OTR editor ejected from Vietnam

Our friend and fellow editor Morgan Meis, on an article assignment for Virginia Quarterly Review, has been escorted out of Vietnam by that country's security services. We're very proud and we'll keep Chronicles readers updated when we get any further news. In the interim, Master S. Abbas Raza over at 3QuarksDaily has this commentary that delivers all the details we know as well as posting a cute picture of Morgan and his wife, Stefany. Here is the last Saigon (a.k.a. Ho Chi Minh City) dispatch Morgan wrote for us.

The Global Open Door

A couple of months after 9/11 I went to see the French sociologist Alan Tourain give a talk. He gave a wonderful talk about the macro-political consequences of 9/11. His basic point was that the period of 'globalization' had ended, the world being thrust back into a period of instability and war. I think that there is something very right with this analysis insofar as the project of globalization requires that the various flows that define it (in money, labor, information, etc.) are stable and consistent. I now think, however, that Tourain analysis misses an essential continuity between the project of globalization and the 'war on terror'. This continuity can best be seen by recalling that American foreign policy for much of the Twentieth century was based upon the notion of the open door. The open door policy declared that America could at one and the same time expand its global power and avoid the debilitating wars which often came with such an expansion. It could do this because the expansion of political power would follow our economic power. This, in turn, required that there was an 'open door' to foreign markets and raw materials. The greatest impediment to this policy in the twentieth century was of course the creation of the Soviet block. With its fall, the open door became universally applicable. Indeed, this is how we should view the Nineties: the project of 'Globalization' was also the project of a universal open door policy.

In Latin American, the open door policy was complimented by the Monroe doctrine, i.e., the doctrine which declared Latin America to be in the US’s sphere of influence. Here, Latin America serves as a template for world politics. For one way of seeing the Bush doctrine is that it is (as I've put it before) a global Monroe doctrine. Even though many neo-cons disdain the Clinton policies of the Nineties (which were essentially economic), their political project in fact piggybacks upon them. For without the global open door, their policies would not be feasible at all.

Turning It Off

The television, that is. Want your friends eyes to stop glazing over while you're trying to tell them something inportant in the local bar, café, airport, etc.? The answer may have arrived, in the form of a small and powerful universal TV remote--"off" only. Sports bars will probably be safe, but "ambient" television elsewhere is in trouble. Well, not really, but it's a nice idea.

Iraqi Insurgency is "undiminished"

The BBC reports that General Richard Meyers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, has acknowledged that the Iraqi insurgency is “undiminished”. It has, according to Meyers, the same capacity to deliver attacks that it did a year ago. His superior, Donald Rumsfeld, often delivers a more sanguine take on how the war is going and has this method to rely on:

"The people that are going to defeat that insurgency are going to be the Iraqis. And the Iraqis will do it not through military means solely, but by progress on the political side and giving the Iraqi people a sense that they have a stake in that country," Mr Rumsfeld said.

Questions: If we were to cynically take the present stalemate (perhaps to be resolved tomorrow ?) within the Iraqi government as indicative of future trends, we would have to ask, what Iraqis? Are there really Iraqis as citizens of a single nation-state or are there only Kurds, Turcomen, Shiites and Sunnis squabbling over a weak central state for the spoils of patronage politics? It is the ubiquitous question that has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.

Dire warning: Under such conditions, and with clear losers (Sunnis) who have little or no “stake,” the insurgency could easily continue for quite awhile. State consolidation is needed to field a security apparatus capable of crushing a tenacious insurgency with multiple fronts, much financing, and many international supporters among sympathetic populations in neighboring countries. Furthermore, the longer it takes to transition, the more the present lame duck government decays and when the new government does assume control, there will be some degree of purging to rid the bureaucracies and security services of the impolitic and undesirable. These disjunctions and fissures will provide space for the insurgency to operate while the state is attempting to assert control. If it does, once it does, then the real war can begin.

Humane Development

As part of the New Internationalist's critical examination of the UN at 60 this month, Mark Engler celebrates one remarkable project, the Human Development Index that was able to find a home in an organization which has recently been more in the news for corruption than for its successes. He writes:

"For a decade and a half now this annual report has propagated a brand of thinking that contrasts with the dominant viewpoint of the ‘Washington Consensus’ and corporate globalization. While never framed as a radical enterprise, it has armed advocates of global justice with statistics and analysis that cut through the rhetoric of neoliberal triumphalism."

Read more here.

Saigon Dispatch

Must be brief here and the internet is very slow.

A surreal conversation with a couple of young Vietnamese people yesterday evening. Preparations are being made all over Saigon and especially at the Re-Unification Palace for the 30th Anniversary of the end of the American war and the reunification of Vietnam. The hammer and sickle, which tend to make themselves scarce in public life in Vietnam these days, have made a reappearance with a vengeance. Still, as far as I can tell, to the vast majority of the population (a high percentage of which is under 30) the coming days simply represent a few days off from work and a loud party.

Anyway, in conversation I spoke with the young Vietnamese about the American War. "I've heard about this war," a young woman said, "it seems like it was very terrible." "Yes," said another, "there was a documentary about it a few days ago. Those must have been difficult times."

So much for presuppositions. Perhaps the final and sweetest revenge is that they've moved on more than we have.

Get to Know Your World...

...through its national anthems!

(Did they use the beginning of Burkina Faso's anthem for the first Lord of the Rings movie...?)

One Step Closer to Thought Police

This article from today's NYTimes is for Mr. Po. Just think, no more misunderstandings at cocktail parties!

Improved Scanning Technique Uses Brain as Portal to Thought
By NICHOLAS WADE

Published: April 25, 2005

By peering not into the eyes but into the brain, an improved scanning technique has enabled scientists to figure out what people are looking at - even, in some cases, when they are not aware of what they have seen.

The advance, reported today, shows that the scanners may be better able than previously supposed to probe the border between conscious and unconscious thought and even, in certain circumstances, to read people's state of mind. Read the rest of the article.

Democracy vs. Judicial Review

In Dissent, Mark Tushnet wants to do away with judicial review as anti-democratic, and suggests that liberal faith in the Supreme Court is not only misplaced, but debilitating to progressive activism:

"One T-shirt sold after the 2004 election listed what the Democratic Party has accomplished: "Equal Pay. Equal Rights. 40 Hour Work Week. Social Security. Medicare. Clean Water. Clean Air. Safe Food. Freedom of Speech. Voting Rights." All but the last two were achieved primarily through legislation, and some-the social welfare achievements of the modern state-had little connection to the Supreme Court, except when it obstructed them."
Read more here.

Why Andrea Dworkin was so pissed

Her peculiar intellectual evolution and lawsuits notwithstanding, let's not forget why Andrea Dworkin was so pissed off. She was among the first in the Anglo American scene to point out that sexuality could be exploitation, against the prevailing view that it is liberatory. This is as true today as it was when she first articulated this position in the 1970s. Here are some less than encouraging stats:

From researcher and commentator Donna Hughes:

Contributing factors to the growth of the sex industry in Asia and around the world are the mobility of people via tourism, the migration policies of governments, military prostitution, and the building of the infrastructure for sexual entertainment in Asia for the military, during the Vietnam War and after. Prostitution has become a high stakes business, with huge profits for brothel keepers, pimps, procurers, recruitment agencies, airline companies, hotels, travel groups, marriage bureaus, and many others. The trading of women and an increasing number of girls is carried out and mediated in many direct and indirect approaches, and is oftentimes glamorized by including language that makes such practices acceptable. One no longer uses the word prostitute, but instead uses "sex worker," "entertainer," "guest relations officer," or "cultural dancer." Read more here.

