Sunday 28 April 2002

Official stupidity

The Norwegian foreign minister, Jan Petersen, said a few days ago that Norway might demand reparations from Israel for the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure financed by Norwegian aid.

This does not make sense. Either you give things away, or you keep them. If you want to have Norwegian schools, roads etc, then build them in Norway. If however the buildings belong to Israel, then the Israeli surely have the right to do with them as they see fit. This includes destroying the objects, if that is necessary to protect a majority of the people from a violent minority.

If you however believe that Palestine is a separate state, then it is a state from which terrorist attacks are regularly launched against civilians in a neighboring state. For supporting such a state, we should pay reparations to Israel, not the other way around. Certainly those who fund terrorist states or states that shelter terrorists, cannot come mewling afterwards and bemoan their losses.

Norway actively assisted in the attacks on Afghanistan. Sure we are going to help rebuild the country afterwards; but are we going to compensate those who invested in the Taliban era? I think not. Nor do I expect any of them to have the gall to ask for it, much less demand it.

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Like most stupid ideas in politics, this one comes from the left. You would expect the leader of the Conservative Party to be able to ridicule such nonsense on his own, even in a consensus oriented culture such as ours. Particularly now that his party tends to be the largest in Norway, and Mr Petersen is widely regarded as the true leader of the government, rather than the lovable theologian Kjell Magne Bondevik who fronts the coalition as Prime Minister.

Ah, but his newfound popularity may be the rub. A vast majority of Norwegians either side with the Palestinians or detest the two sides equally. As a people, we root for the underdogs. Besides, we love to be generous. (As well we should, being one of the world's richest countries, well ahead of for instance the USA in income per citizen.) And like a non-enlightened human, our country is still attached to the gifts it has given. So basically, the great and glorious little nation of Norway is now sulking. How cute.

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I trust I do not need to explain how I feel about this. I apologize on behalf of my country for this childish behavior. Hopefully when we get a few decades of perspective, we may learn from this to stop giving rich gifts to terrorists and the people who shelter and encourage them. It's not like this is our only great idea: We poured money into Nicaragua under the Sandinists, and Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. There are others, but these leap to mind. I guess we just can't let sleeping mad underdogs lie.

Here's my free investment tips for the Norwegian Department of (increasingly) Foreign Affairs: Don't invest in countries where the leaders refer to black as white, evil as good, 1 party rule as democracy, or mass murderers as martyrs. Good luck.