All Couped Up
I've been vaguely following the comments threads on this blog about the recent coup in Thailand and I find them, frankly, quite alarming. With what dispatch some who enjoy all the comforts and privileges of "bourgeois democracy" are willing to dispense with them for others!
I think there's a pretty simple and self-evident rule of thumb in these matters. If the government in question has been elected and is not actively blocking future elections, it is a legitimate administration that justifes no military coup. Full stop.
In the case of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin, well, he certainly left a lot to be desired, didn't he? He had used his positiion to vastly enrich himself and others and was no darling when it came to press freedom.
All of those are excellent reasons to rally political opposition against him and defeat him in the next round of elections. Or try to defeat him as I understand he retained great pockets of popular support in spite of his venality.
At the very best -- and I think it's always a long shot-- the military coup of this week will do no long term damage to Thailand's imperfect democracy. But it sure ain't gonna help. The most recent reports coming out of Bangkok describe a situation depressingly similar to most post-coup atmospheres: a bunch of guys with guns and tanks wrapped in the national flag (and in this case carrying the King's colors) proclaiming that they, and they alone, are wise enough to represent the aspirations of their people. Nobody's else's opinion matters, nor for that matter, are they even any longer legal. This report from the Toronto Globe and Mail:
Thailand's coup leaders have tightened their grip on the country, banning all political meetings, outlawing all party activities and imposing tough new restrictions on the news media. After seizing power in a bloodless coup this week, the military junta announced yesterday that it is taking over the duties of parliament and banning any public gathering of five or more people. It also confirmed that the military had detained four senior colleagues of the deposed prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra. They include a deputy prime minister and two cabinet ministers, and are being held in military custody on an army base in the Bangkok area... ...The new restrictions on the media, meanwhile, were announced in a decree on Bangkok's television channels yesterday. Live interviews will be banned on radio and television. Phone-in comments in the broadcast media are also forbidden. And any media comments that are deemed a threat to national security are banned.Some will argue that my position is too formalist, that it is naive to equate true freedom and democracy with mere elections. I will readily concede that point. Where I will not budge, however, is in opposing the tortured notion that democracy and justice are somehow possible without elections and unfettered political discourse. We hear this crap all the time, mostly about such revolutionary wonderlands as Cuba or Zimbabwe. You know the tired old routine: well, tut tut, there might not be elections as we like them but at least the people can eat, go to school and not wake up in Haiti. There's usually also a couple of dastardly lies thrown into the mix as well: like, there's no torture in Cuba and no political killings either (unless you count the couple of thousand executed). Great. It would be nice if they were also allowed to read a newspaper, have an opinion, maybe a trade union or two, a defense lawyer when arrested, a code of law when being prosecuted, government officials who are accountable, and maybe even the right to dissent, organize and -- God Forbid-- act peacefully on that dissent! (Oh no comrade, that would be playing into the hands of Cheney-Bushco Imperial IMF Diebold Aggression). In my mind, nothing can be more offensive than a bunch of well-read, well-fed, unmolested, net-surfin' folks in the most advanced countries in the world, enjoying all of the privileges and guarantees of their own "flawed" democracies, flippantly ruling that all those people of color in the Third World really don't require the same modicum of decency, civility, human respect and, yes, flawed democracy. I nominate them for a week's all-expenses-paid stay in Fidel's Boniato Prison or perhaps a few hours under interrogation by an enlightened Thai Army captain in time of absolutist martial law. I can't think of a single recent historic example where a coup and military regime has successfully produced some sort of "progressive" outcome. I was around in the 70's when the nationalist militaries in Peru and Bolivia (much a la Chavez but sans oil) posed as revolutionary regimes. It wasn't long before they descended into the usual sort of right-wing rule. There's the Ethiopian "model" of the 80's, I suppose. Another disaster in which the country's youth were sent off to die in droves in pointless wars under giant portraits of Stalin, no less! Nigeria? That worked well, no? What other example can be proffered? I can also remember quite clearly the atmosphere in Buenos Aires in March 1976 when Argentine Army General Videla seized state power. I was wearing blue pajamas that night -- he was wearing gray. The overturned regime was the elected government of Isabel Peron. Inflation and corruption were rampant. Murderous death squads were openly operating out of the Ministry of Social Welfare under the diabolic Lopez Rega. Isabel was certainly rather daft. In the first days after the bloodless coup, there were many -- including on the Left-- who breathed a sigh of relief. Surely the military would restore order, clean up the sewer of corruption operated by the Peronistas, lock up Isabelita, rein in the murder squads and quickly return the country to democracy. Argentine Communists were particulary enthusiastic about this way of seeing things, And many of them held fast to their opinions -- at least until the very moment in which the new dictatorship whisked them away, gagged and blindfoled them and cast them into the bottomless night of the Dirty War. EnterJoni Mitchell singing: "You don't what you've got till it's gone."
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:11 am
Funny thing is, Marc Cooper was not that terribly upset with the US coup attempts against Mr. Chavez only a few years ago. Or ya’d have had no sense of it from his writings generally, pardon the awful pun.