From Human Rights Watch:

Criminal networks that often operated with the tacit support of government and police officials trafficked hundreds of Vietnamese women and girls for prostitution, domestic work, and forced marriage both internally and to other Asian countries, particularly Cambodia and China. Vietnam was also a transit country for women being trafficked from other countries in Asia. Read more here.

From the International Vietnamese Youth Network:

In South-East Asia each year, poverty causes over 225,000 people, mostly women and children, to be lured from home, trafficked and forced into prostitution...Traffickers often use local people in a community or village to find young women and children, and target families who are poor and vulnerable. In some situations, family members sell children to middlemen or traffickers. The parents are deceived into believing their children will get a good job or an education, and out of respect for their parents the children will do as they are told. However, most of the time they end up in a brothel or other business where they are forced to have sex with clientele. Read more here.

Dworkin, Libel, Lesbianism and Separatism

Blogger has eaten our access to comments for the last week and a thoughtful response from RadGeek on my entry Was Andrea Dworkin a Lesbian? slipped by unnoticed for awhile. Radgeek’s reading could be quite right, in that Dworkin, in her libel case against Hustler simply claimed that the pornographic cartoons of her were libelous period. Usually, though, a plaintiff has to assert in what ways statements were libelous, and I’m attempting a bit more research on the case itself to try to determine what specifically Dworkin claimed. The actual appellate briefs would be interesting if they could be found on the internet. In addition, I’ve emailed Susie Bright to see if she wants to corroborate her statements in her 2000 essay -- which I cited -- of Dworkin’s intent:

She sues Hustler magazine ... but not for degrading her with their pornography, but rather for calling her a lesbian.

I’m aware of Dworkin’s assertions of her sexual identity as lesbian in her autobiographical “Heartbreak”, and I’ve linked to her 1975 speech at the Lamba festival to show a time when she made similar proclamations. Radgeek makes a good point about the multiple interpretations of “lesbian” that Dworkin and other feminist might have used. I’m curious, though, about those moments when she articulated a desire to be atopos, that is beyond category or classification. One example is this essay, “Biological Superiority: The World’s Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea” from “Letters From A War Zone”, in which Dworkin was angrily queried about her sexual preference at Lesbian Pride Week panel:

Hisses. Women shouting at me: slut, bisexual, she fucks men. And before I had spoken, I had been trembling, more afraid to speak than I had ever been. And, in a room of 200 sister lesbians, as angry as I have ever been. "Are you a bisexual?" some woman screamed over the pandemonium, the hisses and shouts merging into a raging noise. "I'm a Jew," I answered; then, a pause, "and a lesbian, and a woman." And a coward. Jew was enough. In that room, Jew was what mattered. In that room, to answer the question "Do you still fuck men?" with a No, as I did, was to betray my deepest convictions. All of my life, I have hated the proscribers, those who enforce sexual conformity. In answering, I had given in to the inquisitors, and I felt ashamed. It humiliated me to see myself then: one who resists the enforcers out there with militancy, but gives in without resistance to the enforcers among us.

The event was a panel on "Lesbianism as a Personal Politic" that took place in New York City, Lesbian Pride Week 1977. A self-proclaimed lesbian separatist had spoken. Amidst the generally accurate description of male crimes against women came this ideological rot, articulated of late with increasing frequency in feminist circles: women and men are distinct species or races (the words are used interchangeably); men are biologically inferior to women; male violence is a biological inevitability; to eliminate it, one must eliminate the species/race itself (means stated on this particular evening: developing parthenogenesis as a viable reproductive reality); in eliminating the biologically inferior species/race Man, the new Ubermensch Womon (prophetically foreshadowed by the lesbian separatist * herself) will have the earthly dominion that is her true biological destiny.

Powerful stuff and wondering off topic a bit, I find the last paragraph ironic and sad, given Dworkin’s later evolution as an advocate of vigilantism and separatism. Katharine Viner, writes of this later period in the Guardian:

While much of this was brilliant, there are few who could agree with all of Dworkin's work. Her exhortation to vengeance was unpalatable to many; she said that "a semi-automatic gun is one answer" to the problem of violence against women, and that she supported the murder of paedophiles: "Women have the right to avenge crimes on their children. A woman in California shot a paedophile who abused her son; she walked into the court and killed him there and then. I loved that woman. It is our duty as women to find ways of supporting her and others like her. I have no problem with killing paedophiles." And her 2000 book, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel and Women's Liberation, suggested that women should follow the same path as Jews did in the 20th century: they were abused and fought back, and so should women. Her analysis of the situation in the Middle East - an analysis which, according to Linda Grant, "many Zionists, non-Zionists, Palestinians, scholars of the Holocaust, pacifists, the left, women, men, are bound to find offensive" - concluded with a call to women to form their own nation state.

The very sort of separatism, she once derided as “ideological rot”? Viner’s essay is also linked to AndreaDworkin.net under the title “She Never Hated Men”.

Movies = Murder?

The War on File-Sharing, backed by US media forces, has achieved a new Congressional weapon in the form of a draconian new law that punishes sharing film files as harshly as manslaughter. Another huzzah for our enightened leaders!

Young Girls in Prison - Not Sexy This Time

Two sixteen-year-old girls are in detention in Pennsylvania , and the Feds aren't telling their lawyers what evidence, if anym they have against them. Apparently, one of the girls (both of whom are Muslims, obviously) wrote a high school paper about suicide bombers, and that's all it takes. Is this possible? Will this stand?

Perhaps I can relax...

...about the risk of functional artificial intelligence. Our friends at NASA present this remarkably life-like drunk sorority girl in its stead.

A Jewish Perspective on the Pope

My mother, a not-that-Jewish Jew, who is nevertheless obsessed with all things Jewish (like most Jews) sent this on to me. I've rarely heard my grandmother rave about someone like she was about Pope John Paul last night ("He helped this nice Polish woman from the war!") but neither seem too impressed by the conservatism of Benedict XVI.

Michael Lerner on Pope Benedict XVI

Rabbi Lerner (Editor, TIKKUN Magazine) issued the following statement:

"Since the days in which he served in the Hitler Youth and Nazi army in Germany (apparently against his will, but nevertheless apparently absorbing the deep patriarchal and authoritarian character structure that the fascists did so much to foster in youth) to his role as the leader of the forces that suppressed the liberatory aspects of Vatican II and purged or silenced the Church of its most creative leadership (including German Catholic theologians Eugene Drewermann and Hans Kung, Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, and several prominent American Catholic thinkers), to the present moment in which he is recognized as the leader most identified with the forces of reaction and suppression of dissent within the Church, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has distinguished himself as a man who can be counted on to side with the most anti-humane and repressive forces, in opposition to those who seek to give primacy to a world of peace and justice.

"Although normally Jews would welcome any choice of leadership by our sister religion, we have particular reason to comment on this choice.

