Saturday, July 20, 2002

The great charade As the West prepares for an assault on Iraq, John Pilger argues that 'war on terror' is a smokescreen created by the ultimate terrorist ... America itself 2:00:21 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Thursday, May 30, 2002

Camp David and After: An Exchange " . . . about negotiating with the Palestinian leadership: They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie...creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn't. They see themselves as emissaries of a national movement for whom everything is permissible. There is no such thing as 'the truth'." 11:12:10 AM  Google It!  comment  []

Tuesday, May 07, 2002

Listening to the Future? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN "Wisam's views are widely shared by millions of Muslim youth. They are a product of many things: a reaction to America's war on terrorism and Ariel Sharon's war on Yasir Arafat, the failure of Muslim states to master modernity, Muslim resentment at being blamed for 9/11, unquestioning Congressional support for Israel and outright incitement against Israel and Jews in Arab and European media and Web sites. Stir it all together, and what comes out is a single big idea melding in the minds of many young Muslims: America, Israel and the Jews are working together to undermine Islam and dominate the world." 12:59:08 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Tuesday, April 30, 2002

Arab League chief warns U.S. to fix Mideast policy " . . . Arabs were feeling 'humiliated, depressed and helpless' by the United States' policy in the Middle East but would not stand by and watch Washington let Israel stay 'above international law'." "Islamic Arabia is an honor-shame culture. In such cultures, the primary concern is what others believe about you. If others believe you are inferior, then you are humiliated and shamed, and you will hate not only those who perceive you in such a shameful way, but also the source of that perception." This is the primary reason why the Israeli-Arab 'problem' is insoluble at this point. Israel, by its very existence, is a humiliation to its neighbors, who, in all their hundreds of millions, lack the power to conquer a tiny state with seven million citizens. Worse, the quality of Israeli existence is a humiliation: Surrounded, constantly threatened with attack, vilified, dependent ultimately on the goodwill of the United States for survival, and yet Israel, at least in comparison to any other country in the Arab world, thrives. Its people live in freedom. It is incredibly productive. It is the only nation in the middle east to make the desert flower wholesale. Everything it accomplishes, every new height to which it rises, is a living rebuke to Arabia, which has done none of these things." "To a shame culture, Israel's mere existence is absolutely intolerable. The Palestinians are a side issue. The Arabs don't care about Palestine, and they never have." " . . . Turkey is no solution, either, because its secular government is, all by itself, a humiliation to Islam." "And Israel itself is not the ultimate problem, because the existence of the west itself is an intolerably shameful fact of life to Islam. The mere presence of the United States is an unbearable humiliation to a honor-shame culture that perceives any more successful group as a rebuke not only to its person, but its religion and even its God. God promised Islam that all other nations and faiths would submit to it; the continued existence of any non-submissive states or religions is not just a humiliation, it is a humiliation in the eyes of God - and it cannot be borne." "If Israel were to vanish tomorrow, the next day the shamed, humiliated rage of Islam would focus on the United States. For the west to live in peace, the entire culture must be changed, and I suspect that this is not possible without first defeating it so thoroughly that even its religion is discredited. Shame cultures make war on anybody more successful than they. They cannot help it. They cannot be reasoned with, only defeated. That's why almost every festering 'struggle' around the world partakes of this equation: SomeNation<-->Islamic Foe. Honor-shame cultures are culturally incapable of renouncing war unless one of two things happens: Either every other state or culture submits to them ("Islam" means "submission"), or they are defeated so decisively the culture itself is destroyed. 12:00:03 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The New Statesman Profile - Francis Fukuyama He is the intellectual as celeb, ready to pronounce on all the questions of the day including, soon, our "posthuman future". "For 50 years, from Pearl Harbor to the final deliquescence [meltdown] of the Soviet Union, the United States stood at Armageddon and did battle for the Lord against the vast forces of totalitarian evil. Suddenly, the age of trial was over. The question for the thoughtful was: what now? Two schools of thought quickly emerged." "Who will be next, said this first school, as prominently represented by Harvard's Samuel Huntington. Whose potential threat might now justify the defence budget and the national security state? Huntington's answer . . . Americans must expect 'the clash of civilisations'. There would be conflicts . . . between whole civilisations." "More widespread was the triumphalist interpretation. 'That's it! We were in the final, and we just won! The United States is the last superpower! Now the world will want to adopt not just our political philosophy, democracy, but our economic system, free-market corporate capitalism, as well.' Triumphalism triumphed." "And the most persuasive, because the least overtly ideological and most benign, exposition of this doctrine was in an article, subsequently expanded into a book, by a youngish classicist-turned-political scientist called Francis Fukuyama. . . . The article that made Fukuyama famous was entitled 'The End of History' . . . It argued not overtly in favour of triumphalism, but against pessimism. For decades, people had feared the end of liberal democracy. Now, suddenly, a consensus seemed to be emerging in its favour, 'as it conquered rival ideologies like monarchy, fascism and, most recently, communism'. So liberal democracy would turn out to be 'the end point of mankind's ideological evolution,' and so 'history' - meaning 'history understood as a single coherent evolutionary process' - was over. . . . [The article] was therefore a product of the conservative establishment that had, by the 1980s, succeeded in Kristol's dream of displacing liberalism as the prevailing American public philosophy." "Fukuyama went on to expand his article into a book, The End of History and the Last Man . . . much of the book was a restatement of the argument put forward by the French Hegelian Alexandre Kojeve. (Fukuyama studied in Paris under Jacques Derrida.)" " . . . [Fukuyama] has the rare gift of lucidity in explaining complex ideas. And although he is a product and protege of the neo- conservative stable, he is by no means a narrow or predictable ideologue. The End of History was an almost comically overrated book. It was successful because it spoke to a particular mood in the US, a mood not so much of aggressive triumphalism as of relief. Not only was the cold war over, but Americans could take legitimate pride in the growing acceptance of ideals they liked to think were their own - though, in truth, democracy and capitalism are scarcely American inventions." "Fukuyama tackles his great subjects from an essentially Candidean standpoint. All is for the best in the best of all possible societies. Yet we should still welcome the universality of his intellectual ambitions. After all, we complain about the pervasive stranglehold of specialisation. We should be delighted when someone comes along who is willing to take on philosophy, history, management studies, sociology and bioethics, and who has cool, clear thoughts to offer on those and other fields - for us to take or leave. He may not be the Last Man, but it would be a pity if he were the last would-be Renaissance man." 11:06:23 AM  Google It!  comment  []

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

Word Play "For leftists, economics determines international relations; for realists, power does." "Russia's, India's, and Israel's "war on terrorism" is not like our own. And in order to craft wise and decent policy, the Bush administration needs to explain why. The critical difference is that the wars in Kashmir, Palestine, and Chechnya are wars of national liberation. The terrorists seek to end a foreign occupation and create an independent state on a defined piece of land." "Because Al Qaeda is international, it doesn't have a clearly defined set of territorial demands. To the degree it has any demands at all, they are to rid the Muslim lands of infidels and of their culture--to establish a vast Islamist caliphate across much of the globe. And as with Nazism and international communism, movements that seek world domination don't make very good negotiating partners." "In Kashmir, Chechnya, and Palestine those conditions don't exist. If the vast majority of Palestinians support terrorism, then terrorists can easily take refuge among the civilian population, which dramatically increases the risk of civilian casualties, which in turn shifts popular support further in the terrorists' favor." "Does Israel have the same right to defend itself against suicide bombers in Tel Aviv as the United States has to defend itself against suicide hijackers in New York? Is an attack on the Indian parliament as evil as an attack on Congress? Absolutely. But the question isn't moral; it's strategic. And strategically, Israel's and India's wars against terrorism differ radically from America's because Israel and India aren't merely fighting a terrorist network; they're fighting a people. And a people can be militarily occupied, but they can't be militarily crushed. The moral right to respond to terror with single- minded, overwhelming force doesn't make such a response successful. And in the end, if a government's response to terror doesn't stop future terror, the moral clarity it provides is cold comfort indeed." 4:06:48 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Saudi Breakpoint A time for choosing. " . . . Saudi rule is being pushed to breakpoint by its internal inconsistencies. . . . [Saudi Arabia] has been, and still is, the source of much of the Islamic radicalism now destabilizing the world far and wide. That remains to be dealt with." "One of the reasons the Saudis may not be able to sustain this model much longer is that money at the moment is scarce; the economy is shrinking and unemployment is reported to be 30 percent. Elections and opinion polls are unthinkable in this society, but if there were such things they would reveal that Osama bin Laden is a national hero, far more popular than the monarchy." "In the aftermath of the Afghan campaign it is no longer possible for the Saudis to continue double-dealing, offering the Americans a disdainful lip-service loyalty while also tolerating, or worse encouraging, anti-American extremism. A choice has to be made, and it will determine the future of the region." "The withdrawal of American bases consequently would expose Saudi Arabia once more to that existential threat. And just over the horizon is Iran, acquiring weapons of mass destruction as busily as Iraq. The Saudi rulers may well prefer to have America with them when the time comes to confront these dangers. They are in the process of weighing up whether they are most afraid of bin Laden's shadow, and so need to propitiate their people by removing the American presence; or whether they are most afraid of Saddam Hussein and Iran and so must keep the American protective shield." 4:02:48 PM  Google It!  comment  []

An Arab Moment of Truth Which way the Islamist fantasy? " . . . the Muslim world has never known exactly how to respond to the West, whether to adopt its values or to reject them. A logic arises: The West is powerful; power is arrogant; we are proud people; therefore we must overpower and humble the West. False as the logic is, it locks in high emotion. It also raises for Muslims an existential question of identity: What sort of people do we think we are?" "For the past half century and more, the Muslim world has been free and independent, with every opportunity to organize as it wishes. And this is the heart of the issue: The Muslim world is a political and social disaster for all to see. With the arguable exception of Turkey, it consists of a series of despotisms, each with an absolute ruler whose ultimate justification is his strength and will. A family or a clique gathers around the ruler under the protection of the state apparatus of secret police and military repression. To the powerful, the spoils; to the weak, submission. No rights, no freedom of expression, no loyal opposition, no rule of law, no redress except through violence, conspiracy, a coup, and ultimate civil war." " . . . 'The Arab and Muslim world is completely naked. [None of us] can claim any more that he is independent. We have proved we are not modern. We have proved that we are not religious in the real sense of the word. We have proved that we cannot afford democracy.'" "Like Soviet dissidents, they are only saying what almost everyone knows to be the truth. For most Muslims have answered the existential question for themselves the way the populations under Soviet rule did: They want what those in the Free World have." "Ayatollah Khomeini . . . gave a quite different answer to the existential question of Muslim identity. Muslim society was a failure, he concurred with secular critics like Haikal, and one cause of this was the people's abandonment of their faith. Islam had made its believers great and powerful in centuries past, and it would do so again." "A fantasy is loose in the world, the fantasy of an Islamic supremacy destined deservedly to triumph everywhere. Like Communism before it, this Islamic fantasy aims to impose its vision on others — and call it peace. In an unexpected form, here is another totalitarian movement with the usual murderous belief that the ends justify the means." "In the event of liberation from the general Islamist fantasy and the suicide bombers in particular, most of the Muslim world will feel a grateful relief that can only surprise and shock the Left as much as the joy of those liberated from Communism did. Should America fail to rescue them for whatever reason, though, Muslims will know that the Islamist fantasy is coming true, and they will have to endure it for a very long time to come." 3:58:35 PM  Google It!  comment  []

We are waging a just war "The purpose behind the attack was to separate America and its allies from everyone else, and the Muslim world in particular. For the past decade or so, Muslim extremists have been on the march, fighting neighbors of other religions wherever they find them: Hindus in Kashmir, Jews in Israel, Orthodox Russians in Chechnya, animists and Christians in Africa. In the perspective of the suicide bombers, Americans are Westerners but also Christians, therefore the principal legitimate objects of holy war. These Muslim extremists have been trying to open their version of an ideological and armed struggle with global implications: Muslims and as much of the Third World as possible versus democracy. This ambition is now out in the open." "The Muslim world does not present a unified bloc. On the contrary, it is split by sectarian and ethnic disputes as well as by internal power struggles. The extremists represent a small— though no doubt growing—minority. Destroying everything before them, they have already provoked civil war in Algeria, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and they have destabilized Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the Palestine Authority, and not least Pakistan. The response of these countries’ respective leaders is critical to American success." "A wise America will hold a heavy stick behind its back and in its hand as enticing a bunch of carrots as possible, including remission of debt, trade advantages, and political support against extremists. This is, essentially, a hearts and minds operation." "A fantasy is loose in the world, the fantasy of an Islamic supremacy that is destined to triumph everywhere. Some of its advocates claim that eventually Christian countries will become Muslim, in what would amount to a reverse colonialism. Like Communism before it, this Islamic extremism aims to impose its vision on others and call it universal peace. Here, in an unexpected form, is another totalitarian movement." "Needless to say, this Islamic fantasy has nothing to do with Islam proper, a religion like all other great religions, with a genuine vision of justice and equality at its core. Indeed, the damage that the Islamic triumphalist fantasy does to Islam as well as Muslim countries and peoples is at least as severe and dangerous as the damage it does to democracy. The same was true about other totalitarianisms: Nazism utterly ruined Germany, Communism utterly ruined Russia." "Each man kills the thing he loves, in the famous words of Oscar Wilde. Premeditated killing of unknown people in an act that simultaneously kills oneself requires a life-denying hate so exceptional that it is in a realm of fanaticism all its own. Such hate signifies a total human failure. This corresponds to the turmoil of the Muslim world today. Each and every Muslim country faces intractable problems of demography, lack of resources and skills, ethnic and religious strife, and selfish government; each and every Muslim suffers from this jumble of assorted ills." "The causes of today’s turmoil go deep into the roots of history. The major intellectual developments of the West—the Renaissance with its concept of humanism and the Age of Enlightenment during which scientific principles by and large replaced religious dogma—passed the Muslim world by. Muslims everywhere were in the grip of the absolute system of one-man despotism that they had inherited from their forebears and that they believed protected their religion and identity. Western energy and creativity of which they were unaware duly overwhelmed them, and they could do nothing about it." " . . . imprinting throughout the Muslim world a sense of inferiority to the West. The Muslim masses, otherwise proud people, came to see the West as an entity deliberately out to shame and humiliate them. Today’s Islamic fantasy springs from this mindset in which self-pity and revenge go hand in hand. . . . in order for Muslims to recover their pride, a test of strength with the Europeans was built into the future. . . . the end of colonialism seemed to absolve Muslims, and in particular Arabs, from the sense of shame tormenting them." "They have imported modernity as though it were a commodity like any other. But once again, in an incomplete and misleading analysis of the position, they did not recognize that the true source of Western strength lay in a democratic political system that liberated people’s energies and had nothing to do with nationalism.  . . . The result has been a present- day mimicry of the historic despotisms of the past. Nothing like democracy exists in the Muslim world . . . Parliaments exist to rubberstamp the ruler’s decrees. There is no freedom of speech or of assembly, no civil rights, but only the dreaded secret police, prisons, torture, and execution. The injustice is flagrant. Corruption is everywhere. Excluded from any say, the masses still have no control over their destiny, but they are able to protest only through a riot. Power changes hands by assassination or coup. In the absence of mechanisms for power-sharing and mediation, every national and international conflict of interest degenerates into a test of strength.  Muslims and Arabs have nobody to blame but themselves for so disastrous a social and political failure. There are intellectuals who point this out, but they are few. It is far more comforting to displace the blame on to others." "The suicide bombers have at last engaged the United States in a test of strength according to their standards. Muslim—and especially Arab—one-man rulers will be watching for signs that the United States understands the stakes and has the resolve to act as it should. If they detect weakness in Washington, they will have no choice but to pay lip-service to the Islamic fantasy and at least pretend to join the ideological war against the West. Anything less leaves them at the mercy of assassination or a coup undertaken by extremists. American strength and determination to see this through, however, will encourage them to join the coalition of Western allies." "This is a just war if ever there was one, in defence of life and liberty against an ideological enemy. If the United States and its allies were to retreat from the test of strength imposed on them, or botch it somehow through inadequate preparation or loss of will, then the extremists will conclude that they have the West on the run. They will strive on for victory. Who can guess how far hate and killing will then spread, or how destructive it will prove for mankind. " 3:52:25 PM  Google It!  comment  []