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:12 am
As I mentioned the other day it was a given in comparative politics classes in the early seventies that coups were not necessarily bad since the military represented the “Modernizing” and “Progressive” forces in most third world countries. I asure you Marc the people making these arguments were not devotees of MONTHLY REVUE but included the “Hard Headed” Realists who dismissed critics (of, for example, the Vietnam war) as “naive” as you put it. I have no doubt that plenty of Leftists worship Castro (what coup there?) but, frankly, most Left types seem anti-coup to me. But I’ll concede your point that some may have applauded anti-electoral stategies – not surprising since I believe the Left does not believe in electoral politics. Still you can’t use every event as a new cudgel to bash ideological opponents no matter how beastly, or silly, they were at Pacifica!
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:13 am
From Leftside, a devestating reply to Bolton’s ignorance about Venezuela. Scary thing is Cooper would agree with Bolton, only in a softer more ‘moderate’ fashion:
John Bolton, US Top Diplomat, Shows His Ignorance
Here is what John Bolton, the un-confirmed US representative to the United Nations, had to say about the dust-up on 42nd Street yesterday:
I understand that President Chavez of Venezuela had some interesting things to say in the General Assembly this morning. You know it’s a phenomenon of the United States that not only can he say those things in the General Assembly, he could walk over to Central Park and exercise freedom of speech in Central Park too and say pretty much whatever he wanted. Too bad President Chavez doesn’t extend the same freedom of speech to the people of Venezuela. That’s my comment on his speech.
Too bad no one had the balls or knowledge to challenge that completely false statement, that he repeated twice, proving it was well cooked up in the State Dept. lab. If there was an instance of restricting freedom of speech in Venezuela every American would know about it. If a journalist has ever been threatened or killed (like what happened in US lapdog state Guatamala last week) we would know. There are no such restrictions and in fact the Government faces one of the most hostile press in the world. Read their major papers, watch their major TV, internet, etc – there is nothing but anti-Chavez slant and open disrespect for the social revolution. Any talk of repression is just plain ignorance. No one is in jail, no one muzzled, no one facing any sort of presecution at all (unlike this US blogger)– except the couple of folks who took US money and took part in an overthrow of the Government in 2002.
Even the vehemently anti-Chavez, anti-leftist organization Reporters Sans Fronteres – admits that the press in Venezuela is more free than that in Israel.
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:11 am
More free than Israel? Kinda doubt it since the Israeli press is a rambunctious crew that, on the MiddleEast at least, puts our media to shame! I think what you mean is the Venezualan press is anti-Chavez and gets away with since HC knows his supporters don’t read them anyway.
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:45 am
It’s interesting how excited some people get about defending anyone with anti-American and vaguely leftist credentials. Oikophobes, I guess.
Chavez is a pretty typical Latin American populist strongman, a la Juan Perón. He’s also a performer and a bit off the bubble (crazy like a fox, perhaps).
He’s a demagogue and if threatened could get nasty, but I haven’t heard that he’s gotten all that nasty (except verbally) yet.
Back in the day he would have cozied up to Brezhnev. These days the best he can do is Ahmadinejad.
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:53 am
Doug Ireland’s site has a more reasonable perspective…
September 22nd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Also amazing how quickly the media-pack, including NPR where I heard the first comments this morning, concludes that the Thai coup isn’t all that bad really, quoting a lot of Bangkok intellectuals in tones very similar to what you write of Buenos Aires in 1976. Let’s hope they’re not equally mistaken in this case.
September 22nd, 2006 at 12:33 pm
“Even the vehemently anti-Chavez, anti-leftist organization Reporters Sans Fronteres – admits that the press in Venezuela is more free than that in Israel.”
cal’s rant seems to imply that no criticism of Chavez is allowed, which is par for the course for true believers, but this statement needs some support. I am a member of Reporters sans Frontieres and I would like to see the citation for this comparison and the exact words. Also have to agree with rlo that Israel’s press is one of the freest in the world, and certainly much more so than the US press when it comes to criticizing Israeli policies.
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Hey, Cal. How upset does Marc have to be? Is writing an article in 2002 criticizing the Bush admin’s passive and approving response good enough? http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020506/marccooper
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Thanks for that, Mavis. But calls for honest debate are lost on people like Cal, who just make up things as they go along. I still want to see the exact quote from RSF by the way.
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Never mind, I found it myself. While Venezuela was ahead of Israel in 2002, the one Cal may have looked at, the 2005 ranking puts Israel way ahead of Venezuela in freedom of the press ranking. Don’t worry about the French, just look at the rankings on the right. So guess Cal was pulling stuff out of hats there.
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=549
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:21 pm
btw if you look down at the bottom of the page I linked to you can see the rankings for previous years back to 2002, and you can see how Venezuela slipped badly since then. I have made the point before about accuracy and honesty in linking, usually in regards to Woody’s links. Some of us actually look at them.
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:51 pm
The question of whether a true democracy depends on elections reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw on a car in the parking lot at my college. It read:
A republic, not a democracy.
While I thought that was too simplistic since it ignored the definition of democracy to be a system of government whose leaders are elected, it makes me wonder if certain aspects of the country being ruled by some of the non-elected (appointed) leaders in places like the FCC, SEC, etc make the democracy a sham and powerless to actually have a majority decide important matters…like going to war illegally (by int’l standards or US).
I’d have to assume that if the executive of the country is elected as well as those determining the laws then you have a true enough democracy to be considered fair.