"Jews have a powerful stake and commitment in ending global poverty and oppression. We fully well understand that in a world filled with pain and cruelty, the resulting anger is often channeled in racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic directions. Both as a matter of principle, based on our commitment to a prophetic vision, and as a matter of self-interest, Jews have disproportionately supported liberal and progressive social change movements seeking to end war and poverty.

"So it was with great distress that we watched as Cardinal Ratzinger led the Vatican in the past twenty-five years on a path that opposed providing birth control information to the poor of the world, thereby ensuring that AIDS would spread and kill millions in Africa.

"And we watched with even greater distress as this Cardinal supported efforts to involve the Church in distancing itself from political candidates or leaders who did not agree with the Church's teachings on abortion and gay rights, prioritizing these issues over whether that candidate agreed with the Church on issues of peace and social justice. As a result, Cardinal Ratzinger has led the Church away from its natural alliance with Jews in fighting for peace and social justice and toward a stance which in effect allies the Church with the most reactionary politicians whose policies are militaristic and offer a preferential option for the rich.

"We can't help noticing that under Cardinal Ratzinger's tutelage the Church began moves to elevate the infamous Pope Pius XII to the status of saint. Instead of repenting for the failure of the Church to give unequivocal messages telling all Catholics that they would be prevented from receiving communion for collaborating or cooperating in any way with Nazi rule, or for failing to hide and protect Jews who were marked for extermination, Ratzinger has sought to whitewash this disgraceful moment in Church history. Many Jews are outraged at a Church that denies communion to those who have remarried or those who oppose making abortion illegal but that did not similarly deny communion to those who participate in crimes against humanity.

"In fact, Cardinal Ratzinger publicly praised the fascist movement in the Church known as Opus Dei and supported canonization of Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei, an open fascist who served in the government of Spain's dictator Franco, and who publicly praised Hitler.

" While many of us agree with Ratzinger's critique of moral relativism, he extends that critique in illegitimate and dangerous ways, equating secularism with moral relativism and suggesting that secularism is now repressing religion. Since many, many Jews are secular, we have much concern about the way that this assault can quickly turn in anti-Semitic directions (some of us remember the Nazi-supporting priest Father Coughlin of the 1930s whose US radio show always insisted that he was only against the secular Jews and hence wasn't "really" anti-Semitic). But whether or not he turns against Jews, those of us who are religious Jews or people of faith in other religions should rally against the attempt to demean all secular people and blame on them the problems of selfishness actually rooted in the dynamics of the the global capitalist market.

Ratzinger also publicly critiques all those inside the Church who are tolerant enough to think that other religions may have equal validity as a path to God. This is a slippery slope toward anti-Semitism and a return to the chauvinistic and triumphalist views that led the Church, when it had the power to do so, to develop its infamous crusades and inquisitions.

In 1997 Ratzinger said that Europeans attracted to Buddhism were actually seeking an "autoerotic spirituality" that offers "transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations." Hinduism, he said, offers "false hope," in that it guarantees "purification" based on a "morally cruel" concept of reincarnation resembling "a continuous circle of hell." At the time, Cardinal Ratzinger predicted that Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic church's main enemy.

"Ratzinger is being falsely described as a conservative, when in fact he, despite his publicly genteel manner, is a raging reactionary. Unlike many American conservatives who oppose gay sexual practices but not their legal rights, Ratzinger in 1992 argued against human rights for gays, stressing that their civil liberties could be "legitimately limited."

"Those of us in the Jewish world who have enormous respect for Christianity and for the wisdom and beauty of the Catholic tradition are in mourning today that the Church has confirmed for itself a destructive direction that will hurt not only Catholics but all those who seek peace and justice in the world.

"We remain hopeful that the new pope may return to his original more progressive positions (pre-1968) and realize that the world needs a church that can respond compassionately and wisely to what is needed rather than remain wedded to dogma that is so destructive. In a statement that Ratzinger made a few years ago, he seemed deeply aligned with TIKKUN's ciritque of the selfishness and materialism of the contemporary world. We hope that he stops blaming that on secularists and comes to understand that secularists too, as well as people from other faiths, can be allies in the struggle for a new ethos of love and generosity. We pray that he may find a way to bring a better, kinder, more loving and compassionate agenda to the Catholic Church.

It is precisely because we continue to feel allied with the Church and see it as an important ally in the struggle for social justice and peace that we are so dismayed at this misdirection. Meanwhile, we reaffirm our solidarity with the many millions of Catholics who had hoped for a very different kind of Pope who would make the Church more open to women's leadership, to prioritizing social justice, to rethinking its opposition to promoting birth control, and to returning to the hopeful spirit of Vatican II. We can say publicly what many of you can only say privately-that this new Pope does not represent what is most beautiful and sacred in the teachings of Jesus."

Privatize the Weather!

Ah, greed.

Creepy Rick Santorum thinks that we should have to pay a private company for our weather reports, even thought the National Weather Service is, ultimately, supplying the data. How dare the government stand in the way of the sainted and infallible Free Market.

Guess somebody should look at who's been lobbying him.

Bodies in the Tigris

From the Washington Post.

At least 50 bodies have been recovered from the Tigris River, top Iraqi political leaders said Wednesday.

Although Iraqi President Jalal Talabani indicated that the bodies were Shiites who had been taken hostage last week by Sunni militants in the town of Madain, south of Baghdad, he provided no evidence of that or details about the discovery of the bodies or how the people died. Other officials would not confirm his account.

A pretty horrible mental picture. As always, stories like this are difficult to interpret. Obviously, the idea here is to try and stimulate acts of retribution and so forth onward to civil war. And that would pretty much ruin the new government. The question is whether this constitutes that famous 'act of desperation' or just another tactic in a wont-go-away insurgency.

Pie Throwing as Fascism

After being hit by a cream pie during a lecture at Butler College, David Horowitz had this to say about the wave of pies that have struck prominent conservatives:

Asked if he believed there was an organized effort, Horowitz said, "Yes, no question about it. The point is that the left is a religious fanatic movement. It is classically fascist. It's driven by very intense passions. They don't want conservatives to show their faces on campuses. They have really lost the ability to conduct a rational argument, and this is generally encouraged by the faculties. They're derisory; they make fun of conservative students and they have absolutely no consideration for what it means to be a young person in a university. When they don't do it themselves, they allow the class to do it."

Classically fascist? Cream Pies?

Was Andrea Dworkin a Lesbian?

Whether she was or wasn’t would be nobody’s business and it’s almost déclassé to bring it up so soon after her recent death if she hadn’t been so wonderfully controversial. It’s a contentious question because her chosen sexual identity has some impact on her critiques, notably whether she and her work were truly “sexless”. We all know her take on intercourse, but where was the joi d’ vivre of opposition, where was the praise of lesbian or alternative sex? Was there really a positive option or was all sex bad? The latter charge is the caricature that her harshest critics level, and in college I had heard denunciations from radical women that she had “disavowed” being a lesbian. This anecdote, with less condemnation and more sympathy, is put forth in a 2000 essay by the feminist Susie Bright:

Everything about Dworkin results in these contradictions and unexpected interpretations. She sues Hustler magazine ... but not for degrading her with their pornography, but rather for calling her a lesbian. Yes, the average Joe thinks she's a lesbian, but she's lived with her man, John Stoltenberg , for 20+ years. Andrew and John give no explanations. Maybe they're as sick of identity labels as everyone else.