No Mere Terrorist "Sept. 11 was about a very new kind of threat. And it wasn't mere terrorism. Real terrorists don't want to kill a lot of people. Rather, they use limited, but indiscriminate, violence or hijacking to create noise or fear that draws attention to their cause and ultimately builds political or diplomatic pressure for a specific objective." "That's why Osama bin Laden is not a mere terrorist. He has much larger aspirations. He is a super-empowered angry man who has all the geopolitical objectives and instincts of a nation-state. He has employed violence not to grab headlines but to kill as many Americans as possible to drive them out of the Islamic world and weaken their society. That's why the Sept. 11 hijackers never left a list of demands, as terrorists usually do. Their act was their demand. Their demand is total victory." "It will take us a long time, and much diplomatic therapy, to cure such intentions. But what we can do now is limit the capabilities of such people. We are not the only ones with an interest in this. If suicidal warfare becomes 'normal,' the Arab regimes won't be spared. Because once people feel empowered by this sort of thing, they won't stop with just the infidels — they will turn it on their own autocrats. And if it becomes 'normal,' it will be awful for Palestinians, because how their state is born matters, and a state brought about by suicide bombers will forever be deformed." "And if it becomes 'normal' in this integrated world, it will touch your kids and mine in a way that will make Iraq look like a day at the beach." 3:43:10 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The 1930s, Again A hard rain is going to fall. " . . . a much larger dilemma — how to corral a very powerful dictatorship and its axis that  wished dominance not coexistence, and whose fuel was brutal force and autocracy, not democracy and freedom. . . . We are in a similar dilemma — in our hesitation about Iraq, our pressure on Israel, and our worries about mission creep in pursuing the killers." "All the while, no American statesman has the guts to tell the Arab leadership that statism, tribalism, fundamentalism, gender apartheid, and autocracy — not America, not Israel — make their people poor, angry, and dangerous." "After 30 years of listening to nauseating chanting from Teheran to Islamabad to Nablus, hearing the childish rants about 'The Mother of All Battles' and 'The Great Satan,' and witnessing presidents from Carter to Bush burned in effigy, the ritual torching of the American flag, the misspelled banners of hatred, the thousands of paint-by-the-numbers posters of psychopaths from Khomeini to bin Laden, televised threats that sound as hideous as they are empty, Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism, embassy takeovers, oil- boycotts, hijacked planes, cars, and ships, lectures from unelected obese sheiks with long names and gold chains, peacekeepers incinerated in their sleep, murders at the Olympics, bodies dumped on the tarmac of airports, shredded diplomats, madmen in sunglasses in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, demented mullahs and whip-bearing imams in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, continual televised murders of Americans abroad, our towers toppled, our citizens butchered, our planes blown up, hooded Klansmen in Hamas and Hezbollah, killers of al-this and Islamic-that, suicide bombers, shrill turbaned nuts spouting hatred on C-SPAN broadcasts, one day the salvation of Kuwait, the next sanctions against the swallower of Kuwait, the third day fury against the sanctions against the swallower of Kuwait, the fourth day some grievance from 1953, the fifth another from A.D. 752; and all the time sanctimonious fingerpointing from Middle Eastern academics and journalists who are as bold abroad in insulting us as they are timid and obsequious under dictators at home in keeping silent, I've about had it. No mas. The problem is you, not us — you, you, you…." "I don't listen any more to the apologies and prevarications of our whiney university Arabists, our equivocators in the state department, and the really tawdry assortment of oil men, D.C. insiders, bought and paid for PR suits, and weapons hucksters. The truth is that a large minority of the Middle Eastern world wishes a war with America that it cannot win — and much of the rest is apparently either indifferent or amused." "The truth is that there is a great storm on the horizon, one that will pass — or bring upon us a hard rain the likes of which we have not seen in 60 years. Either we shall say "no more," deal with Iraq, and prepare for a long and hard war against murderers and terrorists — or we will have more and more of what happened on 9/11. History teaches us that certain nations, certain peoples, and certain religions at peculiar periods in their history take a momentary, but deadly leave of their senses — Napoleon's France for most of a decade, the southern states in 1861, Japan in 1931, Germany in 1939, and Russia after World War II. And when they do, they cannot be bribed, apologized to, or sweet-talked — only defeated." "In that context, we see much of a whipped-up Arab world entering this similar period of dangerous unreality. The problem is them and their unelected and unfree regimes, not us — just as it was Hitler, not us; Tojo, not us; Mussolini, not us; and Stalin, not us — just as it always is when unelected maniacs take control and hijack an entire country and culture. We can either step up and stop Islamic fundamentalism, Arab terrorists, and Middle Eastern dictators or we can step back and watch it all continue to grow. If 9/11 was the beginning of a war, then we should remember that wars usually end when one, not both sides, win." 3:36:33 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Saturday, April 20, 2002

Why the Jews are always to blame "But Israel has committed a heinous crime. That crime is to seek to defend itself against the attempt to annihilate it. For this effrontery, a torrent of lies, distortions, libels, abandonment of objectivity and the substitution of malice and hatred for truth is pouring out of the British and European media and Establishment." "The authorised version, from which there is barely any deviation, goes as follows. The Palestinians, denied a homeland by Israel and understandably driven to terrorism in their despair, are now under murderous assault by Israel’s Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, who is using the suicide bombings as an excuse to destroy the Palestinians. " "This will understandably produce more suicide bombings; so, if more Israelis are blown to smithereens, it will be their own fault. Indeed, all this mayhem is their fault anyway because they won’t negotiate. If only they would give the Palestinians what they want, the violence would end, and the world would be a safer place. As it is, the whole region may go up in flames, Israel included. That, too, will be Israel’s fault. " "Israel, for all its faults, is a democracy and an open society. The Palestinian Authority is a corrupt despotism which has brainwashed its people into believing mediaeval blood libels against the Jews. . . . everyone knows that the Israelis cannot be victims because they are always to blame. In the same fashion, everyone knows that Chairman Arafat is not a terrorist. He is a statesman . . . " "There is no doubt that Israel has behaved badly to the Palestinians in these territories. It was wholly wrong to settle them; those settlements should have been dismantled and the territories returned years ago. But the territories are a monumental diversion from the issue, which is that the Palestinians want the Jewish state destroyed. They do not want a ‘two-state’ solution. That was offered in 1948 and . . . has been rejected by the Arabs from that time onwards. . . . the peace process was a ‘Trojan horse’ and that the long-term goal was ‘the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea’." "There is a widespread view that the Middle East impasse has to be solved before the assault on terror can proceed. This is precisely the wrong way round. There will be no prospect of the Palestinians making peace until their terrorist sponsors in Iran, Iraq and Syria are dealt with." "For the real crime of Israel is this: to have fought back. Jews aren’t supposed to do this. They are supposed to go passively to their deaths. If the Jews do fight, they should lose. What they must never do is to win." "But if all those who believe the Jews run America really think that the world would be better off if only those dreadful Jews would kindly disappear, they should think again. For radical Islam, the West is next on the list." "The question is whether the West will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel in its war against terror or whether it will side with terror against it. At present the signs are ominous. The leitmotiv of the state of Israel, forged after the world looked the other way from the Holocaust, is ‘never again’. The West has now given its response: ‘Yes, again’; and if they are destroyed, the Jews, as ever, will be to blame." 1:53:03 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Baghdad Delenda Est. "Even the Marxists and Arab apologists like Edward Said . . . " " . . . the Middle East is what anthropologists call a 'shame society.' In such societies . . . 'the acquisition of honor and the converse, avoidance of shame, are the keys to motivation.'" ISLAMIC LIBERATION "Indeed, the Islamic faith itself is at odds with the concept of nationalism. In the Koran, Mohammad admonishes believers . . . to think of themselves as members of the faith, regardless of geography. Islam began as a pan-Arab religion and even though it has become a catholic faith, . . . it has retained much of the internal logic of empire." "Europe, thanks to geography and Christianity, developed into coherent nation-states that are only now melting together. The cultures are different. Civil society — the space between state and the individual — is huge in the West. It's teeny-tiny in Arab cultures. The word 'religion' draws from the Latin 'religio' which originally referred to customs and rituals. The Islamic word for 'religion' in Arabic is "din" which means 'law.' To be grossly simplistic, religion in the West is something we do, in the Middle East it is something you must do." "'For the traditional Muslim . . . religion was not only universal but also central in the sense that it constituted the ultimate basis and focus of identity and loyalty. It was a religion that distinguished and united those who belonged to the group and marked them off from those outside the group, even if they lived in the same country and spoke the same language.' . . . 'The Fatherland of a Muslim is wherever the Holy Law of Islam prevails.'" LINES IN THE SAND "The Middle East is a shame culture. What unites the Arab world, from "moderates" to "suicide bombers" is a fixation of humiliation and honor. When Crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia offered his "peace plan," almost the first words out of his mouth were about humiliation. Terrorists of every stripe and flavor seethe with talk of their honor and how humiliation must be avenged." " . . . as for the Palestinians as a "people" (a very new concept), countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait talk a great game about how much they care for them, but their actions run in the opposite direction. These regimes pay lip service to "Palestinian nationalism" — with all their talk of the "Arab nation" and "Muslim world" — as a way to feed their own resentments and hence, the beast of Islamic fundamentalism." " . . . the distinction between Osama bin Laden's terrorism, that seeks to attack America first, and Hamas's terrorism, that wants to start with Israel, is fairly academic from their perspective. They have a very real  fight against very real terrorists. And, let us not forget, it isn't a war on terrorism, but on those willing to use it." DISMANTLE IRAQ "Which brings us to Iraq. Of all the artificial nations of the Middle East, Iraq is the most bogus. . . . The Ottomans never conceived of Iraq as a nation, in fact no one did. To the Turks the area was comprised of three imperial provinces centered on three respective cities: Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul. . . . Shortly before his death King Faisal wrote, 'I say with my heart full of sadness that there is not yet in Iraq an Iraqi people.'" "The point for now is that Iraq shouldn't have existed in the first place. It's lasted this long thanks to the Stalinist repression of the Baath regime. And the only reason we didn't get rid of it last time was that the Saudis despise the idea of toppling Hussein because they don't want us to establish an attractive alternative to the nasty form of government they profit from." 1:27:15 PM  Google It!  comment  []

12:55:55 PM    comment  []

Thursday, April 18, 2002

PoliSci 101: Carving a grand theory about the war on terror "THE MOST DURABLE political theories about war and peace are undoubtedly those of the so-called 'Realists.' . . . The Realists founding texts are Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War, Machiavelli’s Prince and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan." "The best characterization of each would be the simple message that the world is wicked, and nations had better grab whatever they can, when they can, the niceties of morality be damned. The lessons of these works were codified and enlarged in what many political scientists would concur are the three most influential works of international relations theory of the 20th century. These are E.H. Carr’s “The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919-1939,” (1939); Hans Morgenthau’s “Politics Among Nations” (1948) and Kenneth Waltz’s “Theory of International Politics” (1979)." "[They] tak[e] the world as it is rather than as most of us would wish it to be. Reformers, democrats, idealists are considered to be dangerous fools, whose naïve plans to better mankind inevitably make things worse. Life is nasty, brutish and short, goes the Realist critique. Deal with it." THE LIBERAL VIEW "Historically, the primary challenge to Realism in Anglo- American political science has been Liberalism. Liberals have argued that the kinds of unpleasant power calculations that Realists insist upon are not necessary because life need not be as nasty and brutish as it may appear. . . . The interdependence argument has also remained powerful as some political scientists have sought to combine it with elements of Realism, and the need for a single, all-powerful 'hegemon' like the United States in today’s world, to use its power to maintain peace and build prosperity - and democracy - for all." THE NEW WAR "A Liberal political theorist would argue that crushing bin Laden is the least of our problems. What is necessary to genuinely protect ourselves from such threats is to remove the sources of discontent that help breed a bin Laden in the first place. To be truly safe and prosperous, Americans must embark on a global crusade to uplift the poor, the hungry, the ignorant, and anyone who suffers under the yoke of oppression and might one day seek revenge on us for what they deem to be our responsibility for their misery." HISTORY’S EXAMPLE "In the last decade of the 20th century, some theorists have sought to break out of these categories by reinterpreting the movement of history in new ways. The most prominent of these are Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History” and Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilization” arguments. The former seeks to argue that democratic capitalism has already vanquished its significant adversaries. . . . Huntington’s theory would appear to point in the opposite direction. We are being challenged not by a historically anomalous bandit, but by an entire civilization."   11:19:08 AM  Google It!  comment  []

