….where action is the attraction…

Bruce Kesler -” Interagency Coordination Requires Dems & Reps To Come Together“

Top billing. The issue, while seemingly a dry one of inside-the-beltway bureaucratic wrangling among deputy assistant secretaries really could not be more important for increasing the resiliency of U.S. foreign policy. Why can’t the United States respond effectively to nimble 4GW groups ? Look to the lack of “operational jointness“, ” unified action” and ” System Administration” and the plethora of turf battles and bureaucratic empire building. More on this topic in the near future.

James McCormick -“Iklé — Annihilation From Within“

A deep and probing review at Chicago Boyz of an important book (I’m reading it now).

Gabriel Kolko at DNI -” The Age of Perpetual Conflict“

Kolko is the well known Marxist historian and one of the more credible scholars (i.e. he’s a real historian, not a Noam Comsky type polemicist) with an unrelentingly critical view of the United States. I’m holding this one up as a negative example; as a vigorous argument for isolationism and for a weakness of reasoning that assumes as static benefits of global interventionism ( bad actions deterred by the potential of intervention are ignored but are assumed to continue after a shift to isolationism) as a given while counting only the costs.

Catholicgauze -“Turkish Payback to Ralph Peters and Signs of Things to Come? “

I agree this is disturbing. I am no expert on Turkish politics but there seems to be an emerging strand of crypto-Islamist rejectionism of the West in Turkey that is larger than issues over Iraq. To hazard a guess, anti-Americanism is partly a safe “euphemistic” discourse to hide opposition to secularist Kemalism ( which if you oppose openly in Turkey -or even not so openly -that gets your party banned and perhaps you a jail sentence). Anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism can be presented as Turkish nationalism, even when it masks an ideology that is decidely transnationalist.

Marc Schulman – “Who Is George Soros? “

Speaking of disturbing. George Soros appears to be becoming unhinged. Does he realize that he – a major Democratic Party and liberal organization contributor – is openly suggesting introducing Kangaroo Courts to try Republicans and conservatives or is he so isolated in a bubble that he does not realize how that statement sounds to folks who are not on the MoveOn.org email list ?

How would Soros like somebody saying ” We should de-naturalize and deport politically active, authoritarian, crackpot, billionaires who violate the Logan Act ?”

Gunnar Peterson – “Protect the transaction“

System security expert Gunnar Peterson opines on Col. David Kilcullen’s post Two Schools of Classical Counterinsurgency from his professional perspective.

That’s it.