Indeed in an autobiographical excerpt from 1994 she writes of living with John Stoltenberg for 20 years, which doesn’t prove anything. A quick perusal of Dworkin’s website turns up her 1975 speech to the lesbian Lambda festival, a zesty and moving paean to the riches of woman loving women:

For me, being a lesbian means three things --
First, it means that I love, cherish, and respect women in my mind, in my heart, and in my soul. This love of women is the soil in which my life is rooted. It is the soil of our common life together. My life grows out of this soil. In any other soil, I would die. In whatever ways I am strong, I am strong because of the power and passion of this nurturant love.

So what of that lawsuit? Luckily, for those who care, Dworkin versus Larry Flynt Publishing is available on the internet, courtesy of the Wyoming State Law Library. By my non-expert reading it does indeed seem that Dworkin claimed that part of the libel of the nasty Hustler cartoons was to portray her as a lesbian:

[¶37] There are four statements in the article which appear more likely to be objectively capable of proof or disproof and about which we will say more below. They are that Dworkin is a lesbian; supporters of the antipornography ordinance asked her to stay away; she advocates bestiality, incest and sex with children; and she initiated a nuisance suit. The remainder of the statements in the article, however, are not capable of being proved by objective means as either false or true. The terms "militant feminist," "shit-squeezing sphincter," "publicity-grab," "foul-mouthed abrasive manhater," "cry-baby," "foaming-at-the-mouth," and "censor" are hopelessly vague, imprecise, indefinite and amorphous. These terms are loosely definable and subjectively interpreted in such a variety of contexts that they cannot support an action for defamation. "Lacking a clear method of verification with which to evaluate a statement * * * the trier of fact may improperly tend to render a decision based upon approval or disapproval of the contents of the statement, its author, or its subject." Ollman, 750 F.2d at 981. See also Smolla, supra, § 6.12[5].

[¶41] The four statements are: Dworkin is a "lesbian"; when Indianapolis contemplated an antipornography ordinance co-authored by her, supporters asked her to "stay away for fear her repulsive presence would kill it"; Dworkin "advocates bestiality, incest and sex with children"; and Dworkin initiated a "nuisance suit" against Hustler. We consider these statements in the light of Dworkin's legal burden of having to prove with convincing clarity not only the falsity of the statements, but also that Hustler uttered them with knowledge of the falsity or in reckless disregard for the truth. As shall be seen, Dworkin has not satisfied her burden in this summary judgment setting.

[¶42] Hustler has provided Dworkin's own writing to support its statement that she is a lesbian.14 Neither in her argument before the trial court nor in her argument before this court has Dworkin challenged this particular statement. Thus, she has failed to carry her burden of proof in this instance.

There are a number of possibilities here and we can tease out a few. Perhaps one of the two statements, the Lambda speech or the libel suit, is a bit of artifice. Maybe her Lambda speech in ’75 was simply pandering to her base and her real preference at that time was asexuality, which would be consistent with the libel suit. Perhaps her heart lay with the Lambda speech and the libel suit was an over-reach. Certainly she lost the case, in part because Larry Flynt’s lawyers submitted the Lamba speech to prove she was a lesbian (footnote 14 in paragraph 42 above). That raises the question of why she wasn’t prepared for the rebuttal. Then again, perhaps both statements were genuine, and simply came from different points of her evolution; lesbian in the 70’s and asexual in the 80’s, and it would’ve been nobody’s concern if not for her works and the courtcase. There could have been a more complex point that Dworkin was attempting to raise in the suit, but had to drop under the restrictive logics of a law and public perception.

Small Groups and Global Warfare

'The decline of the nation-state is seen in a graph of the ability of small groups to replicate the state's most vital commodity -- large scale violence. The Yale economist, Martin Shubik examines this in his paper "Terrorism, Technology, and the Socioeconomics of Death" (PDF). His conclusion? Rapid technological improvement and global information transfer (part of a larger context of interconnectivity) has produced a spike in the ability of small groups to produce mass casualties...'

Via Global Guerrillas.

Trippy Tea for Christians

The Bush administration loves them Christians, as a rule, but not an obscure Brazilian sect that worships with the aid of hoasca tea. The War on Drugs is as absolute as the War on Terror, after all, so O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal is going back to court, and all the way to the top, to defend their right to employ a substance that makes Christianity convincing.

Less Tangible Warfare

The U.S. Government's secretive and elite hacker force may be deciding what is available on the internet, soon or already. This article in the egregious Wired magazine describes the JFCCNW, our own wired force, and its potential to manipulate enemy networks at home and abroad. In our increasingly digitized lives, these people are the masters of information, and we don't even know they exist.

Into the Memory Hole

What a strange example the Bushies must be for emerging democracies abroad. What are they to make of the President's campaign against transparency?

Price of a "Faulty Initial Strategy"

It’s troubling to read that reconstruction is faltering in Iraq, failing to meet its initial goals, not only from a reallocation of funds to security concerns, but also from maintenance cost:

For the third time in nine months, the Bush administration has redrafted its project to rebuild Iraq, forcing planners to cancel more of the water, sewage and power plants that were part of the grand American design to transform the shattered country. . . .

"They describe this as a response to changing circumstances," said Mr. Dobbins, now with the RAND Corporation in Washington. "But the shifts are in part a response to a faulty initial strategy." . . . .

The recent changes, the report said with unusual candor, are mainly needed to salvage the facilities already repaired or built, many of which are barely functioning. Iraqis tend to fault poor American planning for the breakdowns while American contractors point the finger at poor Iraqi management.

New efforts in training and maintenance are needed, the report said, "to avoid the shutdown of critical facilities we help rebuild."

In addition, American aid officials in Iraq now recognize that refurbished electrical and water plants do not help many people until new wiring and pipes are run into individual homes - less technological but in some ways more arduous tasks. Thus, between poor management of regional grids and chaotic local wiring, urban residents still suffer frequent blackouts even as electrical power capacity climbs. [emphasis added]

Islamofascism or Democracy?

One of the most fascinating of the many internal contradictions of the new Bush Doctrine of Global Democracy is its profound policy shift regarding popular terrorist groups with democratic wings, namely Hamas and Hezbollah. Those once deemed by neoconservatives and liberal hawks as “Islamofascist” are now grudgingly viewed by the Bushies as somewhat respectable polities that should be allowed to democratically compete. When Bush signaled this policy zag vis-à-vis Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the conservative National Review nearly puked. The Bushies soon followed up with a fresh look at Hamas in Palestine, and the National Review is mighty peeved, especially since the US plans to further fund the Palestinian Authority. Last Wednesday, White House spinmeister Scott McClellan claimed that the Bushies will not be upset that US taxpayer monies might find their way into the coffers of Hamas, should the Islamist organization win a majority in Palestinian legislative election. Why? Because those elected would be “business professionals,” who were addressing the “economic needs” of the Palestinian people. Here’s the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy in response:

What is McClellan thinking about here? All terrorist organizations engage in this kind of beguiling propaganda. That Nazis had lots of spiffy spokesmen talking about improving people’s lives. So does the IRA. So does Hezbollah. Osama bin Laden’s construction concerns built roads and infrastructure to improve people’s lives in Sudan and Afghanistan — all the better for ingress and egress to the many terror training camps he ran in those countries with impunity.