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

Behind the Rage "This frenzy in the Arab world is fascinating, because while the Israeli brutality in the occupied territories is real, it is small potatoes by Arab standards." "What's going on here? First, there is a double standard; the Arab world is outraged in large part because it is Israel that is killing Arabs this time. Second, despite the double standard, the outrage is still sincere and deeply threatening to pro-American Arab governments; there is a tendency among Israel's supporters to assume that the rage must be feigned, but that's a fantasy." " . . . several reasons that Arab outrage is going off the charts: The Palestinian problem is bigger than other concerns, for it has involved an entire society, several wars and the disruption of neighboring countries; it is older, having burdened the Arab consciousness since the end of World War I; it is more visible, emerging from television screens every moment; it is worse, at least in perception." "'Whether you measure it in deaths, eviction from home and homeland, destruction and loss of property, the ruination of lives in refugee camps, psychological damage to children, or the continual insults from the conquerors and their American patron — this issue is an existential nightmare from which there seems no awakening . . . '" "Another reason for the double standard in the Middle East is that Arab countries are shame-based societies, and Israeli repression of Arabs is seen not just as brutal, but also as humiliating. . . . Israel is a colonial outpost and that as a result while Israeli Arabs may have ballots and free speech, they have no dignity. In other words, protesters are enraged not just because Israel kills Arabs, but also because it humiliates them." "The Israeli occupation represents a total humiliation of all the Arab regimes," says Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist in Florida. "It's a continuous reminder of the weakness of the Arabs as people, of their society and political system, as well as an indication of the impotence and corruption of their regimes." 3:41:05 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Beyond Good and Evil: Saying the Unsayable " . . . the “dark side” of Uncle Sam – a nation, he argued, hell-bent on furthering its own interests at any cost. Now, in the wake of September 11, America has cast itself as a global crusader against terror, above the law, above criticism." " . . . his country's imperial state of mind, as seen in its foreign policy and cultural overkill . . . " " . . . the policies of Washington, I came to realise, reflect the ruthlessness of corporate America, which treats other lands according to their rating: market, mine, sweatshop or basket case. Uncle Sam's rapaciousness is both driven and disguised by a mix of pop culture, mass media, brand fetishism and propaganda so clever and tantalising that most of us feel the sooner we're indoctrinated into the American Dream, the better. Hey, don't stop the music." "The events since 9/11 have heightened my concerns. The wounded Goliath is on a rampage - armed to the teeth, adored by the polls, unfettered by law, answering to no-one and licensed to kill. Western nations fall in behind the furious avenger, beguiled by the notion of civilisation protecting itself, striding forth with the flame of freedom. Our commentators applaud. The 'axis of evil' speech is hailed by The Australian's foreign editor as a 'key defining document of the new era' in which George W. Bush guides us beyond the 'magnificent' Cold War strategy of deterrence to the brave new magnificence of 'preemption', where the US upholds democracy, topples tyrannies and makes the world a better place." "A better place for whom? Some see Uncle Sam as he sees himself - a Santa Claus for all seasons, dispensing lollies, global justice, gadgets, Oscars, blue-chip stocks and fizzy beverages. Others see him as the school bully in charge of the tuckshop. Perhaps it's a case of split personality: a good Uncle Sam and a bad Uncle Sam. America provides more freedoms, thrills and opportunities for its own citizens than can be matched by any other nation. The good Uncle Sam regards this as a hot franchise to market for the betterment of all. The bad Uncle Sam wants to preserve the cash flow at head office by any means necessary, even if it destroys the planet and all the wretches who get in the way." "Bush's 'new kind' of war in the name of freedom is actually an old kind of imperial excursion to extend America's grip on the wealth of the world. A wealth which belongs to everyone. But instead of a misnamed bombing spree, which incubates terror, what the world needs most is an ongoing, unconditional fairness revolution to eradicate the roots of rage. Such a sweeping global ethic is absent from the priorities of the millionaire mogul hawks who run Washington, but it was briefly glimpsed at street level in the rubble-strewn surrounds of the twin towers." "When the twin towers collapsed, so did America's sense of invincibility. Perhaps this is why the grisly deaths in Manhattan seemed so much more shocking and outrageous than the deaths of hundreds of thousands of terror victims elsewhere in the world. The mob wanted vengeance. . . . When the world's mightiest air force unleashed itself on the world's poorest nation, the result was never in doubt. Carnage, and lots of it. Among my reasons for opposing the action in Afghanistan was the awkward fact that the Taliban, however insufferable, did not plan or execute the attacks on the US. But why let the truth get in the way of a sitting duck? The Taliban was a vile theocracy which subjugated women, mutilated criminals and disallowed free speech. It deserved to be crushed. Maybe so. In which case, so does our coalition ally Saudi Arabia." " . . . it is time to transcend the belligerent imperialism of Old Guard America that is prepared to ravage the whole of earth in order to foster, for its spoilt elite, a lifestyle of careless opulence. The promise of globalisation is a shared destiny of nations working together to minimise conflict and poverty, restore ecosystems, reduce emissions, ban arms trafficking and thrash out an evolving agenda of ethics and fairness to which all can be a party, especially the strong. Its deeper meaning is a belated awareness that we are all connected - and connected in a deeper way than the choice of being with America or against America, of being a target market, or a target." 11:17:28 AM  Google It!  comment  []

Monday, April 15, 2002

War between America and Europe "Resentment of US cultural imperialism is merely a supersized version of the charges levelled at ’tween-wars European Jewry: the anti-globalisation crowd, droning on about interlopers interested only in profits and swamping local cultures, are singing a very old song. Indeed, the savvier Aryans can claim to have seen it coming. As Werner Sombat wrote in The Jews and Economic Life (1911): ‘One can rightly say that the United States owes what it is entirely to the Jews: that is, its American nature. What we call Americanism to a large degree is nothing other than the influence of the Jewish spirit.’ . . . American sympathy for Israel and European support for the Arabs are essentially cultural statements, unrelated to the finer points of the ‘Palestinian question’. America supports Israel not because it’s Jewish but because it’s democratic." "Republicans look at Israel and see not Jews but a liberal democracy.  Funnily enough, that’s also what the Arabs see. They don’t hate America because it backs Israel; they hate Israel because it looks like America — it’s a functioning state. If you get out a map of the world and look at the vastness of the Arab lands from North Africa to the Gulf with a tiny Israeli sliver in the middle (if you accept the 1967 borders, it’s only 11 miles wide at one point), it’s simply not possible for any rational human being to blame the tiny sliver for all the woes of the surrounding vastness. At least in the old days Muslim victim culture sought out more plausible oppressors." "In the objective sense, the Arab states are failures. If Israel was ‘imposed’ on the region in the Forties, the other nations date only from the Twenties. The only difference is the Jews have made a go of it." "So each half of the West looks in the Middle East for what it values most in itself: for the Americans, liberty; for Europe, paternalism, benign or otherwise. The result is a mirror image: just as Israel is the odd man out in the Middle East, so increasingly America is in the West, wedded as it is to such bizarre concepts as capital punishment, gun rights, free speech, etc." "Having grown up in Arab countries that place no value on work and provide little incentive to economic activity, your would-be suicide bomber fits easily into the welfare culture of the European Union or Canada." "In the Middle East, two cultures jostle side by side: one channels its citizens’ energy into economic fulfilment, the other into pathetic victim fantasies. The sides the United States and the European Union have chosen to align themselves with say as much about themselves and their own psychological health as they do about Palestine." ... [more] 2:13:36 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Sunday, April 14, 2002