Common law in Western cultures helped up have a fair legal system to build off of. In other regions of the world, innocent till proven guilty doesn’t really exist unless they base their legal system on principles equivalent to habius corpus and rights that we have in the Bill of Rights.
If courts can convict people unfairly, what difference does it make whether you can elect the lawmakers – the courts (military?) can try you anyway they want without fairly deciding whether you are guilty of “elected” laws.
September 22nd, 2006 at 2:03 pm
Michael,
I didn’t see the US on that list? Do you know why?
September 22nd, 2006 at 2:20 pm
Ryan,
Probably because you don’t read French. It’s number 44.
September 22nd, 2006 at 2:44 pm
Here’s the English version for all y’all uncultured types:
http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554
Explain to me how El Salvador made 28th place? By far the highest in Central America, ranked above even Costa Rica (41), and, uh, the U.S. (44). Of course, the U.S. was downgraded because of Judy Miller and Plamegate, but still–El Salvador?
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:42 pm
Randy,
Thanks. I must have looked at the “Etats” beginning and just skipped it.
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm
I’m curious why America is so low? One guess would have to be the concentration of media capital in corporations. But if that were the case, how can other companies with less free markets in general have media capital spread out more than us?
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:48 pm
If RSF downgraded the US because of Judy Miller and Plamegate, I’m curious by how much? If that one case can do enough damage to rank the US below El Salvador, I would think the RSF is taking freedom from withholding a little too seriously. Certainly the restrictions in Iraq would be enough; I have to think that did it.
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:38 pm
“cal’s rant seems to imply that no criticism of Chavez is allowed, which is par for the course for true believers, but this statement needs some support.”
it’s not my rant, it’s leftaside’s rant. heck, you can criticise all you want, just most of the criticisms made of chavez are typically picayune in nature and all about style and supposedly awful repression of ‘dissent’ in Venezuela, this a country whose media is almost entirely controlled by the equivalent of Veneuzuela’s Rupert Murdochs.
And Balter are you serious? Israel has a more free media…well, uhm, yeah, Venezuela’s media is controlled by the “opposition”. I guess that Chavez really is evil dictator henchman Kim Sung111 after all.
September 22nd, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Michael, you’re right, Cooper did criticise the US attempted coup in Venezuela. One wonders why everything he’s written on Chavez since then is as balanced as a ton of steel and a feather on opposite ends of a see-saw.
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:48 pm
“I guess that Chavez really is evil dictator henchman Kim Sung111 after all.”
Most of the criticisms of Chavez here haven’t been “evil dictator Kim Sung Ill” – not even close. They’ve focused on his style of “leadership” and his moronic rhetoric, they’ve been measured and from a perspective that his populist programs aren’t a problem – and in fact are better than many or most of his neighboring countries and that the U.S. has absolutely no right to interfere in Venezuela’s politics. If that’s not good enough for you, it’s because you’ve got your tongue up the guy’s butt. Getting his ass out of your face might put you back among the ranks of all those blind folks Hugo has cured. Maybe that’s how they did it…
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:57 pm
“I can’t think of a single recent historic example where a coup and military regime has successfully produced some sort of “progressive” outcome.”
Portugal?
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:01 pm
Chavez is using Venezuela’s oil money more strategically and responsibly than the Mexican ruling class did. I have no problem giving him credit where it’s due. But I don’t have to declare the man a role model as a political leader. What is the problem with all of these “you’re with him or against him” yokels ? If I were Venezuealan, I would be looking beyond Chavez but not to his right-wing opposition. Since I’m not, the only thing I care about, frankly, is that the U.S. butt out. Chavez isn’t making this case any easier, although his behaviour doesn’t make the case that he’s a dangerous enemy, or whatever, any more accurate. Just more plausible to people who react to superficial events and are easily manipulated. No reason not to alienate them and talk right past them, Hugo. They’re never a “swing” factor in U.S. politics. Right ? Well, at least not while BushCo is tied up in the Middle East. So I guess the posturing and half-cocked bluster are a tolerable form of mutual masturbation for him and his admirers in the present moment. Real smart stuff.
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:21 pm
“You’ve got your tongue up the guy’s butt. Getting his ass out of your face might put you back among the ranks of all those blind folks Hugo has cured.”
A stiff left followed by a wicked right upper-cut.
He’s probably thinking it might help get reg out of his face too. Not a bad idea.
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:41 pm
“Explain to me how El Salvador made 28th place?”
Or how Serbia+Montenegro (my, how fast things change) ranks above *India*?
I think it might be the difference between de facto and de jure press freedom. It’s not the laws on the books, but how often they are enforced. It’s not the nominal guarantees of speech protection, but how much actual protection it enjoys.
I find Japan’s ranking above the U.S. very interesting–and flatly ridiculous. The press here is really rather bland. Only about a month ago did the country see its first political satire TV show. Professors at public universities are forbidden to criticize the government–and I suppose most Japanese don’t mind. Why, that’s biting the hand that feeds them! (A total no-no in a nation with a significan cultural hangover of feudalism.) If a newspaper criticizes the Imperial Family, they receive death threats from right-wingers, and the editor’s house is subject to arson attacks. So … none of them criticize the Imperial Family. Right-wingers, on the other hand, flagrantly violated noise-abatement ordinances for decades with their sound-trucks blasting martial music and scathing fascist propaganda in the streets, and the cops (who keep photos of the Imperial Family in their offices) didn’t lift a finger. (What finally silenced the trucks was ironic: right-winger Tokyo governor Ishihara pushed through a populist enviro measure to ban diesel transport in the city; alas, the winger sound trucks were diesel-powered.)