The rationale for the Bush presidency, the bedrock basis for reelection, is that the President has been clear-eyed and unflinching on the central issue of the day: the threat posed by militant Islamic terrorism. Again and again, he has said it: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. This was the firm foundation of the Bush Doctrine — no quarter for terrorists, no place, no how. And no exceptions for the Palestinian Authority.

If “Islamofascism” means anything -- and I’m not asserting it does because I’ve reservations with the term -- then McCarthy is being ideologically consistent. You don’t proffer democratic participation to fascists; history has been fairly clear on that lesson. From the Reichstag to the Ayatollah Khomeini, budding tyrants from all manner of fascisms or theocracies have used democratic means to seize dictatorial power. Now, the more revolutionary aspects of the new Bush doctrine of Democratic Globalism have smacked up against the old doctrine of not negotiating with terrorists. Even when consistent, Bush’s uninhibited democratic advocacy exposes ever more contradictions in his foreign policy. Many a theory, doctrine or faith can survive with small paradoxes intact, but this incongruity runs deeper, challenging the vary basis of friend/enemy distinctions. Sometime soon Bush is going to have to decide, if he hasn’t already, whether he believes democracy can really turn Islamists into allies.

Good for Kofi

Kofi is, of course, perfectly correct about this.

"Britain and America reacted angrily yesterday to accusations by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, that they were partly to blame for the oil-for-food scandal because for years they had overlooked the illegal trade in Iraqi crude.

Mr Annan, under fire for his son's role in the worst corruption scandal in the UN's history, made his comment on Thursday, hours after a British oil trader and his US and Bulgarian associates were indicted for paying millions of dollars in bribes to Saddam Hussein's regime to acquire Iraqi oil.

He pointed out that the Iraqi regime profited far more from illicit shipments of oil through Turkey and Jordan which, he said, took place with the almost certain knowledge of Britain and the US - the only countries with the resources to stop the sanctions-busters."

Halabja loses out

We are beginning to see the consequences in Iraq of the funding shift from reconstruction efforts to security. The New York Times has this article on a cancelled water project in Halabja, the Kurdish city in which Saddam Hussein deployed chemical WMD in 1988, killing at least 5,000 people:

Mr. Nuradeen, a chunky man with a broad face, looking very much the staid engineer in his sleeveless gray sweater and checked shirt, struggled to maintain his composure as he heard the news, seated on the water pipe, assiduously taking notes. Then he began sobbing.
"Everybody uses Halabja like a card," he said finally. "But when it comes to working in Halabja, nobody does it."

Along with most of the people in Halabja and its surrounding villages, about 100,000 in all, Mr. Nuradeen is very aware of the symbolic role their town has had in helping to justify the invasion of Iraq. Local residents also understand the central importance that the mass graves in the local cemetery will have in the impending war crimes trials of Mr. Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali.

The fallacy put forward here by American officials is that the money for ongoing reconstruction projects in Iraq could only be siphoned off the funds already dedicated. With a little Presidential and Congressional will, more money should be allotted for rebuilding this shattered nation. What ever happened to Colin Powell’s “Pottery Barn” rules? “You break and it’s yours.”

Why is Bush protecting Charles Taylor

This is truly baffling, even for Bush . . . . unless the more sinister hints that Ryan Lizza drop pan out. (hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.) Why else would the Bushies protect this tyrant from Liberia with a proven track record of crimes against humanity? Don't American elites recall those horrific pictures of mass amputations that Charles Taylor ordered as collective punsihmenst against Liberian villagers? How does this factor into the President's bold new Democracy Doctrine? If only this blog had a supporter of that doctrine to explain these mysteries to us!

Uglier and uglier: Oil for cash program

So the first US citizen has been indicted in the ongoing discovery of the depraved routing of the UN Oil for Food program in '90s Iraq. This investigation, which is apparently being stonewalled left and right, should be receiving more and better attention than it is.

At risk, on the one hand, is the UN's ability to act and oversee in situations of crisis, and, on the other, the profits of the bloated monsters that slip around beneath the currents of international trade, particularly in the murky seas of multinational jurisdiction and forced markets. It's a hideous mess, and probably nothing compared to the investigation that will eventually be necessary into war-profiteering in Iraq.

I hope to see some fat heads roll.

Reconsidering Talabani

Morgan (below) does a good job of quickly listing sources in which Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is saying the proper platitudes for Iraqi unity. I readily acknowledge this, already have noted it, and submit that he has a tendency to speak out of both sides of his mouth, as per his Kurdish claims to the city of Kirkuk – which, of course, undercut the federalist concept of a unified Iraq. Whether Talabani learns to speak with one voice is something both Morgan and I can hope for.

As to the scope and import of Talibani’s corruption, Morgan hasn’t really spent much effort trying. I'm not asserting, as Morgan correctly warns, that these charges are substantive, only that they are pervasive. Going to the Kurdish sources first we find:

According to the report, in a letter to Mr. Talabani, half the members of the PUK political bureau have called on Talabani to put an end to corruption in his government. They have also called on Talabani to cede powers and allow the political bureau members to exercise authority over the goverment's finances and wage reforms against corruption. Among the the members who wrote to Talabani were Kusrat Rasul, Anu Sherwan, Omar Ali, Mustafa Qadir, Emad Amad, Osman Mahmud and Hama Tewiq.

Even the New York Times has picked up on this theme:

Though Mr. Talabani is widely regarded as an advocate of Kurdish autonomy, there are many Kurds who accuse him and his party of corruption.

Lastly, when Donald Rumsfeld flies to Baghdad, meets with Iraqi leaders, and warns of the dangers of corruption, to what do you think he is referring? It is not just Talabani alone, I’m not claiming that, but he is synechdotal of a larger concern, one that Morgan is hesitant to acknowledge.

As to the importance of Talabani’s past, Middle East correspondent Dilip Hiro has this rather critical biographical sketch:

“He was born in 1934 in a place in Kurdistan called, and he trained as a lawyer. He went to Baghdad University, joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which was then run by Mustafa Barzani, a tribal Islamic leader, and then fell out with him, with Barzani, Sr., and actually went over to work with the government in Baghdad. Then after quite few twists and turns in 1975, he again, he briefly joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party, then left to go and live in Beirut, and when he was in Beirut in the mid-1970s, he came under the influence of George Habash, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, P.F.L.P., who was a Marxist leader. And he then in 1976 set up along with others Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the P.U.K., which actually described itself as a Marxist-Leninist organization. And that is the organization of which he had been a leader. He has changed sides so often that I think it would be very boring for me to go through each twist and turn.”

Hiro is especially caustic of Talabani’s hugging and kissing of Saddam Hussein in a high-level meeting in 1991, an event that occurred after the mass gassing of Kurds in the Saddam’s Anfal campaign of 1988. I think this is unfair, for however distasteful it was, the necessary agreement between them did stop Saddam from charging up north with his armies to wipe the Kurds out. No small achievement that. Here is Talabani’s own take on dealing with Saddam in a very interesting interview from 1999 for Frontline:

And how was Saddam at that time?

When we went to Baghdad at the end of 1983, he received us and he was very kind to us. He said that by coming here you have done some historical achievements. First of all your homeland is in danger, you are coming to protect it from Iranian invasion. Second, he said, 'you came to co-operate with us while our party is in a weak position.' Third, he said that, you are not supporting invaders, you are supporting your government, your people. And he said, 'you have done historical favors and we are owed to you,' he said. He told me, 'Jalal, I will give you something, some Kurdish demand that will raise you not only in the eyes of Iraqi Kurds but with Iranian Kurds and Turkish Kurds.' And he looked to Tariq A ziz and he said, ''this nationalistic political position of PUK must be studied in Iraqi history and in the schools.'