Among the Bourgeoisophobes Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel. by David Brooks "Of all the great creeds of the 19th century, pretty much the only one still thriving is this one, bourgeoisophobia. . . . [It] is the major reactionary creed of our age." " . . . today, in much of the world's eyes, two peoples--the Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. These two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the view of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because they are spiritually stunted. It is their obliviousness to the holy things in life, their feverish energy, their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power and gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct weapons, and play the role of hyperpower. And so just as the French intellectuals of the 1830s rose up to despise the traders and bankers, certain people today rise up to shock, humiliate, and dream of destroying America and Israel. . . . [Some] are erudite Europeans who burn with humiliation because they know, deep down, that both America and Israel possess a vitality and heroism that their nations once had but no longer do." "The dispute over Palestine, which was once a local conflict about land, has been transformed into a great cultural showdown." "BOURGEOISOPHOBIA is really a hatred of success. It is a hatred held by people who feel they are spiritually superior but who find themselves economically, politically, and socially outranked. . . . This Manichaean divide between the successful, who are hideous, and the bourgeoisophobes, who are spiritually pristine, was established early in the emergence of the creed." "[In] 'Traders and Heroes,' [Werner Sombart] argued that there are two basic human types: 'The trader approaches life with the question, what can you give me? . . . The hero approaches life with the question what can I give you?' The trader, then, is the selfish capitalist who lives a meager, artificial life amidst 'pocket-watches, newspapers, umbrellas, books, sewage disposal, politics.' The hero is the total man, who is selfless, vital, spiritual, and free. . . . When bourgeoisophobes describe their enemies, they almost always portray them as money-mad, as crazed commercialists. And this vulgar materialism, in their view, has not only corrupted the soul of the bourgeoisie, but through them threatens to debase civilization itself and the whole world." " . . . no country in the world ever succeeded like America, and everybody knew it. And no people in the European experience ever achieved such sustained success as the Jews. So the Jews were quickly established in the bourgeoisophobe imagination as the ultimate commercial people. They were the bankers, the traders, the soulless and sharp dealmakers who crawled through the cellars of honest and noble cultures and infected them with their habits and practices. The 19th-century Teutonic philosopher Houston Chamberlain said of the Jews that 'their existence is a crime against the holy laws of life.'" "By 1904, people around the world were worrying about American cultural hegemony. . . . 'What is Americanization? . . . Americanization in its widest sense, including the societal and political, means the uninterrupted, exclusive, and relentless striving after gain, riches and influence.' . . . So by the time Osama bin Laden came along, hatred of America was well rehearsed, a finished product just waiting for him to pick it up." "FOR THE bourgeoisophobe, then, the question becomes, how does one confront this menace? And on this, the bourgeoisophobes split into two schools. One, which might be called the brutalist school, seeks to reclaim the raw, masculine vitality that still lies buried at the virile heart of human nature. The other, which might be called the ethereal school, holds that a creative minority can rise above prosaic bourgeois life into a realm of contemplation, feeling, art, sensibility, and spiritual grace." "The brutalist school started in Germany, more or less with Nietzsche. . . . Salvation . . .  is found in the will to power. The Ubermensch possesses force of will. . . . [The brutalists] looked for [a]hero to emerge today, a virile warrior who would demolish the stale encrustations of an overcivilized world and revive the raw energy of the species." " . . . the ethereal bourgeoisophobes were emerging in Paris and later London and the United States. They argued that people in decaying cultures should not try to reclaim their former economic and military power. It was wiser to accept the decline of their worldly power and embrace the contemplative virtues. . . . Europe's virile, self-assertive days were over. Europeans would have to choose between spending their money on comfortable welfare states and spending it on militaristic 'war-making states.' They could not afford both." " . . . to anybody familiar with the history of bourgeoisophobia, it is striking how comfortably Muslim rage meshes with traditional rage against meritocratic capitalism. The Islamist fanatic and the bourgeoisophobe hate the same things. They use the same words, they utter the same protests. . . . an essay . . . called 'Occidentalism,' Avishai Margalit and Ian Buruma listed the traits that enrage al Qaeda and other Third World anti- Americans and anti-Westerners. First, they hate the city. Cities stand for commerce, mixed populations, artistic freedom, and sexual license. Second, they hate the mass media: advertising, television, pop music, and videos. Third, they hate science and technology--the progress of technical reason, mechanical efficiency, and material know-how. Fourth, they hate prudence, the desire to live safely rather than court death and heroically flirt with violence. Fifth, they hate liberty, the freedom extended even to mediocre people. Sixth, they despise the emancipation of women. As Margalit and Buruma note, "Female emancipation leads to bourgeois decadence." Women are supposed to stay home and breed heroic men. When women go out into the world, they deprive men of their manhood and weaken their virility. If you put these six traits together, you have pretty much the pillars of meritocratic capitalist society, practiced most assertively in countries like America and Israel. " "Contemporary Muslim rage is further inflamed by two additional passions. One is a sense of sexual shame. . . . The second inflaming passion is humiliation . . . in the 1960s and 1970s, many Arab and Muslim nations tried to join this bourgeois world. They tried to modernize, and they failed. . . . The Islamist response to humiliation has been worship of the Muslim man of force. Islamist extremists romanticize the brutal warrior . . . " "Europeans . . . are bourgeois themselves, even more so in some ways than Americans and Israelis. What they distrust about America and Israel is that these countries represent a particularly aggressive and, to them, unbalanced strain of bourgeois ambition. No European would ever acknowledge the category, but America and Israel are heroic bourgeois nations. The Israelis are driven by passionate Zionism to build their homeland and make it rich and powerful. Americans are driven by our Puritan sense of calling, the deeply held belief that we Americans have a special mission to spread our way of life around the globe." "Europeans . . . simply can't remember what it's like to be imperially confident, to feel the forces of history blowing at one's back, to have heroic and even eschatological aspirations. Their passions have been quieted. Their intellectual guides have taught them that business is ignoble and striving is vulgar. . . . the imperial confidence is gone, along with the youthful sense of limitless possibility and the unselfconscious embrace of ordinary striving." "To European bourgeoisophobes, America is the radioactive core of . . . 'The Other Axis of Evil' . . . It controls the IMF and the World Bank, the institutions that reward the rich and punish the poor . . . The American military provides the muscle to force-feed economic liberalism to the world. . . . They see us as a mindless Rambo, a Mike Tyson with rippling muscles and no brain. Where the Islamists see us as a decadent slut, the European etherealists see us as a gun-slinging cowboy. The Islamists think we are too spoiled and comfortable, the Europeans think we are too violent and impulsive. . . . each side's vision springs from a deeper bourgeoisophobia--the prejudice that people who succeed in worldly affairs must be morally and intellectually backward. This article of faith governs the way even many sophisticated Europeans and Muslims react to us." " . . . to many Europeans, who must believe in our mindless immaturity in order to look themselves in the mirror each morning . . . [Europeans believe] the American doesn't see the deeper causes of terrorism, the poverty, the hopelessness. America should really be spending more money on foreign aid . . . When the [European] bourgeoisophobe goes to practice politics, he instinctively dons the pinstripes of the diplomat. Diplomacy fits his temperament. It demands subtlety instead of clarity, self-control instead of power, patience instead of energy, nuance instead of restlessness. Diplomacy is highly formal, highly elitist, highly civilized. Most of all, it is complex. Complexity is catnip to the etherealized bourgeoisophobe. It paralyzes brute action, and justifies subtle and basically immobile gestures, calibrations, and modalities. Bourgeoisophobes have a simple-minded faith that whatever the problem is, the solution requires complexity. Any decisive effort to change the status quo--to topple Saddam, to give up on Arafat, to foment democracy in the Arab world--will only make things worse." "The events of the past several months have cast doubt on a century of mostly bourgeoisophobe cultural pessimism. . . . it has become abundantly clear since September 11 that America has ascended to unprecedented economic and military heights, and it really is not easy to explain how a country so corrupt to the core can remain for so long so apparently successful on the surface. If we're so rotten, how can we be so great?" "President Bush . . . has framed the challenge in the most ambitious possible terms: as a moral confrontation with an Axis of Evil. He has chosen the most arduous course. . . . This is not the predictable reaction of a decadent, commercial people. This is not the reaction you would have predicted if you had based your knowledge of America on the extensive literature of cultural decline. Nor would you have been able to predict the American reaction to recent events in the Middle East, which also differs markedly from the European one. . . . Most Americans can see the difference between nihilistic terrorism and a democracy trying fitfully to defend itself. And most Americans seem willing to defend the principles that are at stake here, even in the face of global criticism and obloquy. In this, as in so much else, George Bush reflects the meritocratic capitalist culture of which he is a product. While the rest of the world was lost in a moral fog, going on about the "cycle of violence" as if bombs set themselves off and the language of human agency and moral judgment didn't apply, the Bush administration, by and large, has been clear." " . . . the conflict against terrorism, which is really a struggle against people who despise our way of life." "Maybe it is now time to put intellectual meat on the bones of our instinctive pride, to acknowledge that the American way of life is not only successful, but also character-building. It inculcates virtues that account for American success: a certain ability to see problems clearly, to react to setbacks energetically, to accomplish the essential tasks, to use force without succumbing to savagery. Perhaps ordinary American life mobilizes individual initiative, and the highest, not just the crassest aspirations." ... [more] ... [Part 2] 3:03:48 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Oil and The Middle East: Why U.S. Foreign Policy Has To Change "Petroleum contributes . . . about two-fifths of the world's total energy output, and natural gas (which is in some ways related to oil) more than another one-fifth. . . . the United States used in the year 2000 almost 100 quadrillion Btu's . . . of energy. But of those 100 quadrillion Btu's, the U.S. had to import close to 30 percent. . . . the U.S. imported in the year 2000 almost two-thirds of the oil that it used." " . . . Saudi Arabia has the largest installed but unused rapid production capacity . . . In any emergency that cut off oil supplies from anywhere else in the world, Saudi Arabia would one of very few, and maybe the only, nation that could easily and quickly increase its oil production without a waiting period . . . " " . . . another characteristic of the global oil industry that we should all understand. It is an industry dominated by a half-dozen extremely large, global corporations . . . the companies continue to manage most of the oil production and global oil trade, while the governments, and OPEC, make the basic decisions on how much oil to produce. . . . the companies no longer shun government regulation, because most of the regulations imposed on them are supportive of, and increase the profits of, the companies themselves. The regulations fall more into the area of corporate welfare than into the area of inducing the corporations to become better citizens." "[In] February 1945. . . . President Franklin D. Roosevelt, while returning from the Yalta Conference, met with King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia on a U.S. warship in the middle of the Suez Canal. . . . an agreement was reached under which the United States guaranteed for the indefinite future the security and stability of the Saudi monarchy. In return, the Saudi King guaranteed U.S. access to, and joint development of, the massive Saudi oil reserves, also for the indefinite future. These mutual guarantees were later, implicitly at least, extended to apply to the other, and smaller, Gulf state monarchies . . . these guarantees still today form the basis of U.S. oil policies in the Middle East." " . . . one of the root causes behind the terrorism of September 11 was this very U.S. policy of supporting for the past half-century and more these authoritarian and often corrupt Arab and Muslim governments. There exists a high degree of anger among many Muslims with their own governments, which have for so long been supported by the U.S." " . . . another foreign policy problem that the U.S. faces in the Middle East, one that has become more tightly intertwined with U.S. oil policies since September 11. Ever since shortly after World War II, the U.S. has had not one but two fundamental foreign policies in the Middle East. . . . The other policy . . . has been to provide strong support to Israel and to guarantee the security of Israel as a Jewish state, also for the long term." "The Arab-Israeli war of 1973, and specifically the U.S. response of resupplying Israel with large amounts of new military equipment, precipitated the embargo . . . a perfect example of the fact that there are indeed real conflicting interests involved in the two basic U.S. foreign policies in the Middle East." " . . . Washington has allowed the tensions to grow, more or less ignored by U.S. policymakers, to a point where they are going to be exceedingly difficult to deal with in the future. . . . the position of the monarchies has become more precarious . . . The George W. Bush administration is undoubtedly reassuring them that the U.S. security guarantee is still in effect, but they cannot help but be worried about its permanence when they see public opinion in this country changing. This puts pressure on the monarchies to pay more attention to the opinion of their own Arab 'street.'" ... [more] 2:07:03 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Islam Anti-Islam Discussion with Tariq Ali, editor of London’s New Left Review Editors Note: By "fundamentalisms" Ali means an arrogant, rigid, world-dominant American imperialism–"the mother of all fundamentalisms"–on one side, and the equally rigid, regressive Islamic fanaticism on the other. He depicts much of current world events, including the attacks of Sept. 11 and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as the American empire’s chickens come home to roost. He also, shockingly, opines that because Sept. 11 did the Islamic fanatics no lasting good and caused the U.S. no real systemic harm, the event will sink into "obscurity in the future. It will be a footnote in the history of this century. Nothing more. In political, economic or military terms it was barely a pinprick." He also says that whether Americans care to know this or not, much of the world’s peoples–including some recent immigrants right here in New York City–rejoiced on Sept. 11. "What happens if Musharraf is killed? Other generals will take over. What their orientation will be depends very much on what the United States is prepared to pay. I’m afraid it’s the cash nexus which now accounts for loyalty. Even the generals hostile to Musharraf say, "Leave him alone. He’s bringing in money and weapons." But when the time comes he’ll go or he’ll be got rid of. It’s a very grim situation. The one thing the army has been able to do in the past is restore law and order in the country. This guy has not been able to do that. And the reason is that to do it means taking on the forces of religious fundamentalism inside the army, and that’s a dangerous operation. The thing to do is to disarm these groups– which were created by the military." "Meanwhile, just across the border, the alliance that’s been set up to run Afghanistan is obviously a short-lived fiction. Totally. Hamid Karzai–I honestly think his future is very limited. Either the poor guy will be bumped off, or they’ll have to take him out and find him a job as a fashion model in New York and Rome. He’d be very good at it. He could walk the runway, show the latest shawls and caps. But I don’t think he’s got a future in Afghanistan. What’s the feeling about this in Pakistan? Well, they’re feeling, "We told you so." They warned the Americans behind the scenes what would happen if the Taliban was dislodged. This was a regime we could have controlled. Now there’ll be Russian influence, Iranian influence, Indian influence, no one power will be able to control the situation and it’s going to lead to chaos and intra-fighting. Basically, the struggle–if one’s being utterly straightforward and cynical–has been between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance regarding who runs the drug trade through which part of the world. The Taliban–until the United States paid them some hundreds of millions of dollars to stop in 2000–used to smuggle drugs out of Pakistan, through Peshawar and Karachi to come to Europe. The Northern Alliance drug trade came through the Russian mafia, Central Asia–Kosovo was the big base, and from there it went all over Europe. With the defeat of the Taliban, the Northern Alliance people are openly laughing. "We’ve now got the monopoly on the drug trade." The Russian mafia will be having a field day. Pakistani heroin traffickers are going to lose a lot of money now." "You say in the book that what’s needed in Saudi Arabia is a revolution. My own feeling is that the monarchy, this sort of Mafia-type family which the United States gave the franchise to run that part of the world, their days are numbered. And they know it. Which is why they’re squirming. If you ask which country in the world was most seriously shaken by Sept. 11, the answer is Saudi Arabia." "The book’s called The Clash of Fundamentalisms. In the U.S. we’re used to hearing 'fundamentalism' applied to Christians here, or more recently to Islamic fanatics. You say "American imperialism" is 'the mother of all fundamentalisms.' Explain that. Well, I just thought that if we’re talking about an outlook of the world which is incredibly rigid and refuses to see reason or think rationally, then, even though it’s secular, the imperial outlook can be categorized as such. Also, it was an attempt to rap Huntington on the knuckles. . . . This is not a civilizational clash. This is a clash between an imperial power and religious fundamentalisms which are nothing in terms of power compared to the imperial fundamentalists." " . . . compared to the power of the United States, Islam is nothing. This Al Qaeda group is 3000, 4000 people at most. The thing is how to cut off the flow of young, middle-class professional kids to it. That requires a political solution. Such as? Two things. One, lay off Iraq. If they go after Iraq it’ll just exacerbate the situation. I’m really frightened by that. Some group of martyrs will want revenge and try to outdo the Sept. 11 people, and God knows what they’ll do. But the most important thing that’s driving people crazy is the Palestinian situation and the fact that the United States is openly backing Israel. There I think the only long-term solution is a sovereign Palestinian state. This is the last colonial struggle of the 20th century, and the Israelis just have to bite the bullet and move on." " . . . I think the hardcore of young believers, curiously enough, is in the West, in Europe and North America. I think one of the problems here is that being a hardcore believer has become part of identity politics. 'This is our identity.'" " I think that the only way the Palestinians can get somewhere is by winning over a sizable core of Israelis to their cause. Which will happen." " . . . [Sept. 11] did focus the Bush administration on an ongoing war on terrorism. But they’re just using the events of Sept. 11 to remap the world. Well I think that’s historically significant! But the question is, were they doing this in any case, and did this just accelerate the process. I believe that’s the case." ... [more] 1:49:55 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Enough Already! Time to stop the war on terrorism. "I'm really beginning to believe we should stop the war on terrorism. Not because I'm against the fighting. And not because I don't think there are individuals, groups, and states deserving of a firsthand tutorial on the efficacy of the arsenal of democracy. No, I simply think the war on terrorism may be the wrong war. Terrorism isn't an "ism" like Communism, fascism, socialism, capitalism, etc. To the extent the suffix "ism" suggests a body of thought or system of belief, "terrorism" is a misnomer. Terrorism is a means — the intentional use of violence against civilian populations in order to achieve political ends. We're at war with the people seeking those ends." "The simple fact is that we are not at war with terrorism, we are at war with a brand of Islam. . . . This ideology is not purely religious, it's tied up with various flavors of tribalism, pan-Arabism, and nationalism (hence all the talk about Crusaders, imperialism, etc.). Why this ideology justifies terrorism is actually a fascinating question with complex historical, religious, and military aspects. Hit-and-run raids are a staple of Arab warfare going back to Bedouin days. Islam allows for the total destruction of your enemies . . . And, most obvious, neither these specific groups nor the Arab world in general can hold a candle to the West militarily. They use terrorist techniques because they cannot hurt us using conventional ones. As the Palestinians are so fond of pointing out, they "have to" use suicide bombers against Israel because they don't have the planes and tanks the Israelis have. In other words, if they had planes and tanks they would use them, because they are at war with Israel." "Listening to President Bush chew on his tongue trying to explain why Arafat isn't a terrorist is simply embarrassing. Watching the United States hold a fire sale on its moral authority in order to win the applause of the Saudis and the E.U. is depressing. . . . We ought to be able to declare that we are at war with a kind of Islam without saying we are at war with all of Islam. I don't know what it should be called, but I do know that "terrorism" doesn't do the trick. Providing such clarity would help Americans understand what this war is and isn't about. Such clarity would show that we take our enemies seriously. Such clarity would allow the world to choose sides. And such clarity would also make it more difficult for people to use fatuous phrases like 'One man's terrorist…'" ... [more] 12:14:25 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Friday, April 12, 2002

The Democracy Factor " . . . democracy at least is evolutionary. Its ultimate logic is equality, allowing for a framework of development and change — as citizens constantly seek to match their own maturing notions of freedom with their government's constitutional commitment to fairness. Democracy, more effectively than other forms of government, also seeks to alleviate the inherent sins of mankind, rather than to ignore or even enhance them. . . . Yet the issue lies at the heart of our war with Iraq, unease with allies like the Saudis, bafflement at demonstrations in Cairo, and overwhelming support for Israel." "We must remember that democratic revolution . . . has never made any inroads in the Middle East. . . . Apparently democracy and freedom are words that cannot be spoken — out of politeness by us or embarrassment by them." "There is an asymmetrical war going on in the Middle East; yet it is not merely military, but political and cultural as well: The Israelis elect their leaders, audit their behavior, tolerate active political opposition, and suffer calumny in their press. The Palestinians do not — well before the start of the intifada. And yet all this is left unsaid." " . . . terrorism fails utterly when state and non-state autocrats like those in Japan, the IRA, and Palestine have used kamikazes, terrorist bombers, or suicide murderers against democracies." " . . . consistent support for democracy is valuable in other ways as well. It reminds our Arab friends that support for Israel . . . derives from a shared commitment to open and periodic elections, a free press, and an independent court system." "Should the Palestinians immediately hold free and periodic elections, televise raucous debates of a truly independent Parliament, allow an open press and court system, send their reporters into Israel to learn of the other side's view, and begin nonviolent resistance to the presence of Israeli troops, they would accomplish more in 3 months than they have in 35 years." "But then it might turn out that a free Palestine's biggest enemy would not be Israel — but governments like Syria, Iraq, and Egypt, who could not stomach such dangerous democrats right on their borders and who themselves would no longer have a convenient scapegoat to help vent their own unfree people's growing frustrations." ... [more] 3:17:44 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The violent road from Baghdad to Jerusalem George W. Bush has not changed his mind. Removing Saddam is the key to solving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict " . . . two fundamentally distinct understandings of the region's troubles. The first - favoured by most European governments - says that healing the Middle East is primarily a matter of healing the relationship between Palestinians, represented by Mr Arafat, and Israel. . . . The second view says that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict . . . is merely a symptom of a larger problem, the same one that generated the attack on the US in September. In this view - the administration's - Baghdad has emerged as the root of the trouble." " . . . the White House. . . . to put an ultimatum before Mr Arafat. . . . if Mr Arafat then continues to allow suicide bombers . . . he will no longer be acceptable as a negotiating partner." "the real agenda is not to allow the Arab-Israeli peace conflict to stall the momentum of the US military plan for Iraq. . . . Mr Saddam is feeding Palestinian fires . . . it is the indirect influence of Mr Saddam in the region that is most destabilising. . . . In showing that it would tolerate Mr Saddam, the US emboldened al-Qaeda and Mr Arafat." " . . . the fundamental question about the US posture in the Middle East is: is America after talks or is it after action? The answer is action. In this view, calls for more talks - even the Pope's call for peace - appear outdated. Indeed, to many Americans, Europe seems to be in a dreamland over Iraq." ... [more] 7:48:13 PM  Google It!  comment  []