You can’t say it’s because NHK is top-o’-the-heap, government-run, and therefore neutered, propagating a chilling effect across all other media. Look at the BBC–it seems to stake out almost reflexive oppositional turf against the government that supposedly runs it.
I’d say press is significantly freer–in *effect*–in the U.S. than it is here in Japan.
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Robert Fiore,
Very good catch on Portugal.
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:03 pm
with this being their 18th coup since 1932 and first since 1992 these guys have written the book on the subject. just a casual reading of their editorial pages reveals some yawning. however the 5% of folks who aren’t Buddhists are you guessed it–Muslims who bring along the attendant mayhem in the southern three most provinces. they hope the new guy, a Muslim , can bring some resolution. good luck…….
http://tinyurl.com/njvru
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:16 pm
“With what dispatch some who enjoy all the comforts and privileges of “bourgeois democracy” are willing to dispense with them for others!”
To the extent that you’re responding to my opinions, Marc, you’re misrepresenting them. I’m somewhat a fan of “bourgeois democracy” (two cheers, anyway). But in coup-ridden nations, we’re talking about countries that are a long way off from that goal, whether they have an apparently-democratic system of government or not. Most of them are highly plutocratic (kleptocratic, really.) The ability of a leader like Thaksin to enjoy significant “pockets of support” can be very much a matter of how that leader excels at tossing somewhat larger scraps to the poor than the poor are used to seeing, in exchange for their votes. “More scraps” isn’t the same as equity, though, whether it’s Thaksin tossing scraps or Chavez spreading an oil windfall around to make Venezuelans feel as warm and fuzzy about Cuba as he happens to feel.
Take a look at the U.S.–we seem to be heading in some such direction ourselves. Jack Balkin
http://balkin.blogspot.com/
points out that the overrepresentation of low-population states in the Senate is also an overrepresentation of Red States. And that gerrymandering is very much a matter of which party is in power, and the GOP has benefited greatly from that in recent years. Federal spending on Red State voters is up, even as the deficit balloons wildly–that’s stealth vote-buying. Income disparities continue to grow, with the top 1% getting richer while real wages are stagnant near and below the median. Lobbyist oinking continues, hardly abated by the Abramoff scandals, and is outrageous by the standards of two decades ago.
So how democratic are we? Are we really enjoying the “benefits” of “bourgeois democracy”? Or are we in front-row seats for the spectacle of the system subverting itself, as critics of it have always predicted?
In comments (“We Love Syria”) that diverged into discussion of the merits and demerits of military coups, I pointed out that in some societies, the military is the most meritocratic, most egalitarian, most representative institution. Perhaps I should have prefaced those remarks with “Sad to say, but …” Well, we’re gettin’ there. Not so long ago, the most esteemed member of the Bush administration was Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And a plausible Democratic front-runner was Wes Clark. That’s quite nostalgic, when you think about it. The last ex-general president we had was Eisenhower, it was a long time ago–and it was in an America that was (racial divisions aside) a significantly more egalitarian place than it is today.
We’re still a very long way from being coup material, of course. It’s the trend that bothers me. A coup is always a sign of failure. That the Thais seem to be calmly acquiescing to this coup is a pretty good indicator that democracy hasn’t really mattered to most of them anyway. How long before it doesn’t really matter to most Americans either? The frog is being boiled … slowly, slowly.
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:23 pm
Patrick Neid,
Thailand is nothing compared to Bolivia: 200 coups since independence.
September 22nd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
“over-representation of low-population states”
Those of us who live in the highly productive and/or densely populated states get screwed 12 ways to Tuesday both in terms of electoral representation and in watching our taxes sent disproportionately to regions that really don’t have their shit together – but keep electing “anti-tax” morons (often of the neo-confederate variety) bent on forcing us to compensate for their tawdry ideology and manifest failures of their economies and educational systems. The “red” political forces in this country aren’t merely anti-democratic, they’re phonies. Gingrich syphoned far more tax money into his district than most liberal “blue-staters” in Congress, all the while lambasting the federal government. These insufferable clowns are a drain on our nation – they’re as dishonest as they are divisive.
September 22nd, 2006 at 10:12 pm
This was up at Crooks&Liars and it’s funny as hell…Lewis Black…kindasortanotOffT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcjrXExUAbE&eurl=
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:13 pm
“If the government in question has been elected and is not actively blocking future elections, it is a legitimate administration that justifes no military coup. Full stop.”
I think you nailed it Marc.
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:54 pm
Ryan: I would not argue that the RSF is the definitive word on press rankings, even though I am a member, but let’s not misrepresent what their reasoning is or only give part of it, as you did in your post above. Judy Miller alone is clearly not the entire reason but the trend that her imprisonment represented. Here is the full explanation in context:
“Some Western democracies slipped in the Index. The United States (44th) fell more than 20 places, mainly because of the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and judicial action that is undermining the privacy of journalistic sources. Federal courts are getting increasingly bold about subpoenaing journalists and trying to force them to disclose their confidential sources. Canada (21st) also dropped several places due to decisions that weakened source confidentiality, turning some journalists into “court auxiliaries.†France (30th) also slipped, mainly because of court-ordered searches of media offices, interrogations of journalists and the introduction of new press offenses.”