At what point did you become convinced that Saddam was not somebody you could deal with?

It depends on the time. When he is in need of us, he will be ready to deal with us. When he is in a strong position, he is not ready to listen to us. In 1991 when he was defeated in the Gulf, he asked us to come, and when I went there he kissed, etc.and said, 'you are very much welcomed and you have come again, you proved that you are patriots.' ... That time he needed us.
If Saddam is weak he will be ready to talk to us. For example, sometimes he will be weak, but he is not in need to us. We cannot solve his problems. ... in his heart he is not ready to recognize the Kurdish national rights or democracy and this is the main problem. He is not ready to accept a democratic system in Iraq, and while there is not democratic regime there will be no solution for Kurdish problem or other problems. I always say that democracy is the panacea for all problems of Iraq, including Kurdish problem

In this we see both a six-year old commitment to democracy that is somewhat laudatory and a long history of Talabani’s wheeling and dealing with Saddam while switching sides between Iraq and Iran that just creeps me out. There is, please note, no denunciation when given the chance to castigate Saddam as beyond the pale: a genocidal villain with whom the Kurds are too well acquainted. No, instead we have a figure capable of negotiation, one who, when he is weak "will be ready to talk to us." (Though Talabani does ask "Al Gore" for help in disposing of the "dictatorship". ) As this late stage, 1999, such a stance seems a bit unwholesome and to understand it one has to factor in the complexity and betrayal common to Iraqi politics. So too, does Talibani’s civil war with his rival Barzani and the PDK in 1996 appear a bit . . . . byzantine. It seems as if Talabani wanted some of the “custom’s tax” that Barzani was collecting from Turkish trade. Like most men of his political standing, who have survived and thrived in the chaotic times of exceedingly violent lands, Talabani does not have a pristine history. Caveat Emptor is what I’m saying.

Lastly I’m as surprised by Morgan’s purblindness as to the effect of Talabani’s little enthnocentric chest-thumping as he claims to be about my naivete. When Talabani gave his inaugural address and then, immediately after, “vehemently” defended the Kurdish claim to Kirkuk and said the Kurdish pesh merga would not disband, he gave the wrong message. That should be self-evident, especially when so many Iraqi political factions are distrustful and worried about Kurdish nationalism. Kirkuk is the real litmus test of Talabani’s commitment to a unified Iraq and so far he has not passed it to my satisfaction. He is no longer merely a Kurdish politician but the President of Iraq and the logical response, the moral high ground, that should be abundantly clear goes a little something like this: “Kirkuk is an IRAQI city. Kurdish pesh merga who wish to defend their homeland should join the IRAQI army”. Is that really so hard to grasp? Is that really so hard to say? If so, then it means something.

Considering Talabani

As many debates on this forum go, when it comes to Talabani AK accuses me of mindless uncritical hero worship and I accuse him of outrageous catastrophism in the name of maligning a political process toward which he has painted himself into an oppositional corner. Both are exaggerations, I hope. But, let the games continue.

I really don't think that either of us know very much about the corruption charges. Anywhere that I have heard about them the charges are vague and it is hard to tell if they are or aren't politically motivated. If I've downplayed them in lauding Talabani, it seems clear that AK has pumped them up when he himself has little idea about their scope and import. I'm willing to accept that the corruption issue is a more profound one than I've realized. I ask, only, for something in the way of evidence.

AK's claims that Talabani 'blew' the speech strike me as overstated in the least, especially since the speech itself, from every account I've heard, hit exactly all the right notes. Yes, in questions afterward Talabani stuck to age old Kurdish demands about keeping Kirkuk within the Kurdish autonomous zone and keeping the Pesh Merga in some form. But if AK thinks that it was a realistic scenario that Talabani would become president and that very hour, disband the Pesh Merga and renounce all claims to Kirkuk than his understanding of how politics and negotiation works (and his understanding of the various pressures on Talabani) make my naivety look like the very picture of sophistication. Talabani did pretty close to what everybody expected him to, he said all the right things in his speech and he re-assured his base that he is still fighting for them in his comments. Saying he blew the speech is ridiculous. He is a savvy politician. He has Barzani, the much more strident Kurdish Nationalist on one side and various Shia interests who push centralism for their own needs on the other. I would think, honestly, that a man trained in poli-sci such as AK would be pretty interested and sympathetic to the fine line that Talabani is trying to tread in bringing the Kurds into a new era of Iraqi central government. That Talabani is committed to such a thing does not seem to me, in any of the sources I have read, to be in serious question. Talabani's separatist days of Kurdish nationalism are long behind him. Everything he has said, and more importantly everything he has done, since then speak to that fact. (I'm also, by the way, rather surprised that AK isn't more sympathetic to Talabani for the simple reason that the PUK was formed in order to present a party lighter on the ethnic and cultural Kurdish nationalism and with a more left-leaning mood than the KDP).

The more I look into worldwide commentary about Talabani assuming the presidency the more I think that AK's full fledged assault on Talabani is just kind of weird. Granted, we're all worried about the fact that this new government could fall apart precisely along ethnic and religious sectarian lines. But singling Talabani out in this regard is well, again, kind of weird.

Here's the BBC's round-up of news on the issue:

Jalal Talabani's election as Iraq's new president inspires cautious optimism in the comment pages of Thursday's papers in Baghdad and elsewhere in the region.

Many see the choice of Mr Talabani as an opportunity for Iraqis to cast long-standing ethnic differences aside.

Turkish papers are also generally buoyed by the news, predicting that he could dampen Kurdish hopes of their own independent state.

I guess the Turkish papers haven't read AK's latest revelation about Talabani's Kurdish separatist impulses.

When the Daily Star writes that "Talabani is well placed to usher in a new era of Kurd-Arab ties in Iraq. And more importantly, he can also play a role in cementing Kurdish ties within a wider Arab nationalist framework," they are clearly complete fools blinded by their hero worship.

When The Nation magazine quotes Talabani as saying "I don't see any possibility for a Kurdish independent state," they have simply abandoned their critical impulses.

And The Washington Post is simply acting as a tool of Talabani apologism when they write:

Talking with reporters in Baghdad on Wednesday, Talabani tried to address the worries of southern and central Iraqis that the country would split along factional lines.

The pesh merga would be part of the Iraqi armed forces, he said. Once redesigned, the national flag would fly over Kurdistan as well as the rest of the country, he said. And Iraq would keep just the one capital.

"There's no presidency in Kurdistan," he said. "The president remains in Baghdad."

Wrong Question

"Justice Scalia, do you sodomize your wife?"

Really now, isn't that a question we should be posing to all of our elites?