American Culture Goes Global, or Does It? "Dislike for the United States stems also, they say, from its "cultural imperialism." We have been hearing a good deal about how American mass culture inspires resentment and sometimes violent reactions, not just in the Middle East but all over the world. . . . Despite those allegations, the cultural relationship between the United States and the rest of the world over the past 100 years has never been one-sided. On the contrary, the United States was, and continues to be, as much a consumer of foreign intellectual and artistic influences as it has been a shaper of the world's entertainment and tastes." " . . . as a nation of immigrants from the 19th to the 21st centuries, and as a haven in the 1930s and '40s for refugee scholars and artists, the United States has been a recipient as much as an exporter of global culture. Indeed, the influence of immigrants and African-Americans on the United States explains why its culture has been so popular for so long in so many places. American culture has spread throughout the world because it has incorporated foreign styles and ideas. What Americans have done more brilliantly than their competitors overseas is repackage the cultural products we receive from abroad and then retransmit them to the rest of the planet. In effect, Americans have specialized in selling the dreams, fears, and folklore of other people back to them. That is why a global mass culture has come to be identified, however simplistically, with the United States." "The hallmark of 19th-century culture, in Europe and also in Asia, was its insistence on defending the purity of literature, classical music, and representational painting against the intrusions of folklore and popular amusements. . . . High culture was supposed to be educational, contemplative, and uplifting -- a way of preserving the best in human civilization. . . . the 19th-century barriers between high and low culture were resolutely, if imperfectly, maintained." "The artists of the early 20th century shattered what seemed to them the artificial demarcations between different cultural forms. They also challenged the notion that culture was a means of intellectual or moral improvement. They did so by emphasizing style and craftsmanship at the expense of philosophy, religion, or ideology. They deliberately called attention to language in their novels, to optics in their paintings, to the materials in and function of their architecture, to the structure of music instead of its melodies. And they wanted to shock their audiences. Which they succeeded in doing. Modern painting and literature -- with its emphasis on visually distorted nudes, overt sexuality, and meditations on violence -- was attacked for being degrading and obscene, and for appealing to the baser instincts of humanity. In much the same way, critics would later denounce the vulgarity of popular culture." "Although modernism assaulted the conventions of 19th-century high culture in Europe and Asia, it inadvertently accelerated the growth of mass culture in the United States. Indeed, Americans were already receptive to the blurring of cultural boundaries. In the 19th century, symphony orchestras in the United States often included band music in their programs, and opera singers were asked to perform both Mozart and Stephen Foster." "Writers like Hemingway . . . invented a terse, hard-boiled language, devoted to reproducing as authentically as possible the elemental qualities of personal experience. . . . All of those trends provided the foundations for a genuinely new culture. But the new culture turned out to be neither modernist nor European. Instead, the United States transformed what was still a parochial culture, appealing largely to the young and the rebellious in Western society, into a global phenomenon. The propensity of Americans to borrow modernist ideas, and to transform them into a global culture . . . " "But it is in popular culture that the reciprocal relationship between America and the rest of the world can best be seen. . . . the power of American capitalism is not the only, or even the most important, explanation for the global popularity of America's movies and television shows. . . . [First,] the effectiveness of English as a language of mass communications has been essential to the acceptance of American culture. . . . English is . . . a language exceptionally well-suited to the demands and spread of American mass culture. Another factor is the size of the American audience. A huge domestic market . . . The American audience is not only large; because of the influx of immigrants and refugees, it is also international in its complexion. The heterogeneity of America's population -- its regional, ethnic, religious, and racial diversity -- has forced the media, since the early years of the 20th century, to experiment with messages, images, and story lines that have a broad multicultural appeal. . . . given them the techniques to appeal to an equally diverse audience abroad. . . . " "American musicians and entertainers have followed the example of modernist artists like Picasso and Braque in drawing on elements from high and low culture, combining the sacred and the profane. Advertisers have adapted the techniques of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism to make their products more intriguing. Composers like Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein incorporated folk melodies, religious hymns, blues, gospel songs, and jazz into their symphonies, concertos, operas, and ballets. Indeed, an art form as quintessentially American as jazz evolved during the 20th century into an amalgam of African, Caribbean, Latin American, and modernist European music. That blending of forms in America's mass culture has enhanced its appeal to multiethnic domestic and international audiences by capturing their varied experiences and tastes." "Early- 20th-century European painters wanted viewers to recognize that they were looking at lines and color on a canvas rather than at a reproduction of the natural world. Similarly, many American films . . . deliberately remind the audience that it is watching a movie instead of a play or a photographed version of reality. American filmmakers (not only in the movies but also on MTV) have been willing to use the most sophisticated techniques of editing and camera work . . . to create a modernist collage of images that captures the speed and seductiveness of life in the contemporary world. . . . the Method's disregard for language permitted global audiences -- even those not well-versed in English -- to understand and appreciate what they were watching in American films." "Finally, American culture has imitated not only the modernists' visual flamboyance, but also their emphasis on personal expression and their tendency to be apolitical and anti-ideological. The refusal to browbeat an audience with a social message has accounted, more than any other factor, for the worldwide popularity of American entertainment. American movies, in particular, have customarily focused on human relationships and private feelings, not on the problems of a particular time and place. They tell tales about romance, intrigue, success, failure, moral conflicts, and survival." " . . . But American culture has never felt all that foreign to foreigners. And, at its best, it has transformed what it received from others into a culture that everyone, everywhere, can embrace, a culture that is both emotionally and, on occasion, artistically compelling for millions of people throughout the world. So, despite the current hostility to America's policies and values -- in Europe and Latin America as well as in the Middle East and Asia -- it is important to recognize how familiar much of American culture seems to people abroad. If anything, our movies, television shows, and theme parks have been less 'imperialistic' than cosmopolitan. In the end, American mass culture has not transformed the world into a replica of the United States. Instead, America's dependence on foreign cultures has made the United States a replica of the world." ... [more] 7:22:00 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Dark Thoughts and Quiet Desperation "Israel has been building nuclear weapons for 30 years. The Jews understand what passive and powerless acceptance of doom has meant for them in the past, and they have ensured against it. Masada was not an example to follow--it hurt the Romans not a whit, but Sampson in Gaza? With an H-bomb? What would serve the Jew-hating world better in repayment for thousands of years of massacres but a Nuclear Winter. Or invite all those tut-tutting European statesmen and peace activists to join us in the ovens?" "For the first time in history, a people facing extermination while the world either cackles or looks away--unlike the Armenians, Tibetans, World War II European Jews or Rwandans--have the power to destroy the world. The ultimate justice?" ... [more] 6:01:31 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The Hard Truth "A terrible disaster is in the making in the Middle East. What Osama bin Laden failed to achieve on Sept. 11 is now being unleashed by the Israeli-Palestinian war in the West Bank: a clash of civilizations." "So there you have it. Either leaders of good will get together and acknowledge that Israel can't stay in the territories but can't just pick up and leave, without a U.S.-NATO force helping Palestinians oversee their state, or Osama wins — and the war of civilizations will be coming to a theater near you." ... [more] 5:47:55 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Protecting Saddam "The name of their game is delay — to demand evidence of nuclear development while unfettered inspections are forbidden, and to dismiss as a non-meeting the hard evidence of a terrorist connection. Meanwhile, Iraqi scientists race to build the weapons that would blackmail into impotence any power daring to unseat Saddam." ... [more] 3:32:31 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Popular Arab Anger Is Long- Term, Radicalizing Threat to the Foundations of Peace " . . . an unrelenting siege by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and at the headquarters in Ramallah of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, is radicalizing the politics of the region and creating a threat to peace and recognition of the Jewish state by a rising generation of Arabs . . . 'In order for Israel to be able to exist, it requires the Arab world's willingness to encourage the conditions so that she can exist.'" "And while the short-term threat is whether Arab leaders will be forced to confront their own people to save themselves, a greater risk in the future may be the radicalization of a young Arab population. That population is now engaged in a verbal assault on the Arab commitment to peace, forged over three decades and nurtured by successive American administrations. The consequences of a new generation of Arabs who walk away from the 'strategic' policy of peace with Israel . . . would be a return to the politics of resistance, including weapons of terror, economic stagnation and the further rise of Islamic extremism . . . " "'You don't know what will happen. There is an accumulation of grievances, one against Israel and America and one against the Arab regimes.'" ... [more] 3:30:11 PM  Google It!  comment  []

The Blood Lust of Identity Review of  In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong by Amin Maalouf, translated from the French by Barbara Bray. Arcade. "Identity is a bloody business. Religion, nationality, or race may not be the primary causes of war and mass murder. These are more likely to be tyranny, or greed for territory, wealth, and power. But 'identity' is what gets the blood boiling, what makes people do unspeakable things to their neighbors. It is the fuel used by agitators to set whole countries on fire. When the world is reduced to a battle between 'us and them,' Germans and Jews, Hindus and Muslims, Catholics and Protestants, Hutus and Tutsis, only mass murder will do, for 'we' can only survive if 'they' are slaughtered. Before we kill them, 'they' must be stripped of our common humanity, by humiliating them, degrading them, and giving them numbers instead of names." " . . . reasons why people fear for their sense of belonging: globalization, the erosion of national sovereignty, Western domination over the last three hundred years, the collapse of failed secular regimes. . . . Sadism must play a part. Once their basest instincts are given the official nod, some people feel a sense of pleasure, even liberation. The degradation of one's victims, stripped of their identity, is a way to sooth one's conscience. This results in a ghastly paradox: the more brutal the method of slaughter, the easier it is on the killers, for the victims are no longer regarded as fully human. . . . mass murder can seem entirely legitimate to people who feel that their community is under threat. He writes: 'Even when they commit massacres they are convinced they are merely doing what is necessary to save the lives of their nearest and dearest.'" " . . . elements of [an individual's] identity are shared by many, but the particular mix is what makes him an individual. . . . the same principle applies to everyone. It is when we take one single element and make it absolute that the trouble begins. This tends to happen . . . when we feel that our identity, or part of it, is under attack." " . . . the superior might of the West has put great strains on non-Westerners. Scientific discovery, political freedoms, economic enterprise, and imperial aggression combined to make much of the non-Western world feel peripheral to the European metropole. To match the Western powers, others had no choice but to take up Western ways. Even those who did so with success, such as the Japanese, felt a sense of humiliation. The break with the past was too abrupt. The foreign graft did not always take. Nerves are still raw even now. Those who did not succeed feel as if they live . . . 'in a world which belongs to others and obeys rules made by others, a world where they are orphans, strangers, intruders or pariahs.... What can be done to prevent some of them feeling they have been bereft of everything and have nothing more to lose, so that they come, like Samson, to pray to God for the temple to collapse on top of them and their enemies alike?'" "Another word, today, for Western domination is 'globalization,' and globalization is often used as another word for 'US imperialism'." " . . . many people see globalization as a threat to their 'culture, identity and values.' This is certainly true of disaffected intellectuals, not just in the old colonial peripheries, but especially in the West itself. Yet I wonder how many ordinary Chinese, Indians, Zambians, or even French really fret about their identity and values because of global trade. It seems more likely that the wellsprings of religious or ethnic fanaticism are political more than cultural. Fanaticism has to do with a lack of representation or free speech. Either can lead to an impotent rage." " . . . the failure of democracy in Arab countries, or indeed Asian ones, cannot primarily be blamed on Washington or global trade. In fact, pro-Western countries in the non-Western world which are most exposed to global trade are often—not always—the most democratic too. Religious fanaticism comes when politics break down. The same is true of racial or nationalist fanaticism and revolutionary millenarianism, which are all variations of religious zeal." "The furnace of antiglobalism is actually not in the so-called third world, but in Europe. This, too, has something to do with the lack of representation. We live in democracies. But to many citizens, European institutions and multinational corporations appear to be wielding more power than elected national governments. . . . Another reason for a European sense of impotence is the utter dependency for its security on the US. This, and the huge success of US commercial enterprise, makes Europeans feel more and more peripheral. As is true in the non-West, this doesn't affect the average consumer of Coca-Colonization so much as artists and intellectuals, who see it as their role to define, guard, and express "identity," be it regional, national, or spiritual. This is why Hollywood is seen as such a threat, especially in France; it has swamped our markets and invaded our histories. It has, in the words of a character in an early Wim Wenders film, 'colonized our minds.'" "In a way, non-Americans are in the position of Germans at the time of Napoleon's greatest victories. France was dominant not only in arts and culture, but in military affairs. What was most annoying to German poets and thinkers was France's claim to universality. French values were universal values. Similar claims are being made for America today. There are several ways outsiders can react. They can follow alternative forms of universalism, such as communism or Islamism. They can retreat into romantic nativism, celebrating the national soul, and so on. Or they can boost their confidence by expanding their political freedoms, and taking more responsibility for themselves. There are instances of all three in recent history. But the last decade has shown how often believers can switch their creeds without losing any of their zeal." ... [more] 3:15:29 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Domino democracy Bernard Lewis, the world renowned scholar of Islamic history and the Middle East, explains to Saul Singer why hopes for peace and democracy in the region are still viable even in one of its darkest hours "'If the peoples of Middle East continue on their present path . . . the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression.'" "'There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired . . . in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equaled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country - even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion - to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their Prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions.'" "Lewis . . . argues that 'there is an important difference' between Judaism and the two newer religions. 'The Jewish position was that there is only one God. This was seen with horror by the polytheistic world of the time. But the Christians and then the Muslims went one step further: they said that not only is there only one God but there is only one way to that God - our way. Now that was not the Jewish position, which was expressed in the Talmudic dictum that the righteous of all peoples have a place in paradise. That is not the Christian or the Islamic view, traditionally. Their view is that there is only one true religion and the others are either false or at best incomplete.'" "Lewis makes an observation that is brilliant - precisely because it seems so obvious in retrospect. The countries of the Middle East can be divided into three types: those with an anti-American and pro-American people, those with governments considered pro-American in which anti-American hostility runs rampant, and those in which both government and people are pro-American. The classic members of the first group are Iran and Iraq Regarding the second group, whose most prominent members are Egypt and Saudi Arabia . . . They live in very bad conditions; they at the very least mistrust, and often hate, their governments whom they see as responsible for their misery, and since those governments are seen as pro-American they see America as responsible for those governments. The third group . . . has only two members: Turkey and Israel." "If anything deserves ridicule, then it is the view that systematic change can be wrought without toppling the first domino of Arab tyrannies - Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The likely alternative to the West playing this game in earnest is not the status quo, but dominoes toppling the other direction." ... [more] 5:11:08 AM  Google It!  comment  []

"Then there's this eye-popping comment in a 'Week in Review' piece by Serge Schmemann: 'Even people of good will argue for the morality of suicide bombings, saying that suicide bombers are a natural product of a history of humiliation and despair.' Schmemann himself rejects this view, but his comment that 'people of good will' support it is shocking enough. Would Schmemann say that 'people of good will' endorse the idea that blacks deserved to be enslaved or that the Holocaust is a myth? Of course not. Certain ideas are so monstrous that no one can hold them and still be credited with 'good will.' It's not clear who these 'people of good will' are; Schmemann gives no specific examples. What he seems to mean is that the pro-suicide bombing position is a respectable one in the context of elite Western (particularly European) opinion. What would lead civilized people to endorse such barbarity? The Weekly Standard's David Brooks has an explanation: 'bourgeoisophobia.' Don't blame Brooks for the unwieldy term, which was Flaubert's coinage. Brooks argues that bourgeoisophobia is 'the major reactionary creed of our age': Today, in much of the world's eyes, two peoples--the Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. These two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the view of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because they are spiritually stunted. It is their obliviousness to the holy things in life, their feverish energy, their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power and gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct weapons, and play the role of hyperpower. And so just as the French intellectuals of the 1830s rose up to despise the traders and bankers, certain pToday, in much of the world's eyes, two peoples--the Americans and the Jews--have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this vieweople today rise up to shock, humiliate, and dream of destroying America and Israel. Today's bourgeoisophobes burn with the same sense of unjust inferiority. They experience the same humiliation because there is nothing they can do to thwart the growing might of their enemies. They rage and rage. Only today's bourgeoisophobes are not just artists and intellectuals. They are as likely to be terrorists and suicide bombers. They teach in madrassas, where they are careful not to instruct their students in the sort of practical knowledge that dominates bourgeois schools. They are Muslim clerics who incite hatred and violence. They are erudite Europeans who burn with humiliation because they know, deep down, that both America and Israel possess a vitality and heroism that their nations once had but no longer do. 'People of good will' indeed." [via The Opinion Journal] 5:05:34 AM    comment  []