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:58 pm
“I think you nailed it Marc.”
I think so too. Of course we always have those situationists who think we should judge things by whether we like the outcome or not rather than the democratic principles involved. Those are the ones who didn’t immediately see the Thai coup for what it really was. I would never support a military coup against George Bush, much as I hate the guy and think he is destroying our country. Guess I will just have to be satisfied with watching a fictional film of him getting shot.
September 23rd, 2006 at 12:18 am
I was glad to read your post Marc. I felt the same way as I heard American pundits and leaders speaking so mildly and approvingly of the coup. The comments reeked of condescension and paternalism–exactly as you wrote, “those people” can have their government taken over by the military and it’s almost little more than “wacky” and far from outrageous. The Bushies actually were ready to have the same reaction to the anti-Chavez coup attempt.
So…we can sacrifice thousands of young Americans and spend hundreds of billions to demonstrate our love of democracy for Iraq but we shrug bemusedly when it is overthrown in Thailand.
Of course this is not even close to being the most egregious hypocrisy of this administration, so we will no doubt soon turn our attention to their even greater outrages.
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:41 am
“Guess I will just have to be satisfied with watching a fictional film of him getting shot.”
A man with such high principles and otherwise good taste. I think it was late and you were just very tired Michael.
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:58 am
“Of course we always have those situationists who think we should judge things by whether we like the outcome or not rather than the democratic principles involved.”
I don’t know whether I like the outcome or not. I don’t know what the outcome is yet, and neither do you. I could point out that tanks in the streets of Bangkok are being pelted with a lot more flowers than our tanks were in Baghdad. But I’m not sure I like that either. It has very little to do with what I like or don’t like. Somebody’s going to read it as a democratic endorsement of the coup, others are going to read it as the people capitulating to something undemocratic.
In any case, succession only through elections is not a “democratic principle”, it’s a democratic *practice*.
“Those are the ones who didn’t immediately see the Thai coup for what it really was.”
I don’t know what it is yet, and neither do you. Keep watching.
In the meantime, I’m wondering if I’m missing some nuance in your use of the word “situationist”. I’d always associated it with the Situationists. And I can’t find any other definition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist
Are you talking rather about situational ethics?
September 23rd, 2006 at 8:20 am
I really don’t get people here. If you’re head of country where people make only maybe a few thousand dollars a year, and you’re filthy rich even by American standards, you can usually *buy* all the “consent of the governed” that you happen to need to stay in power. What’s so democratic about that?
It’s an unpleasant fact that the preconditions for healthy democracy are complex, and can take a while to evolve. Like, the idea that everybody should pay income taxes, enough so that civil servants can make a decent living without feeling they need to resort to bribes. Like respect for the rule of law, so that when officials take bribes, it’s recognized as a crime, rather than “business as usual.” Or the idea that, when someone criticizes a government that’s generally popular, the critic deserves as much police protection as anybody else.
Is Thailand really there yet? Somehow I don’t think so. From what I’m reading, the general attitude seems to be, “Oh, a coup? Well, what the heck. We’ve seen those before.”
As I’ve said, a military coup is never a good sign. In this case, the relative equanimity with which it’s being accepted seems to indicate that there wasn’t that much real democracy in Thailand to lose in the first place–and Thais know it.
September 23rd, 2006 at 8:30 am
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab . . . said Washington would be looking for “a [Thai] government that is ready, willing and able to negotiate a free trade agreement” when the situation is resolved.
All righty then. That clearly demonstrates U.S. priorities.
September 23rd, 2006 at 8:43 am
Hitler was wildly popular in Germany and Austria in the early 1930s even after his government took on dictatorial powers. Mussolini also enjoyed a lot of popular support during most of his two decade long tenure. How popular a dictatorship is at any given moment in time should not be the primary guide to how we view it. Those who support the coup in Thailand are giving interviews to reporters, but those who oppose it risk jail if they speak out. Or didn’t those who think we should take a wait and see attitude about the Thai coup realize that?
And yes, I mean situational ethics or something like that, not sure what the right term is really.
September 23rd, 2006 at 8:48 am
“I don’t know what it is yet, and neither do you. Keep watching.”
I know what it is right now. It is a military dictatorship that has banned all political expression at the same time that it proposes to appoint a prime minister and write a new constitution. No matter what you think of elections, a constitution is the underlying document for democratic practice, as you put it. Writing a new constitution when no one is allowed to speak out politically is neither democratic in practice nor in principle. So much for situational ethics or whatever you want to call it.
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:00 am
“I dont know what it is yet, and niether do you. Keep watching.”
Let me explain it for you. Hopeless schilling by the Coulter bunch. My books have met different results –so far, but the list of agents remain long.
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:37 am
“A man with such high principles and otherwise good taste. I think it was late and you were just very tired Michael.”
