Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:35:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [HAB:] A Note on Habermas's "American & World" interview



The latter part of the interview is a wonderful
discussion of JH's view of contemporary international
law vis-à-vis his Kantian ideal of cosmopolitan
lawfulness. I feel I have a good idea now what JH is
working toward in his fall quarter course on
international law at Northwestern:

"What Habermas is teaching this quarter at
Northwestern U."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/habermas/message/913

The interview is also good for appreciating how it is
that apparently academic worries about ethics vs.
morality vs. law have rather stark correlates in
geopolitical current events. I haven't yet read Rawls'
_Law of Peoples_, so I wasn't aware that I was tending
toward Rawls and Waltzer in my skepticism toward a
need for cosmopolitan law (beyond making existing
international law work better).

Like his "Falling of the monument article," JH lodges
his opinion of U.S. policy early on, then gets more
theoretical as the interview moves on, such that, once
again, the matters of principle presumably
backgrounding his early-in-article view of U.S. policy
come after he's lodged his complaints that presumably
follow from principle. 

But also like the "Falling" article, those matters of
principle later in the interview support readings of
current events contrary to what he's sketched early
on. So, I don't take his invective against U.S.
intervention in Iraq seriously, since the intervention
can be justified in JH's own terms.

In fact, I was expecting to have my support for U.S.
policy shaken; but I see clear inconsistency between
is view of current events (including his sense of the
EU in it all) and the matters of principle. I showed
in detail how that kind of inconsistency worked in the
"Falling" article, which I discussed in detail.
Evidently, that interested no one at the time; thus, I
didn't even have the option of learning something from
other subscribers. So I see no reason to put any more
public time into JH's interview than I'm now doing. 

I'm glad to get the update on JH's views of the world,
and especially glad to get a brief on his current
sense of the cosmopolitan law project---which will be
the upshot of his Purdue lecture in October, I
suppose:

http://www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/idis/phil-lit/habermas.htm

But I'm not persuaded that, among many things, France
and Russia would have, in 2003, soon ceased appeasing
the brutal Iraqi dictatorship that they were profiting
from; nor am I persuaded that the corrupt UN Food for
Oil program would have stopped Saddamism's
profiteering. In short, I'm not persuaded that the UN
was showing potential after 12 years of effort on
their terms. 

I'm still convinced that the U.S.-UK intervention in
Iraq was justified on humanitarian grounds and that
"all those affected" are truly benefitting from
efforts to create genuinely representative government
in Iraq. 

JH speaks to current events as a partisan, just as his
stronger-than-appearances EU has also been acting as a
partisan, not at all as a voice of cosmopolitan
impartiality. Everyone will profit from democracy in
Iraq, and the EU wants what it can get, too, just as
the U.S. does---*and* China *and* Russia. The
underdeveloped economic dimension of JH's thought
seems clear. There are interest positions at play all
around, with no better options for stopping
dictatorships' regional destabilizing power than
either UN action in a timely manner or NATO
intervention; or else intervention by the U.S.

My conscience is clear on the U.S.-U.K. process; I see
no coalition interest in colonization or hegemony of
Iraqis. And I'm confident that time will continue to
undermine JH''s view of it all. 

I must say that I agree with JH's final words about
tendencies of anti-Americanism to turn into
anti-Semitism. I hope that Palestine gets its act
together, so that the Arab world can move on---so that
prevailing world attention can move on to, say,
Africa. 

Gary




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