The Peril of Too Much Power "So why I am worried about this wonderful country's current role in the world? Partly because until President Bush changed tack last week, I feared that if the United States were to attack Iraq without taking the lead in negotiating a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Islamic world would be united against the West while Europe would be divided from America, with disastrous consequences for years to come." "But my concern goes deeper than simply a worry about the Middle Eastern policy of a particular administration. The fundamental problem is that America today has too much power for anyone's good, including its own. It has that matchless, global soft power in all of our heads. In economic power its only rival is the European Union. In military power it has no rival. Its military expenditure is greater than that of the next eight largest military powers combined. Not since Rome has a single power enjoyed such superiority — but the Roman colossus only bestrode one part of the world. Stripped of its anti-American overtones, the French foreign minister Hubert Védrine's term 'hyperpower' is apt." "Contrary to what many Europeans think, the problem with American power is not that it is American. The problem is simply the power. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power. The writers of the American Constitution wisely determined that no single locus of power, however benign, should predominate; for even the best could be led into temptation. Every power should therefore be checked by at least one other. That also applies in world politics." "The complicated double task for us pro-American Europeans is to strengthen Europe's capacity to act outside its own borders while disentangling the idea of a stronger Europe from its sticky anti-American integument. We need to build a Europe that sees itself not as a rival superpower to the United States, but as America's most important partner in a world community of liberal democracies. Americans, in their own enlightened self-interest, should want Europe to succeed. Otherwise they will be left to cope alone with the loneliness of the long-distance hyperpower." ... [more] 3:52:53 AM  Google It!  comment  []

Wednesday, March 20, 2002

Captain's Speech to the Sailors of the USS John F. Kennedy 03/10/2002 "They hate us and attack us because they oppose all that is good about America. . . . Make no mistake - this is fight for Western Civilization. If these monsters are not destroyed they will destroy us, and our children and children's children will live in fear forever." "Only America has the strength of character and the vast resources to hunt these fanatics down anywhere in the world. . . . We represent America in all its power and diversity. We are men and women, rich and poor, black and white, and all colors of the human rainbow. We are Christian, Jew, and yes, Muslim. WE ARE AMERICA." "In the end we will win, precisely because we are those things that the terrorists hate - prosperous, happy, tolerant, and most of all, free. . . . Abraham Lincoln said 'America is the last, best hope for the world'. Tonight we hold a shining beacon of that hope. We shall keep it burning brightly." ... [more] 4:38:20 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Epidemic of fear 15 March 2002 "Many claim that 11 September 'changed the world forever', particularly impacting on public perceptions of risk and creating a sense that we live in an ever-more risky world. But it is wrong to blame today's culture of fear on the collapse of the World Trade Centre. Long before 11 September, public panics were widespread . . . " " . . . perceptions of risk, ideas about safety and controversies over health, the environment and technology have little to do with science or empirical evidence. Rather, they are shaped by cultural assumptions about human vulnerability. . . . differential responses were culturally informed. . . . culture has become even more uncomfortable with managing change and dealing with risks." "The balance has shifted even more in favour of emotionalism, suspicion and blame . . . they intuitively grasp that when it comes to public debate the power of emotion triumphs over the cold facts of science . . . " " . . . the politics of risk is based on a useful distinction between health risk and liability risk. Regardless of . . . a health risk, cultural mistrust of new technology could still turn [new technology] into a liability risk. . . . 'the mere possibility of exposure is threat enough to produce fear, and fear leads to illness' . . . " "Society's difficulty with managing risk is driven by a culture of safety that sees vulnerability as our defining condition. . . . Safety has become one of Western society's fundamental values, and people find it difficult to accept that some injuries cannot be prevented. An injury caused by an accident is an affront to a culture that believes safety is its own reward. . . . The idea that we should be immunised against accidents is reaching pathological proportions. . . . a culture that is uncomfortable with misfortune." "The 'What if…?' question dominates today . . . The preoccupation with 'thinking outside the box' continually leads to the 'What if…?' question. . . . " "Since 11 September, speculating about risk is represented as sound risk management. The aftermath of 11 September has given legitimacy to the principle of precaution, with risk increasingly seen as something you suffer from, rather than something you manage. Of course, taking sensible precautions makes a lot of sense. But continually imagining the worst possible outcome is not an effective way to deal with problems. Allowing speculation to dominate how we think about risks may even distract us from tackling the everyday problems and hazards that confront society." ... [more] 4:34:17 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Comic-book superhero gets around "Dubyaman isn't just about George W Bush. Of course, the cartoon strip was inspired by the spoutings of Bush Jr in the wake of September 11. But still, it's not about him per se. It is about what he represents — a combination of ignorance, arrogance and intolerance — which would have been harmless in a man less powerful."  ... [more] 1:58:28 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Monday, March 18, 2002

Saudis Warning Against Attack by U.S. on Iraq March 17, 2002 "Even before Air Force Two touched down in Saudi Arabia today, Vice President Dick Cheney received an unusual public warning from the Saudi leadership that the Bush administration should put aside any plans for a military campaign against Iraq." "'From their point of view there is a clear sequence," Mr. Indyk added. "If we want them to go along with our efforts on Saddam Hussein they want us to at least get the Israel- Palestinian situation under some kind of control.'" "In addition to trying to make a visible effort to quell the Israeli- Palestinian fighting and establish a Palestinian homeland, many observers say, the Bush administration will need to make a separate push through the United Nations to persuade Iraq to allow the return of United Nations weapons inspectors. For much of Europe as well as the Arab world, it seems that any support for military action against Iraq can come only after a determined effort to secure the admission of the weapons inspectors has failed." "But the crown prince had another message as well. It may not be the Saudi's last word, but it was clear. An American campaign against Saddam Hussein's regime . . . 'would not serve America's interests or the interests of the world.'" ... [more] 3:25:58 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Saturday, March 16, 2002

So, are civilisations at war? Is this a war against terror, or the 'clash of civilisations' predicted in 1993 by Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington? Interviewed here by Michael Steinberger of the New York Times, he answers critics who fear that his generalisations fuel conflict "Were you surprised the terrorists were all educated, middle-class individuals? No. The people involved in fundamentalist movements, Islamic or otherwise, are often people with advanced educations. Most of them do not become terrorists. But these are intelligent, ambitious young people who aspire to put their educations to use in a modern economy, and they become frustrated by the lack of opportunity. They are cross-pressured as well by the forces of globalisation and what they regard as Western imperialism and cultural domination. They are attracted to Western culture, but also repelled by it." "So are you suggesting Islam promotes violence? I don't think Islam is any more violent than any other religions . . . But the key factor is the demographic factor. Generally speaking, the people who go out and kill other people are males between the ages of 16 and 30." "Should the US do more to promote democracy and human rights in the Middle East?  . . . In the Islamic world there is a natural tendency to resist the influence of the West, which is understandable given the long history of conflict between Islam and Western civilisation. . . . paradoxical situation: many of the groups arguing against repression in those societies are fundamentalists and anti-American." "Apart from our closest allies, no country has lined up more solidly behind the US than Russia. Is this when Russia turns decisively to the West? Russia is turning to the West for pragmatic reasons. . . . they are very worried about the rise of China, and this will turn them to the West." "The most frequent criticism levelled against you is that you portray entire civilisations as unified blocks. That is totally false. . . . Even in the current crisis, [Muslims] are still divided. You have a billion people, with all these sub-cultures, the tribes. Islam is less unified than any other civilisation." ... [more] 1:57:55 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Americans are masters of destruction Sunday March 10, 2002 The Observer The US is driving the Muslim world to hatred, says newspaper editor Abdel Bari Atwan "Although 11 September changed the Western world the effect on the Islamic world has been far greater. The gulf between the two is widening. Today many in the Islamic world are convinced that the US administration harbours real enmity for Islam and the Muslims. . . . as Arabs and Muslims we have been terrorised by the campaign launched in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia. . . . This campaign has given the mistaken impression that Muslims are the source of terrorism in the world, creating tensions and providing Islamic radical groups with the ammunition to recruit thousands of young Muslim men and women. Now the humane foundations of Western civilisation - tolerance, democracy, a fair and independent judiciary, equality before the law and respect for human rights - are being questioned by Muslims worldwide." " . . . the source of the hatred expressed towards America across the Islamic world is Washington's imbalanced foreign policy. Successive US administrations have supported the two worst things in the Islamic world: the Israeli occupation of the Arab-occupied territories and the corrupt dictatorial regimes that have been imposed on the people. The US will not win its war against terrorism unless it changes the way it sees the world and renounces its arrogant policy of resorting solely to military solutions in order to confront this phenomenon. There must be a long-term policy to deal with the roots of terrorism in order to eliminate the causes of the world's hatred for America. " "The Americans are experts in destruction but novices in reconstruction, reform and renovation. They must learn fast." ... [more] 1:48:52 PM  Google It!  comment  []

What's Behind the New Arab Momentum "As expected, Vice President Dick Cheney's mission to the Middle East has been drawn into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." "These developments do not mean the Iraq focus is lost, only that any major American policy initiative in the region must pass through Israel and Palestine if it is to get anywhere else. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other pro-American powers fear that the Palestinian predicament, televised every day, will rally the Islamist opposition and other alienated people within their societies — and will exacerbate their crises of authority, exposing their many flaws as well as their subservience to the United States." "Genuine local concerns in these countries — problems of modernization, relations with the West, the appropriate social roles of religion, the balance between national and Arab identities — are often defined in relation to Palestine and Israel, as if the problems were really there and not in Cairo or Riyadh. This is without question a dysfunctional way of practicing politics. But it is real enough and cannot be ignored, certainly not if the American goal is to change an Arab regime in Baghdad." ... [more] JAMES TARANTO in Opinion Journal March 18, 2002 10:41 a.m. EST "Whence these Arab dictators' sudden interest in "resolving" the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which they've been happy to have unresolved for decades? In Friday's New York Times . . . Fawaz Gerges of Sarah Lawrence College offered . . . [an] explanation . . . Gerges strains credulity when he asks us to believe that dictators of such ultrarepressive states as Saudi Arabia and Syria have suddenly developed a solicitude for public opinion. He shatters it when he claims that this solicitude leads them to seek peace. To whatever extent "public opinion" actually exists in these countries, it militates for war, not peace, with Israel." "Gerges takes such a blinkered view because he totally ignores the most important change affecting the region: America's new resolve, since Sept. 11, to combat terrorism. There's good reason to think it's the Arabs, not Cheney, who are changing the subject. . . . For months the question has been whether Saudi Arabia would permit America to use its bases there to topple the terror-supporting regime in Baghdad. A year from now the question may be whether America will choose to use its bases in Iraq to topple the terror-supporting regime in Riyadh. No wonder Crown Prince Abdullah would rather talk about the Palestinians." ... [more (search for item date)] 1:28:21 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Can There Be a Decent Left? " . . . it was suddenly clear, even to many opponents of the war, that the Taliban regime had been the biggest obstacle to any serious effort to address the looming humanitarian crisis, and it was the American war that removed the obstacle. It looked (almost) like a war of liberation, a humanitarian intervention. But the war was primarily neither of these things; it was a preventive war, designed to make it impossible to train terrorists in Afghanistan and to plan and organize attacks like that of September 11. And that war was never really accepted, in wide sections of the left, as either just or necessary. . . . The truth is that most leftists were not committed to having a coherent view about things like that; they were committed to opposing the war, and they were prepared to oppose it without regard to its causes or character and without any visible concern about preventing future terrorist attacks." "The radical failure of the left’s response to the events of last fall raises a disturbing question: can there be a decent left in . . . the only superpower? . . . Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left=s reaction to September 11, in the failure to register the horror of the attack or to acknowledge the human pain it caused, in the schadenfreude of so many of the first responses, the barely concealed  glee that the imperial state had finally gotten what it deserved." "Is there any way of escaping the politics of guilt and resentment on the home ground of a superpower? We might begin to worry about this question by looking at oppositional politics in older imperial states. . . . For wasn’t France the birthplace of enlightenment, universal values, and human rights?" "The cold war, imperial adventures in Central America, Vietnam above all, and then the experience of globalization under American leadership: all these, for good reasons and bad, produced a pervasive leftist view of the United States as global bully, rich, privileged, selfish, hedonistic, and corrupt beyond remedy.  The sense of a civilizing mission . . . never got off the ground here. Foreign aid, the Peace Corps, and nation-building never took on the dimensions of a 'mission'; they were mostly sidelines of U.S. foreign policy: underfunded, frequently in the shade of military operations. . . . And yet, the leftist critique . . . has been stupid, overwrought, grossly inaccurate. It is the product of  . . . 'the combination of embitterment and not thinking.' The left has lost its bearings. Why?" " . . . four reasons: 1. Ideology: the lingering effects of the Marxist theory of imperialism and of the third worldist doctrines of the 1960s and 1970s. . . . the inability of leftists to recognize or acknowledge the power of religion in the modern world. Whenever writers on the left say that the root cause of terror is global inequality or human poverty, the assertion is in fact a denial that religious motives really count.  . . . it would be better to find a reason in the realities of terrorism itself, in the idea of a holy war against the infidels, which is not the same thing as a war against inferior races or alien nations. In fact, Islamic radicalism is not, as fascism is, a racist or ultra-nationalist doctrine. Something else is going on, which we need to understand. But ideologically primed leftists were likely to think that . . . [a]ny group that attacks the imperial power must be a representative of the oppressed, and its agenda must be the agenda of the left. It isn't necessary to listen to its spokesmen. What else can they want except...the redistribution of resources across the globe, the withdrawal of American soldiers from wherever they are, the closing down of aid programs for repressive governments, the end of the blockade of Iraq, and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel? . . . A holy war against infidels is not, even unintentionally, unconsciously, or “objectively,” a left politics. But how many leftists can even imagine a holy war against infidels? 2. Powerlessness and alienation: leftists have no power in the United States and most of us don't expect to exercise power, ever. Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as politically incorrect. . . . They talked and wrote as if they could not imagine themselves responsible for the lives of their fellow-citizens. That was someone else’s business; the business of the left was...what? To oppose the authorities, whatever they did. . . . as if there was no need at all to balance security and freedom. Maybe the right balance will emerge spontaneously from the clash of rightwing authoritarianism and leftwing absolutism, but it would be better practice for the left to figure out the right balance for itself, on its own; the effort would suggest a responsible politics and a real desire to exercise power, some day. But what really marks the left, or a large part of it, is the bitterness that comes with abandoning any such desire. The alienation is radical. 3. The moral purism of blaming America first: many leftists seem to believe that this is like blaming oneself, taking responsibility for the crimes of the imperial state. In fact, when we blame America, we also lift ourselves above the blameworthy (other) Americans. The left sets itself apart. Whatever America is doing in the world isn’t our doing. . . . it doesn’t allow for the favorite posture of many American leftists: standing as a righteous minority, brave and determined, among the timid, the corrupt, and the wicked. A posture like that ensures at once the moral superiority of the left and its political failure. 4. The sense of not being entitled to criticize anyone else: how can we live here in America, the richest, most powerful, and most privileged country in the world, and say anything critical about people who are poorer and weaker than we are? . . . we all enlisted on the side of oppressed men and women and failed, again and again, to criticize the authoritarianism and brutality that often scars their politics. There is no deeper impulse in left politics than this enlistment; solidarity with people in trouble seems to me the most profound commitment that leftists make. . . . Even the oppressed have obligations, and surely the first among these is not to murder innocent people, not to make terrorism their politics. Leftists who cannot insist upon this point, even to people poorer and weaker than themselves, have abandoned both politics and morality for something else. They are radical only in their abjection." "What ought to be done? I have a modest agenda: put decency first, and then we will see. So, let’s go back over my list of reasons for the current indecency. Ideology. . . . For the moment we can make do with a little humility, an openness to heterodox ideas, a sharp eye for the real world , and a readiness to attend to moral as well as materialist arguments. . . . high among our interests are our values: secular enlightenment, human rights, and democratic government. Left politics starts with the defense of these three. Alienation and powerlessness. . . . they don't necessarily get things right, and the angrier they are and the more they are locked into their combative posture, the more likely they are to get things wrong. . . . We can be as critical as we like, but these are people whose fate we share; we are responsible for their safety as they are for ours, and our politics has to reflect that mutual responsibility. Blaming America first. . . . The United States is not omnipotent, and its leaders should not be taken as co-conspirators in every human disaster. . . . But shouldn’t an internationalist left demand a more egalitarian distribution of power? Well, yes, in principle; but any actual redistribution will have to be judged by the quality of the states that would be empowered by it. Not blaming anyone else. The world . . . is too full of hatred, cruelty, and corruption for any left, even the American left, to suspend its judgement about what’s going on. . . . If we value democracy, we have to be prepared to defend it, at home, of course, but not only there." ... [more] 1:19:00 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Thursday, March 14, 2002