On Engagement and Imposture

We’ve heard some whining of late form one of our editors as to the approach his fellow bloggers take to analyzing world events. Let me respond thusly: my meager method is roughly rooted in political science: I view some of the political developments in the Middle East – specifically Lebanon and Iraq -- as having to negotiate between the polarities of ethnocentrism/sectarianism and a weak nationalism/parliamentary democracy. This method has proved sound, much to Morgan’s dismay. My critique of the corrupt Kurdish fixer, Jalal Talabani, brought howls of protest from Morgan who can not stand a truthful look at his hero. I’m willing to give Talabani a grudging chance, but when he blows his inaugural address as I suspected he might, the dangers are so obvious (to all but Morgan) that even Donald Rumsfeld had to fly out to lecture him on sectarianism and corruption. Rumsfeld’s visit highlighted the Bush administration concern that:

“Administration officials have voiced concerns that Iraq could fall prey to political purges motivated by religion, ethnicity, tribal or political affiliations that could upset the careful balance being built.”

I consider this incident as a justification of my critique and a repudiation of Morgan’s purblind loyalty to Talabani. Sectarianism, corruption, purges: these are very real problems for the nascent state of Iraq, the sort that a critical perspective engages in while groveling idolatry will not even acknowledge; they are already resolved in the gleaming future of fantasy so why worry about it in the present? Morgan’s lament that “but sometimes you could do a better job of making it clear when you do see some things you like, you do see a process closer to one that could be supported. If not, people could start to think you're coming at the whole thing with bad faith. And we wouldn't want that,” is as snide as it is ignorant. If he bothered to read his own blog he would find that his coeditors do mention and praise what they find helpful. Now we hear from him that he is not advocating “mindless cheerleading”. Fine then, let’s here some critique, and not just dodges. What happens when one’s support for the Bush doctrine clashes with their horror over other aspects of the President’s foreign policy?


Morgan’s concern over the “mood and tone” of his fellow editor’s critique is not only off base (see above), but easily reversed. The primary problem is not that Morgan’s politics have a certain mood and tone, it is that his mood and tone ARE his politics; substituting for argument, critique and reasoning. To too great of a degree and reliance, Morgan’s imposture, his overplayed use of his literary persona, has befogged his judgment. Assuming the role of a wizened old Trotskyite who has shrugged of Marxist dogmatics to revel in a revolutionary renaissance of the Bush doctrine is Christopher Hitchens’ performance, not his. Yes, Morgan was a Marxist poser in the past, but that doesn’t mean he has to play one in the present. The role of Hitchens’ monkey is not one he should audition for with such fervor. There is too much artifice in this silly affectation for it to be cogent or even funny. Secondly, it cuts off the dialogue that has made this conversation, in e-mail and blog, so interesting and worthwhile. Panglossian cheerleading that everything in the Middle East is progressing as it should offers up neither arguments nor facts,which is why most of Morgan’s pieces are of a uniform “I like this,” shallowness. Furthermore, this anti-intellectual lack of critical engagement has led to some pretty grave errors, such as the endorsement of the thuggish Iyad Allawi (Morgan as T.C., myself as D.B.) which though very shameful, Morgan has refused to learn from. (Spare us the sophistry that you were only endorsing the “process” of Allawi’s appointment. A process, created for political expediency, is only as good as its product and that product was Allawi and his neo-Baathist crew.)
In order to redeem Morgan’s errors and restart the dialogue, let’s throw up a few points for further discussion and debate:

1. Talabani is corrupt and has a long history of Kurdish separatism. His post-inaugural outburst was not helpful. This was obvious even to Rummy who lectured the new Iraqi leadership on corruption and sectarianism.
2. Allawi’s neo-Baathist thugs may need to be purged from the present ministries and security forces . . . . at least the newly elected Shiite delegate want to. This will cause some manner of disruption, which Rummy warns against. Discuss.
3. Given the recent events in Basra, it is wise to be critical of SCIRI and the consolidation of Shiite theocracy in Southern Iraq.

Cheers.

Escaping the Double Bind

Robin Vargehese over at 3QuarksDaily put forward a good entry entitled: The War as an Escape for the Complexity of Politics, or yet more on Hitchens. Readers of this blog can watch our own Morgan Meis mimic Hitchens to best of his lesser abilities. More criticisms of his hero's deranged evolution can be found here.

Thoughtful People, for a change

Your Chronicles crew is a reasonably well read and learned group with a few different kinds of degrees here and there. But often we spew off about things in regards to which we have little to no background. Of course, that is the also part of the charm and interest of the blogosphere. It is a rebirth of the dilettante in the best sense of the word. The danger of dilettantism is that it drift off into pure surface, superficiality. That happens sometimes. But it also allows for broad ranging thoughtfulness and debate that ranges across the political, cultural, scientific spectrum. At its best, blogging has stimulated such activity.

But I still like to keep an eye on places like the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where people actually get paid to know a little bit more about the things we ought to know about.

Here are prudent thoughts from Amr Hamzawy (first published in the admirable Daily Star).

The Arab world is changing. Popular protest movements, parliamentary and municipal elections, and successive concessions by the ruling elites are creating a momentum for political transformation in countries as different as Lebanon and Palestine, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Yet it is difficult to foresee what the outcome of the long anticipated "Arab democratization wave" is likely to be. The dream of pluralist polities and open public spheres goes hand in hand with the risk of authoritarian backlashes and radical Islamist insurgencies. . . .

In the Arab reality of 2005, the predominant missing element when compared to more successful experiences of political transformation is the emergence of democratic opposition movements with considerable constituencies that contest authoritarian power and force concessions. American efforts to promote democracy in societies where the tradeoffs of undemocratic governance continue to be bearable for the ruling elites do not suffice to make political reforms plausible or viable. Without the formation of far-reaching popular alliances for democracy, the Arab autocrats and their rather sophisticated state apparatuses will eventually manage to deal with external pressures, either by inventing a "theater of democratization" based on various creative scenes, such as cosmetic reforms, and official discourses on human rights and good governance, or by discrediting them publicly as acts of foreign aggression against national sovereignty.

Looks like it's time to move...

We all wait for certain signs that direct our decisions, whether they are read in tea leaves or the pages of the Wall Street Journal. A long-haired stuntman from New Jersey has sent us a sign, in the form of the most hideous music video in existence. "America we stand as one" is about the virtue of being an uncritical, heroic, dead American, but it also features angels and various icons of newage kitsch and jingoism, and I'm not giving anything away. Thanks to digital production crap, everything can be crammed in here, and you have to see it to believe it. And I'm not even mentioning the song itself.

If Trey Parker and Matt Stone aren't behind this, I'm going to Canada. At least.

A pretty face for Lebanese Nationalism

As the political processes stumble forward in Iraq and Lebanon, what will triumph: ethnocentrism or multi-ethnic parliamentarianism? While the first has tribalism, victimhood and militias on its side, the latter must rely on a new form of nationalism to bind and govern them. What form of nationalism and what new identities will take shape is one of my concerns, for nationalism is a fiery and consumptive thing, yet democracy has rarely learned to live outside its bounds. In Lebanon, we see the development of an identity that just might do the tricky job of cohesion; a new multi-ethnic nationalism in opposition to Syrian domination. The New York Review of Books puts it best:

Yet there is another, wholly new element that plays to the advantage of the opposition. This is the intangible yet powerful sense that a deep historical process is at work. Lebanon was created, in the wake of World War I, by a convergence of Maronite ambition and French colonial legerdemain. It was economically successful but failed as a nation-state. The Lebanese never seemed quite able to settle the core question of identity, never able to achieve a shared sense of belonging. The dominant Christians tilted too far toward the West; this led to a loss of control and then a tilt too far toward the East.