Since I have no intention of assassinating the president of the United States, nor aiding and abetting an assassination plot (please note, NSA, FBI, CIA, and all others monitoring the Internet), I have the luxury of pondering what my reaction would be if either George Bush or Dick Cheney were to die either by natural causes or by violence. I believe that these two men and their associates have done longterm damage to our country and are directly responsible for the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of people. So, Jim R, do you want to know what my honest reaction would be if this happened, or do you want to me to pretend that my reaction would be otherwise? I think we should all be free on this blog to express our feelings, our true, honest, deep and inner feelings. So if this happened, I don’t think I would be able to help myself if my first reaction–just my first, mind you, before I had a chance to think about the tragedy of it all–would be as follows:
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:16 am
Reg, for some time I’ve been thinking of you as our own Lewis Black (even though you’ve cleaned up the language of late).
Michael Turner, I think we always need to be very skeptical of military solutions. Skeptical enough to say if there is another option, it’s preferable. If there are elections, that’s better than throwing the dice and hoping you hit double sixes. You’re right that we don’t know for certain what the end outcome will be, but we know the means are undemocratic and the odds are unfavorable. I felt like supporters of the Iraq War (on democracy grounds not WMD) were taking a similarly calculated gamble and one that doesn’t truly take into account the possible negative consequences on the lives of real people.
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:44 am
I think I will make one addtl comment here: it’s obvious but what the heck? If we were in Thailand right now we could not be publicly having this discussion.
Finally… yes… Portugal did produce a democratic government out of a military coup. Let it be noted it was a coup against a decades old fascist regime.
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:45 am
Thailand’s ‘Imperfect Democracy’:…
There are ways of getting rid of an undesirable head-of-state, says Marc Cooper, who laments that Thailand took the easy and erroneous way out via last week’s coup. “I can’t think of a single recent historic example where a coup……
September 23rd, 2006 at 10:54 am
Michael:
Good point. Judy was just a poster child for the trend; but, the journalists’ inability to get at the truth and restrictions on what they can report on in Iraq should have made the list, although that may have been tacked on Iraq’s points instead of US’s.
I’m not sure if I agree with the assertion that journalists be given the same treatment of doctors, lawyers, & priests; I’m not sure why priests should be exempt, but if they are, then journalists certainly should be offered the exemption. But honestly, unlike doctors, lawyers, etc, the journalist’s job is specifically to obtain information that can help determine culpability. The only reason they should be given exemption is because the evidence could also disclose private information of some adjacent party. Obviously to judge that, the journalist would have to suffer a catch-22; but while the profession needs standards, the standard of protecting client confidentiality isn’t present to avoid breaking other laws (necessarily); it’s their to protect the journalist’s reputation as a safe anonymous printer of information.
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:03 am
I think siding with journalists is good for now since they have a lot less legal basis for determining when they must keep client confidentiality as opposed to doctors and especially lawyers; if none exists, then the prosecutor can clearly abuse the journalist by forcing the catch-22 down their throat that they must reveal the evidence they are concealing to show why it must be concealed. But they really need more ground rules as opposed to just the First Amendment’s “freedom of the press” statement. When they do, then their freedom will be much better defined and guaranteed.
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:16 am
“Freedom of the Press belongs to those who own the press.”
– A J Liebling
MB I don’t know much about RSF but saying the US ranks 44th, way below El Salvador strikes me as ludicrous on its face. Lord knows our media is the like the State of Denmark (something rotten you know) but reporters here don’t face the problems they do in a lot of third world countries. Hate to go all Woody on you but that sounds like fashionable Leftist cant. No our press is free – it just doesn’t want to use it. At least the owners don’t.
But if you really want to test this a perfect case will be available this weekend. By now several of you will have heard of Bill Clinton’s interview on FOX with Chris Wallace. If you want a transcript you can go to a lot of places (HUFFINGTON POST, THINK PROGRESS, KOS, Etc.). He hands Wallace, and FOX, a haymaker when accused of allowing Bin Laden to escape. Anyway read the transcrpt. And then see what is shown tomorrow on Wallace’s Sunday chat show. Betting is the moment will be edited like the media scenes in “Mr Smith Goes to Washington.”
Anyway I report, you decide. . .
September 23rd, 2006 at 12:05 pm
richard:
I agree. Capital of media is just as what you can say in your media.
In America’s colonial times, we sacrificed the security the British empire gave us for our freedom, and we took seriously the need to have the capital freedom as well as political freedom.
Do you think the masses in South America think capital freedom is just as important as political freedom? What distinctions do they make as opposed to what we do?
September 23rd, 2006 at 1:23 pm
Huh?
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:12 pm
capital freedom = ownership
September 23rd, 2006 at 4:02 pm
It’s Official…
http://tinyurl.com/lqnhx
September 23rd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
reg, thanks for link. A couple Q’s…To what degree do you think these analysis rely on information provided by the CIA? Do you think that it is possible that there is an element of ‘c-y-a’ amongst the authors of these analysis (possibly to compensate for holes in their information)? And lastly, do you think these analysis fully refute an argument against appeasement (…against saying we shouldn’t fight them because we’ll only make them — the terrorists — madder)?
September 23rd, 2006 at 6:37 pm
reg:
that is a convincing article that refutes the whole occupation theory.
here’s my “but”:
if we had only toppled Saddam’s regime and detained as war criminals the Iraqi Intelligence Agents who had contact with al Qaeda as well as ansar al Islam terrorists in Kurdish Iraq who had assassinated Kurdish leaders at the behest of Saddam, would allowing the country to reform on its own sound better?