Listen to the Kuwaitis March 11, 2002 8:40 a.m. What can we learn from the baffling stance of the Kuwaitis? "Those who were educated over here seemed to be the most virulently anti-American." "What can we learn from the baffling stance of the Kuwaitis? First, the past conduct of the United States counts for nothing in the present crisis. . . . Since there is not a single democracy or free media in the Arab Middle East, there is almost no chance that religious figures, politicians, academics, intellectuals, and average people can debate honestly the growing contradictions between Islam and the modern world — or Islam's need for Western expertise and the ensuing resentment that such dependency apparently incurs. Instead the success and power of the United States — and to a lesser extent of Israel — in Pavlovian outbursts become the cheap targets when venting Middle-Eastern frustration at internal economic failure, religious hypocrisy, government autocracy, and endemic cultural contradiction, whether in an impoverished Egypt or the affluent Gulf. If saving an entire people from extinction earns less than a decade's worth of appreciation, then nothing we do in the future will matter much either. In the same manner, we should assume that the billions of dollars that go to Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine to help 'moderates' bring not thanks for our largess, but rather contempt for our naiveté. It would be far more intellectually honest — and cheaper — simply now to allow them all to be the enemies that they wish to be rather than the friends they do not." "Second, a common theme of the Kuwaiti displeasure toward us is apparently the murderous Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . . . Mr. Arafat . . . quite vocally backed the Iraqi destruction of Kuwait. . . . In other words, the very peoples that the Kuwaitis now express solidarity with just a few years ago were celebrating their own demise." "But besides ingratitude and hypocrisy, there is also the larger and more metaphysical issue of Westernization that explains Middle-Eastern schizophrenia — the third rail upon which neither our own Arabists nor Middle Eastern 'moderates' dare tread. Kuwait possesses no indigenous tradition of consensual government, religious tolerance and diversity, secular rationalism, free speech and open debate, or class and gender equality — in other words, the entire cargo necessary for a humane and technically sophisticated culture." " . . . public opinion in Kuwait confirms that the root of anti-Americanism is not poverty (they are rich), not exploitation (they do not give oil away), not past grievance (we saved them), not purported solidarity with the Palestinians (whom they ejected), but a basic sense of umbrage and accompanying envy that grows with greater exposure to the West." " . . . the solution for our fickle friends in the Gulf is a long overdue accounting with the terrorist autocracy of Iraq and the implementation of consensual government in its place. . . . These are grim times when our very best Americans are dying in Afghanistan to stop Islamic fundamentalists from vaporizing thousands more of our innocent civilians. It is not the hour to mince words, back-peddle, or pretend about a Middle East that presently does not exist. Courting Kuwait in the present crisis would be like hosting Franco in Washington, D.C. during December 1941. We really are in a war about which our President has said that you are either for us or against us. What we are learning from the Kuwait people is that they prefer the latter. " ... [more] 1:20:18 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Surge of Arab unrest on horizon? March 13, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern "Driven by a burgeoning youth population, stagnant economies and the regionally unpopular U.S. war on terrorism, domestic challenges in many Arab states are nearing critical mass. . . . [Arab government] measures so far are half-hearted at best and will not resolve the underlying pressures nor halt a surge in popular unrest in the coming year." "Mounting social and economic pressures, combined with the U.S. hunt for al- Qaida, has made maintaining the status quo in the Arab world impossible. The added pressure of a U.S. war against Iraq could seriously destabilize several regimes in the region. . . . an explosion in popular unrest within the next year." "Washington's hunt for al-Qaida . . . the U.S. campaign is widely unpopular in the Middle East." "tension between frustrated and angry Arab citizens and their governments. . . . the tensions surrounding Iraq complicate an already explosive situation. . . . Arab governments are already feeling threatened, the most important being that the Arab world as a whole has missed out on the economic boom brought about by globalization. . . . many Arab economies remain sluggish and tied to extractive industries. Only Egypt and Jordan fall within the list of top 50 countries on the World . . . Global Competitiveness Index. . . . a population bulge combined with high unemployment is creating a pressure- cooker scenario across the board. More than 50 percent of the population in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria is under 25. . . . To counter the looming social problems and deflect the tension created both by the U.S. war against al-Qaida and the cooperation of Arab governments with Washington, many regimes now are taking wide-ranging and unusually proactive measures." "The Saudi example is only one of many. . . . Syria . . . Bahrain . . . Jordan . . . Egypt . . . Yemen . . . Lebanon . . . These reforms, measures and initiatives are meant to diffuse popular resentment. But most are little more than cosmetic. . . . Once it becomes obvious that these measures are insufficient, the frustration and dissent that prompted the changes will only resurface. . . . In the Arab world, such waves of protest are now on the horizon. Who takes advantage of them is the next question." ... [more] 11:12:58 AM  Google It!  comment  []

9:54:40 AM    comment  []

Wednesday, March 13, 2002

The next clash of civilisations? 16 January 2002 To travel through the ‘developing’ lands during the current war is to encounter a level of anger and protest against the West that reveals a core fissure in global politics. Not the terrorist challenge to the civilised world, but rising opposition from communities across the globe to the stifling embrace of materialist consumerism. "I have seen and heard intelligent people driven by some hatred of the West and of America, symbol of its power, lauding, defending or justifying the actions of a mass murdering Saudi millionaire who they had probably never heard of last August, and still know next to nothing about. . . . Perhaps those pictures of . . . Islamic people apparently celebrating on 11 September have made it clear to you that the anger at America and its allies runs deeper than imagined." "Perhaps too, though, this undercurrent of resentment and hatred which people all over the world continue to feel for the West and all that it represents is something more than that. Something deeper. Something that showers of neither money nor bombs can solve. If so, what? . . . it may be, still, that this has something to do with an aspect of globalisation, and the opposition to it, which is rarely mentioned, but which may even be the key to the whole puzzle: something called culture. Something which is mostly unseen, taken for granted, ill-defined, until it is threatened, and which then has the power to create more discord, rebellion and opposition than mere economics ever could." " . . . we have talked about a clash of world views – of cultures – that has been sparked by the new wave of corporate capitalism unleashed over the last two decades. This clash is between two distinct forces. One is a fundamentally materialistic world view, driven by multinational companies, politicians and their handmaidens in multinational agencies like the World Bank, WTO and IMF. It sees people as consumers, nations as markets, the natural environment as a bundle of resources ripe for profitable extraction and unique, ancient cultures as demographics. The other is a vast, massing, often confused but potentially hugely powerful collection of opponents, numbering tens of millions around the world, who see life in quite different terms. This may represent a real clash of civilisations; a clash between the destructive, homogenising force of the West’s capitalist economic model, and the diverse, varied, hectic alternatives that every day are destroyed by it. . . . the West and its increasingly smug politicians had better start realising what they are up against, before their whole edifice comes tumbling down." " . . . centres of resistance to the global economy all over the world. . . . What ties them all together, though, is that idea of culture. Partly a defence of their traditional cultural values which are so alien to the West; close communities, shared land, utterly different conceptions of nature, work, family, time, which the global economy must destroy in order to expand its markets and thrive. But also, more broadly than this, a collection of values which might be called a global culture of resistance . . . " "What might these values – this alternative culture – be? . . . some themes are clear. Opponents of the neoliberal machine believe in diversity – cultural, individual, ecological, economic – over homogeneity. They believe that one global model can never fit all, and talk . . . of 'a world in which many worlds can fit'; the precise opposite of the McWorld that globalisation is imposing. They believe in certain common aspects of life which cannot and should not ever be commodified or privatised by global economic interests; water, agriculture, the airwaves, the atmosphere, traditional knowledge, biological diversity, gene lines and more; a concept some call the “global commons”. They believe in communities exercising their own form of democracy and gaining genuine control over their land and resources. They reject centralisation and tend to be suspicious of both big government and big corporations, and of traditional ideologies, left or right. All this they sum up in their most well-worn slogan: 'Our world is not for sale.'" " . . . the growing opposition to an economic model which is eating them alive. It represents a frustration felt by millions, and may provide an alternative to celebrating mass murder as the only outlet for kicking back at the West. This looks increasingly like a new culture in the making; a global culture, formed of many, many older ones, which is heading straight towards the culture of neoliberalism at breathtaking speed." "When – if – they collide, we could see what a clash of civilisations really means. . . . no-one involved really knows how it will be resolved. But it will have to be, and with real change, for the tens of millions of dissenters are not going away anytime soon; indeed, their numbers are growing all the time. And whatever the powerful try or say, they will not be shut up or shut out. They have far, far too much at stake." ... [more] 4:40:12 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Letters Exchanged between KENZABURO OE and EDWARD W. SAID March 6, 2002 From Oe to Said Japan's youth should avoid assimilation into cultural imperialism " . . . I was reading your ``Culture and Imperialism.'' I was reading it partly to intensify my criticism against myself for not sufficiently confronting history and reality." "The Japanese are now willingly accepting the rule by cultural imperialism or unification of the cultural and national identity . . . Japan's envisagement of her identity with the world other than Islamic countries. . . . I am not certain-perhaps nobody is-whether humankind can surmount the current crisis without being integrated into the imperialism (not only cultural but overall imperialism) of one great nation." From Said to Oe Indiscriminate hostility makes Muslims enemies of the state "As one of the world's great writers, you are also a sensitive witness to the travails of our time, particular those that concern Japan, an extraordinary country that seems to embody more intractably than most, the contradictions, the ups and downs of modernity and tradition, war and peace, dependence and audacity, empire and its loss." "'What does it feel like to be the enemy?' which is something that every Arab or Muslim American that I know feels: We are the officially designated enemies of a nation whose president committed himself publicly to a war against evil, on an apocalyptic level and scale unknown to previous history. . . . [It is] a noteworthy fact that two of the officially designated members of the 'axis of evil' are Muslim states, one of them Arab, and that the only countries since the Vietnam War that the U.S. has waged all-out war against are Muslim countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, whose complete destruction was desired, if not totally achieved." "Who can forget Herman Melville's character Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, the greatest American novel, in relentless, crazy pursuit of the white whale that has become his monomaniacal obsession as the personification of evil?" "My impression is that what has overtaken America is a wave of triumphal patriotism . . . Yes, it is completely understandable for the United States to have responded to the attacks, but that response has been overlain with a kind of metaphysical language justifying unilateralism abroad while preventing discussion and criticism at home. . . . what we are talking about . . . is American power on such an unprecedented scale as to grind down the rest of the world and say . . . you're either with us or you're for terrorism." " . . . used without qualification as a concept merely to identify what one doesn't like, or something evil that has been done, or an official enemy, the word 'terrorism' can also obscure what may be an act of resistance, or of desperation caused by a preponderance of power that is both heedless and destructive. . . . To every Arab and Muslim, what Israel has been doing is state terrorism, and what Palestinians do most of the time is to resist that violence, sometimes using desperate terrorist means." " . . . human knowledge is essentially tragic and always somehow inadequate to the terrible immediacy of human experience. That doesn't stop one, however, from thinking and trying everlastingly to elaborate the situation that presents itself so urgently for consideration, analysis, judgment. And this is one reason, whether we live in Japan or the United States, the engulfing power of enormous military enterprises and huge corporate endeavors prompts us to deal with them carefully and stubbornly, analyzing and demystifying them, without falling into the kind of assent to authority that so many of our compatriots have succumbed to. Never unquestioning solidarity without criticism, is my motto. And I think yours, too. Doubtless we are now in a new phase of history, of which the regulation of political discourse by central authority is an intimidating reality for individuals everywhere." ... [more] 3:34:55 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Tuesday, March 12, 2002