That balance is now shifting to the center. Those vast, flag-waving throngs in the streets of Beirut showed themselves, if only fleetingly and in spite of their differences, to share a common pride and a common vision. Sectarian hotheads and saboteurs certainly still lurk in the shadows. But a chance has emerged, and it is one that most Lebanese would love to grasp, of creating a real nation at last.

[hat tip: 3QuarksDaily]

Yesterday, developing on the momentum of mass protests, the nascent opposition coalition launched a national unity festival to manifest and simultaneously celebrate their broad appeal:

BEIRUT: Demonstrators at Martyrs' Square see the National Unity Festival, begun Friday, as a natural extension of their protest following the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The protesters, who are demanding the full withdrawal of Syrian troops and intelligence agents from Lebanon and the resignation of the country's pro-Syrian political leaders, have encouraged the various opposition factions to abandon their groups' slogans and banners and unite under the Lebanese flag.

Elie Harb, a member of the Lebanese Forces, says: "This is a fantastic move by our colleagues in the cause. They are saying: 'We are with you,' and they are giving us momentum."

You can see pictures of this lovely festival here:
[hat tip: Sploid.com]

Talabani, Insurgency, Not Knowing, Etc.

This is something of a grab bag post written with even less than my usual rigor (which AK can tell you is barely at the level of an underachieving child, though if you've ever read this blog you already know that).

In general, and as usual, I object not to the letter of many of AK's, Dr. Emile's, and Steven's recent posts, but to the spirit. Many of their specific points about potential problems with the integration of a truly cohesive central Iraqi government, the degree to which we don't really know what life on the ground is like in Iraq and exactly what is happening with the insurgency, and so forth are perfectly cogent. God knows I have no idea what is really happening in Iraq and it is difficult to get even basic information about the real ins and outs of the current political machinations and the creation of a new quasi-federal arrangement.

But the points raised, taken as a whole, admit of being a little too far over a line that I myself have often crossed on the other side. This is to say that, in my enthusiasm for a new historical era in the Middle East I've grasped onto good news sometimes rather naively and dismissed contrary evidence that I should have taken more seriously. In this instance, I'd say, my colleagues have taken their roles as being the 'opposition' party, as it were, to the point where possible problems, unknowability, and the basic complication of the situation in general have become means by which to impugn a present situation that doesn't warrant it.

When I say it 'doesn't warrant it' I'm trying to be reasonable. I'm not asking for mindless cheerleading and I'm not saying anyone should abandon their critical faculties. But turning around on Talabani the week he's elected and accusing him of being simply another currupt so-and-so due to one sentence from an article on the web strikes me as a little below the belt when the man is acting, not just talking, pretty much how you would want someone to act in the process of bringing the Kurds into a broad national alliance. Indeed, a political process is taking shape in which, so far, the key actors are behaving pretty damn well and putting their money where their mouth is. They're compromising and reaching out to Sunni leadership that is willing to talk. They are continuing toward a reasonably secular constitution. Blah blah blah.

It seems to me that these are the very political developments that we all gestured to when we said that the problems in Iraq wont be solved militarily, when we begged the Bushies to lay off and let self-determination begin its course, when we fumed against the stupidity of the CPA. Sure, we don't know all the things going on in Iraq, but we do know that these political developments are happening and we know that they are immensely important. We all said that the political process was by far the most important thing. Now, when it's happening, you all seem to go out of your way either to kind of ignore it, or to belittle it, or to explain how it isn't really real. I understand that your job is to ask the tough questions and so forth. OK. But sometimes you could do a better job of making it clear when you do see some things you like, you do see a process closer to one that could be supported. If not, people could start to think you're coming at the whole thing with bad faith. And we wouldn't want that.

The comedic aspect of the Bush Doctrine

So what does Bush do when his close ally, Ariel Sharon, openly transgresses the "road map" to Middle East peace which Bush has pledged to shepard? Sharon, while agreeing to withdraw Israeli settlements from Gaza, is planning to further expand them in the West Bank:

The Israeli position has heightened tensions with the Palestinians over the disputed territory and put Mr. Sharon at odds with the White House, which says the framework for peace talks agreed to by both sides, known as the road map, bars such construction.

"Israel has obligations under the road map," Mr. Bush said, speaking to reporters with Mr. Sharon at his side. "The road map clearly says no expansion of settlements."

Laugh it off I guess:

Before leaving Texas for Washington, Mr. Sharon played down any division between Israel and the United States, telling reporters traveling with him that there were "peals of laughter" coming from the meeting.

My stolid post-Lutheran wits are a little dull tonight. Maybe Morgan can explain to us what's so funny?

What we don't know, what we do

Our anglophile co-conspirator, Dr. Emile, has bemoaned the lack of facticity coming out of Iraq from the mainstream media. This “fog of war” phenomenon bears resemblance to all previous wars, of course, but the latter ones that occurred within the realm of high-speed communications and television bear the closest analogies. A Vietnam comparison to the present is always fraught, but it was probably the first war in which those media consumers at home could watch/read/listen to war reporting unravel almost in real time, leading to a popular distrust of government assertions and first reports. This is not to say that many younger reporters didn’t do an excellent job at cracking through all the BS to get some amazing details and stories during the Vietnam War, in particular, Johnathan Schell, Peter Arnett, David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan all made their careers in that theatre. Their successes, however, coming on the heels of so many optimistic exaggerations and outright lies from their older colleagues reinforced the skeptical regard towards accepting prima facie facts of how the war was really progressing.

Last month, for example, I first heard the heartening news on BBC radio that an Iraqi commando force of 500 had wiped out an insurgent camp north of Bagdhad, killing 85 international jihadis in the process. Then the prima facie print report came out that showed, at least, a bit more help from US forces than the radio version. The basic facts, however, seemed to be the same:

The Iraqi Interior Ministry statement said 85 insurgents had been killed, and that the fighters had been planning to attack the town of Samarra, 34 miles east of the lake, with a large number of car bombs found at the camp.

A week later, and the Washington Post ran the skeptics version of events, throwing up at least three different possibilities as to what had occurred:

Maj. Richard L. Goldenberg, spokesman for the 42nd Infantry Division, said, "I can't confirm the estimate" given by Iraq about the number of insurgents killed in the fight. He said that by the time additional U.S. ground forces arrived, "the insurgent forces who had fled . . . were able to recover their casualties and take them with them."

Noting that an Islamic militant group had said 11 insurgents were killed, Goldenberg said: "I would tell you that somewhere between 11 and 80 lies an accurate number."

Goldenberg said crewmen who provided support in two Apache attack helicopters and an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter later estimated that 80 to 100 insurgents participated in the fighting. Asked how 85 bodies could have been carried away, Goldenberg referred the question to the Interior Ministry.

But then the reporting took an even weirder turn:

The news service Agence France-Presse reported that one of its correspondents visited the site Wednesday and found that 30 to 40 insurgents were still there. A man who identified himself as "Amer" and claimed membership in the militant Secret Islamic Army of Iraq said 11 insurgents were killed in the raid. [emphasis added]

What’s this? Are the Frogs making this up? What could it possibly mean that the insurgent camp was “still there” ?! Was it wiped out or not? We just don’t know.

Nor do we have much of an idea of how well the majority of the citizens of Basra are enjoying their new lives under