Here’s an interesting link so that you don’t say it’s all a Bush/Cheney thin air claim: read to find out who furthered such claims.
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040624-112921-3401r.htm
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Nice discussion fellows, unfortunately I am still trying to figure out “Who America Is?” However, I guess that discussion got 86′ed because it produced nothing clear – except business as usual. So on to Thailand.
If you put things in perspective Thailand can’t figure out who she is – it is coup central, if you look at the historical record. I count about twenty, if you look at bonafide coups and coup attempts combined.
September 23rd, 2006 at 7:59 pm
I should have qualified that statement with a time frame, since 1932 (Thailand).
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:22 pm
What is your position on this one Virgil, and coups in general?
September 23rd, 2006 at 9:47 pm
“Writing a new constitution when no one is allowed to speak out politically is neither democratic in practice nor in principle.”
Banning political speech in public (extended now even unto SMS messaging, not just call-in radio talk shows) has the *claimed* goal of quelling rumors of a counter-coup, a not unreasonable public-order measure at a dicey moment. Is that the real motivation? Who knows? Telling everybody to shut up about the issues for a minute doesn’t do much harm when everybody already knows what the issues are. It’s how long that “minute” drags on that’s the question.
Public speech isn’t the end of the story. We have no transcripts of the convention in Philadelphia that produced our own Constitution. What we have is the Federalist Papers, which when taken together are one of the great classics of political reasoning. They were serialized in newspapers and subject to great debate. Everybody seems to know that the Thai constitution needs to be fixed. There are reasonable proposals about how to do that. Let’s see what kind of debate is allowed when the document is published.
The political classes of Thailand are pretty aware of what was wrong with the old Thai constitution, with its huge loopholes through which Thaksin reaped wide powers and obscene wealth. A public prosecutor who Thaksin was at the point of firing for her inquiries into his corruption is being retained by the coup leaders. Esteemed jurists’ names have been mooted for the position of interim Prime Minister. These are not bad signs.
When the rule of law is truly in danger, all freedoms are at risk. So far (“SO FAR,” OK? READ MY LIPS), this junta seems to be about shoring up respect for the rule of law, and equality under the law. The very popular King of Thailand has endorsed the coup, and apparently whole-heartedly. Let’s see who ends up being PM, how quickly the free-speech curbs are lifted (or *whether* they are).
I really don’t want to see SE Asia’s few democracies go down the tubes because of unrestrained kleptocracy. Maybe these coup leaders don’t either, and maybe that’s why they moved so precipitously. So wait and see. Not much else to do anyway.
September 23rd, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Some questions MT.
How does this coup help Thai break it’s democracy destabilizing coup history Virgil pointed out? With its history of the military removing elected heads of state, why is there any hope of this coup being any different than the many others?
If you use the supporting argument ‘When the rule of law is truly in danger, all freedoms are at risk’, how much difference was the situation in Thai to that in the US today; where we have a large majority that think rightwinger Bush has ignored the rule of law, threatened civil liberties, helped reap big profits for his supporters, and taken the country to war with lies?
If this coup is potentially acceptable for Thailand, depending on how it works out, would you say a coup may be an acceptable solution for the US? Can one justify another 2 years of Bush’s regime just out of respect for US democracy?
September 24th, 2006 at 12:13 am
Jim R, you raise some very good questions in this last post. Michael Turner’s musings about the motivations of the coup leaders are likely to turn out to be fantasies. Coup leaders always say they are acting in the best interests of the country, and so do dictators, as per my example of Hitler and Mussolini above. And let’s say that the coup leaders in Thailand are well intentioned and have acted only to get rid of a corrupt prime minister–is this the precedent we want to set for acceptable actions any time a leader is deemed corrupt or dangerous, a military coup? If so, then the answer to Jim R’s question is that a coup would be welcome and justifiable in the United States. But personally I reject that kind of logic and so should Michael Turner.
September 24th, 2006 at 12:16 am
Addendum: Note that those who don’t think we can stand another two years of George Bush are calling for his impeachment. If they can pull it off, they at least will have done so democratically.
September 24th, 2006 at 6:59 am
Jim R: “why is there any hope of this coup being any different than the many others?”
Well, for one thing, it’s coming after 15 years of democracy. Which is to say, there are (young) voters in Thailand who don’t clearly remember any other form of government.
“If you use the supporting argument ‘When the rule of law is truly in danger, all freedoms are at risk’, how much difference was the situation in Thai to that in the US today?”
The difference is still very great, but the gap (I argued above–maybe you didn’t notice?) is narrowing. Ten more years at this rate, and the frog will be thoroughly boiled.
MB: “And let’s say that the coup leaders in Thailand are well intentioned and have acted only to get rid of a corrupt prime minister–is this the precedent we want to set for acceptable actions any time a leader is deemed corrupt or dangerous, a military coup?”
You know, we’ve had democracy more or less continuously in the U.S. for so long that I think people forget that it can be inherently unstable in some forms and at certain stages of enculturation to it. The Phillipines is currently engaged in debate over whether it should move to a more parliamentary form of government, and proponents of that view take encouragement from Thailand’s coup: they see it as a case in point that a more broadly representative government is likely to be more stable and less prone to corruption. (The Phillipines has been plagued with coup rumors recently, with its current leader, not the military, being the center of suspicion.)
Places like Thailand already have precedents aplenty, at home and abroad. What’s going on now will bust probably precedents only if the coup leaders return Thailand to democracy with all deliberate speed.
“If so, then the answer to Jim R’s question is that a coup would be welcome and justifiable in the United States. But personally I reject that kind of logic and so should Michael Turner.”
I would support it under the right conditions, precisely because I regard democracy (in the extended sense that includes rule of law, protection of dissent, etc.) as too precious to squander out of some “foolish consistency”. They would have to be considerably more extreme conditions than we see now, and the coup leadership would need to have impeccable democratic credentials; even then I would nurse suspicions. But if it had to be done, it should be done.
“Note that those who don’t think we can stand another two years of George Bush are calling for his impeachment. If they can pull it off, they at least will have done so democratically.”
But perhaps impotently. Can you name a president who was impeached but saw hardly a ripple in his approval ratings? Why don’t I hear you asking, “what kind of precedent does it set for a president to be impeached but then just sail calmly onward as if nothing had happened?”
September 24th, 2006 at 7:30 am
From an Int’l Herald Trib news analysis:
—
[Thaksin] took office in 2001 with the first outright majority any prime minister had enjoyed. Almost immediately, he began to gather power into his own hands. At one point he said he intended to remain in office for 15 years.
By engineering the appointments of his supporters and family members, he took control of the institutions that were meant to check his power: the Senate, the courts, and commissions to oversee elections and curb corruption.
Using financial and legal pressure he took over the nation’s television stations and intimidated its press. He worked to silence independent civic groups and critical academics.
At the moment he was deposed he was attempting to manipulate an annual military shuffle to place his supporters and relatives in command positions.
Some newspapers here are reporting that he planned – as early as last week – to engineer a violent clash with pro- democracy demonstrators and to seize total power through a state of emergency.
With constitutional avenues of opposition closed off, Thai political analysts almost unanimously say, the democratic opposition had no choice but to resort to extra-constitutional means.
—-
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/24/news/thai.php
[The whole piece is well worth reading]
A military coup in Thailand is not precedent-setting. You’re worried about bad precedents? Then ask yourself: what kind of precedent would it have set for Thaksin to have remained in power because nobody wanted to go through extra-constitutional measures to take him down before he declared himself President for Life?
Non-democracies all over the region would then be able to point to Thailand (one of the few democracies in the region), and say, “*there’s* your South-East Asian democracy!”
Sometimes situations come down to which bad choice is the best of some bad choices. I am not “fantasizing” that the coup in Thailand was the best of some bad choices. I don’t know yet. But neither do you. People who study Thailand for living haven’t been able to figure it out yet.
September 24th, 2006 at 7:33 am
On the Thai coup, you took a cool stand , Marc.
I think there’s a pretty simple and self-evident rule of thumb in these matters. If the government in question has been elected and is not actively blocking future elections, it is a legitimate administration that justifes no military coup. Full stop.
Loved it, overall. You still couldn’t restrain your Chavezphobia (is it the anchovies?), but hey, nobody’s perfect.
Coups are NEVER good for democracy. But is the US a democracy? Gee, I hope so.
September 24th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Ryan – I’d have to research that further, but my bet is it’s some pretty thin stuff. Frankly, I don’t trust interpretations by the Washington Times even one little bit. Call it my ideological bias – or more to the point, the execrable Wes Pruden’s. Okay, that’s an ad hominem rejection of what you’ve offered, which isn’t fair as a matter of principle. I can’t do the work of checking those “facts” in context right now, but I will.
September 24th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
rob – I’m certain, or would hope, that a lot of this info comes from the CIA, but I’d also assume that this stuff, turned into and NIE, has to pass through Negroponte’s filter. CYA is a bureaucratic given, but I when I read stuff that my gut, common sense and practically every in-depth report or journalistic history of the Iraq war has also been telling me, my response is “it’s obvious”.
I think that the issue of appeasement is a red-herring. You raised “CYA”. Crying “appeasment” in response to not adhering to the definition of insanity in Iraq is about all of the “CYA” that the hard-core pro-war crowd has left. I happen to believe that anything we do in Iraq is going to be disastrous to some degree. I don’t think there’s an easy way out. But when I despair of any “solution” to the mess rather deliberately generated and amplified by the best-laid plans of BushCo, and my head tells me we’re fucked, my heart reaches out first, frankly, to the troops who’ve been sent into the midst of it. I also think that at some point we have to use whatever threat we have over the Iraqi political class to get serious and fulfill the “standup” doctrine. I’m not for withdrawing reasonable assistance to the Iraqi police or military who actually are operating as a national, rather than sectarian, forces. But enough is fucking enough in terms of the open-ended commitment of tens of thousands of troops. There was actually a time when I would have supported a buildup were it possible, but it’s long past. Now when I see the scrolls on the Newshour or ABC’s “Without David Brinkley”, I feel nothing but anger and shame. We’ve wasted these lives – I’m not a pacifist nor am I particularly sentimental, but this thing has gone from bad to worse and it’s time to put some sort of reasonably orderly and, in so far as possible, strategically determined end to it.
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