The slyer virus: The West's anti-westernism The New Criterion "September 11, 2001 was a call to moral seriousness. We know now what is at stake." "Around the world, there are certain societies that function and those that don’t. The ones that work have certain things in common. The ones that don’t reject some or all of those features, disdaining explicitly the rule of law, property rights, free expression, and representative government, thereby additionally depressing economic activity, technological innovation, foreign investment, education, and the arts. ... it is in the nature of multicultural man, generous to a fault, to regard these aberrations as just another “alternative lifestyle”— lesbianism, vegetarianism, totalitarianism, whatever." " ... in the immediate aftermath of September 11, it quickly became clear that there was no serious antiwar movement—just a few aging Ivy League slogan-parroters whose tired tropes failed to spark even on campus. ...  the inability of the elites to rouse the masses to their tattered banner speaks well for Tennyson’s 'common sense of most,' at least in the United States. Not for the first time, one appreciates the importance of the popular will as a brake on the inclinations of the elite." "Given the choice between its booming westernized economy or a blood-soaked wasteland, Yugoslavia eagerly chose the latter. The critical soundtrack is not Britney, but the deeper rhythms of the culture playing underneath. ... The Durban Syndrome—the vague sense that the West’s success must somehow be responsible for the rest’s failure—is a far slyer virus than the toxic effusions of the Chomsky-Sontag set, and it has seeped far deeper into the cultural bloodstream.  At its most benign, Durban Syndrome manifests itself in a desire not to offend others if one can offend one’s own instead." "This is what we’re fighting for—the right not to tolerate any intolerance of our tolerance. ... The one identity we’re not encouraged to trumpet is the one that enables us to trumpet all the others: our identity as citizens of a very particular kind of society, built on the rule of law, property rights, freedom of expression, and the universal franchise. I am Western, hear me apologize!" " ... generally, around the world, the likelihood of living your life unmolested by the arbitrary cruelties of government is inversely proportional to how far the state departs from Anglo-American theories of liberty. ... Of the world’s fifty most free nations, half were once ruled by Britain. That’s the sort of thing most countries would boast about, not teach in schools as a shameful legacy of oppression." "Multiculturalism was invented to make amends for “cultural imperialism,” for the idea that the West in taking its ideas to the world had somehow obliterated all the other cultures out there. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. ... while it’s not as dramatic as blowing statues sky- high, when Congress is willing to collude in a fiction [the Iroquois Confederation] about the foundation of America’s institutions, it’s embarking on the same process, removing some of those building blocks from our civilization. Once begun, selective demolition is hard to control." [deconstruction] " ... every sermon on the social issues of the day reached a climax with the words, 'We are all guilty!' Riddled with self- doubt and an enthusiastic pioneer of the peculiar masochism that now afflicts the West, the Anglican Church has for years enjoyed the strange frisson of moral superiority that comes from blanket advertising of one’s own failures. It was surely only a matter of time before some litigious types took them at their own estimation. ... 'Cultural genocide' is similar to traditional forms of genocide—such as being herded into ovens or hacked to pieces with machetes—but with the happy benefit, from the plaintiffs’ point of view, that you personally don’t have to be killed in order to have a case. All you need are blurry accusations, historical resentments, and a hefty dose of false-memory syndrome. Against craven clerics like the Anglican Church, that’s more than enough." "No civilized society legislates retrospectively: if you pass a seatbelt law in 1990, you don’t prosecute people who were driving without them in 1980. Likewise, we should not sue the past for noncompliance with the orthodoxies of the present. We are the accumulations of our past, in its wisdom and folly, and to repudiate it is a totalitarian act, never more explicitly captured than in Pol Pot’s proclamation of 'Year Zero.' The reason why the American Revolution succeeded and the French, Russian, and almost all others failed is precisely because it resisted the 'Year Zero' approach. ... As long as we are ashamed of ourselves, there’ll always be something to apologize for." "Until Islamic fundamentalism came along, all the noisiest anti-Western ideologies were developed in the West, again mostly in Anglo-America. (Capitalism itself, as the French Eurocrats used to lecture Mrs. Thatcher, is “an Anglo-Saxon fetish.”) Whether you’re a liberal democracy or a moribund dictatorship, you’re operating to a Western template. Ever since Karl Marx sat in the Reading Room of the British Library writing Das Kapital, great Western thinkers have been obsessed with discovering the flaw in capitalism, a kind of negative Holy Grail for the knights of progressivism. For Marx, capitalism functioned only by exploiting the proletariat. But the proletariat got richer and bought homes in the suburbs. So the next generation of Marxists turned their attention to “colonialism”: capitalism functioned only by looting the West’s imperial possessions. But the West decolonized in the Fifties and Sixties, and they didn’t get any poorer, only the colonies did. So the Marxists invented “neo- colonialism”: capitalism functioned by informally exploiting the nominally independent developing world. But the dramatically differing rates at which developing economies developed in Asia, Africa, and Latin America seemed to have little to do with external forces and a lot more to do with obvious local factors." "Like all the rest of the West’s anti-Western theorists, they don’t dispute that capitalism works but only why it works. To those of us of a less pathological bent, it seems obvious that, rather than “exploiting” people, it invites citizens to exploit their own potential." "This then is the paradox of the most successful culture in history: the “Anglo-Saxon fetish” and its attendant liberties have enabled more people to live their lives in freedom, health, and material comfort. Yet at the same time no other culture works so hard to deny its achievements and its heritage, to insist there must be a catch, there’s gotta be an alternative. There isn’t. The Anglophone culture has succeeded because it is in its way an anti-culture—a culture of individual rights, not collective rights or group rights (which the Euro-left have always been partial to) or identity politics (in which form collective rights have made a critical beachhead here)." ... [more] 4:34:44 PM  Google It!  comment  []

Sunday, March 10, 2002

March 10, 2002 A Foul Wind By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN "There is something about this new, intensely violent, stage of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is starting to feel like the fuse for a much larger war of civilizations. You can smell it in the incredibly foul wind blowing through the Arab-Muslim world these days." "The notion is taking hold ... that with a combination of demographics (a baby boom) and terrorism, the Arabs can actually destroy Israel. Some radicals even fantasize that they can undermine America." "'If you are willing to give up your own life and that of thousands of your own people, the overwhelming power of America and Israel does not deter you any more. We are now on the cusp of the extremists' realizing this destructive power, before the majority is mobilized for an alternative.' ... until the passive majorities are ready to act against the energetic minorities, the minorities will have their way. That's why our choices are becoming clear: either we have civil wars within the communities ... or we could end up in a war of civilizations, between communities, with America also being pulled in." " ... if the Arab moderates didn't step up with a peace idea of their own, they were going to be dragged into a collision with America. ... With all the passive support shown for bin Laden in the Arab-Muslim world, it's not so easy any more to understand who is a moderate or who is an extremist out there. But if we don't force ourselves, and Arab moderates, to make that distinction and live by it, we're heading for a war of civilizations." ... [more] 11:05:46 AM    comment  []

Saturday, March 09, 2002

What We're Fighting For Preamble "AT TIMES it becomes necessary for a nation to defend itself through force of arms. Because war is a grave matter, involving the sacrifice and taking of precious human life, conscience demands that those who would wage the war state clearly the moral reasoning behind their actions, in order to make plain to one another, and to the world community, the principles they are defending. We affirm five fundamental truths that pertain to all people without distinction: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. The basic subject of society is the human person, and the legitimate role of government is to protect and help to foster the conditions for human flourishing. Human beings naturally desire to seek the truth about life's purpose and ultimate ends. Freedom of conscience and religious freedom are inviolable rights of the human person. Killing in the name of God is contrary to faith in God and is the greatest betrayal of the universality of religious faith. We fight to defend ourselves and to defend these universal principles." What are American Values? " ... no appeal to the merits or demerits of specific foreign policies can ever justify, or even purport to make sense of, the mass slaughter of innocent persons. ... in a democracy such as ours, in which government derives its power from the consent of the governed, policy stems at least partly from culture, from the values and priorities of the society as a whole. ... our attackers ... grievances extend far beyond any one policy, or set of policies. ... our attackers despise not just our government, but our overall society, our entire way of living. Fundamentally, their grievance concerns not only what our leaders do, but also who we are." So who are we? What do we value? " ... some values sometimes seen in America are unattractive and harmful. Consumerism as a way of life. The notion of freedom as no rules. The notion of the individual as self-made and utterly sovereign, owing little to others or to society. The weakening of marriage and family life. Plus an enormous entertainment and communications apparatus that relentlessly glorifies such ideas and beams them, whether they are welcome or not, into nearly every corner of the globe. One major task facing us as Americans ... is facing honestly these unattractive aspects of our society and doing all we can to change them for the better." " ... other American values - what we view as our founding ideals, and those that most define our way of life ... are much more attractive ... mention four of them. ... first is the conviction that all persons possess innate human dignity as a birthright ... the idea that all persons possess equal dignity. The clearest political expression of a belief in transcendent human dignity is democracy. ... the affirmation of the equal dignity of men and women, and of all persons regardless of race or color. ... second ... the conviction that universal moral truths ... exist and are accessible to all people. ... third is the conviction that, because our individual and collective access to truth is imperfect, most disagreements about values call for civility, openness to other views, and reasonable argument in pursuit of truth. ... fourth is freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. ... these values ... apply to all persons without distinction, and cannot be used to exclude anyone from recognition and respect based on the particularities of race, language, memory, or religion. ... Historically, no other nation has forged its core identity ... so directly and explicitly on the basis of universal human values." " ... we believe that all people are created equal. We believe in the universal possibility and desirability of human freedom. We believe that certain basic moral truths are recognizable everywhere in the world. ... the best of what we too casually call 'American values' do not belong only to America, but are in fact the shared inheritance of humankind, and therefore a possible basis of hope for a world community based on peace and justice." What about God? " ... our belief that invoking God's authority to kill or maim human beings is immoral and is contrary to faith in God. ...  'holy war' or 'crusade,' not only violates basic principles of justice, but is in fact a negation of religious faith, since it turns God into an idol to be used for man's own purposes." "The human person has a basic drive to question in order to know. Evaluating, choosing, and having reasons for what we value and love are characteristically human activities. ... Politically, our separation of church and state seeks to keep politics within its proper sphere, in part by limiting the state's power to control religion, and in part by causing government itself to draw legitimacy from, and operate under, a larger moral canopy that is not of its own making. Spiritually, our separation of church and state permits religion to be religion, by detaching it from the coercive power of government. In short, we seek to separate church and state for the protection and proper vitality of both." A Just War? " ... reason and careful moral reflection also teach us that there are times when the first and most important reply to evil is to stop it. There are times when waging war is not only morally permitted, but morally necessary, as a response to calamitous acts of violence, hatred, and injustice. This is one of those times. ... The primary moral justification for war is to protect the innocent from certain harm. ... If one has compelling evidence that innocent people who are in no position to protect themselves will be grievously harmed unless coercive force is used to stop an aggressor, then the moral principle of love of neighbor calls us to the use of force. ... if the danger to innocent life is real and certain, and especially if the aggressor is motivated by implacable hostility - if the end he seeks is not your willingness to negotiate or comply, but rather your destruction - then a resort to proportionate force is morally justified." "Just war authorities from across history and around the world ... consistently teach us that noncombatants are immune from deliberate attack. ... it is not morally acceptable to make the killing of noncombatants the operational objective of a military action. ... These principles strive to preserve and reflect ... the fundamental moral truth that 'others' - those who are strangers to us, those who differ from us in race or language, those whose religions we may believe to be untrue - have the same right to life that we do, and the same human dignity and human rights that we do." September 11, 2001 "We use the terms "Islam" and "Islamic" to refer to one of the world's great religions, with about 1.2 billion adherents, including several million U.S. citizens ... We use the terms "Islamicism" and "radical Islamicist" to refer to the violent, extremist, and radically intolerant religious-political movement that now threatens the world, including the Muslim world. ... This radical, violent movement opposes not only certain U.S. and western policies ... but also a foundational principle of the modern world, religious tolerance, as well as those fundamental human rights, in particular freedom of conscience and religion ... and that must be the basis of any civilization oriented to human flourishing, justice, and peace." " ... the animating philosophy of this radical Islamicist movement, in its contempt for human life, and by viewing the world as a life-and-death struggle between believers and unbelievers (whether non-radical Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, or others), clearly denies the equal dignity of all persons and, in doing so, betrays religion and rejects the very foundation of civilized life and the possibility of peace among nations." "Those who slaughtered more than 3,000 persons on September 11 and who, by their own admission, want nothing more than to do it again, constitute a clear and present danger to all people of good will everywhere in the world, not just the United States. Such acts are a pure example of naked aggression against innocent human life, a world-threatening evil that clearly requires the use of force to remove it." ... [more] 3:02:43 PM    comment  []

March 9, 2002 Buffett Warns on Terror Attacks, Markets "Billionaire investor Warren Buffett issued a pessimistic outlook on the world on Saturday, saying the war on terror could never be won -- a potential problem for his insurance interests -- and warning that returns from the stock market over the next few years look meager. Buffett, known as the 'Oracle of Omaha' for his astute investments, also blasted executives for taking millions of dollars out of businesses even as they fare badly, a practice he said went far beyond Enron Corp." "'Fear may recede with time, but the danger won't ... The war against terrorism can never be won. The best the nation can achieve is a long succession of stalemates.''' "' ... decidedly lukewarm feelings about the prospects for stocks in general over the next decade or so ... Today's equity prices presage only moderate returns for investors ... The market outperformed business for a very long period, and that phenomenon had to end. A market that no more than parallels business progress, however, is likely to leave many investors disappointed, particularly those relatively new to the game.''' BOSSES MAKE OFF WITH THE CASH "Buffett also returned to a favorite theme -- the shabby ethics of many businesses in the United States -- encapsulated by the tech bubble and the fall of Enron. ... 'disgusted by the situation, so common in the last few years, in which shareholders have suffered billions in losses while the CEOs, promoters, and other higher-ups who fathered these disasters have walked away with extraordinary wealth' ... Enron has become the symbol for shareholder abuse, Buffett said, but 'there is no shortage of egregious conduct elsewhere in corporate America' ... " ... [more] 9:59:25 AM    comment  []

Friday, March 08, 2002

The Longest War by Victor Davis Hanson The fight we’re in didn’t begin on September 11; it started thousands of years ago. It’s the struggle between East and West, and history can both encourage and help us—if we read it properly. " ... many facile comparisons that are being made with the past are fraught with error ... and they misinform us about every element of the situation, from its underlying politics to the nature of the terrorism involved, the proper role of the military in our nation’s survival, the broader cultural context, and the true philosophy of war itself." Politics " ... wars often break out over professed rather than authentic grievances. ... the source of conflict hinges on a state’s perceived sense of 'honor, fear, and self-interest.' ... bin Laden is ... an inherently evil man who hates and envies us for our clout and our influence. ... That simple explanation seems to offer more consistent logic than do all the ... critiques of our foreign policy ... the reasons bin Laden himself has proffered for his hatred of America: our military protection of Saudi oil, Israelis on Palestinian land, the hateful modernism of global democracy and capitalism, Jewish American women walking in the land of Mecca ... " " ... the Muslim world has rejected the twin forces of global capitalism and democracy. ... Failure to emulate Western market economies and constitutional governments is probably the chief reason why living standards in the Middle East, despite extravagant oil and natural gas deposits, lag so far behind those of other continents. Revolutionary Islamic movements, which promise Muslim utopias based on strict adherence to the Koran and the exclusion of foreign ideas, have, in fact, ruined their countries." " ... our policy of not intervening to insist on gradual democratization has been understandable, because of our worry over world oil supplies ... In an irony of history, the promotion of democratic movements in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq may be our best way to oppose Islamic fundamentalism ... Most Americans support Israel because it is the single Middle Eastern state most like us in its commitment to a free society based on the rule of law and the consent of the governed." Terror "We are repeatedly told that we have entered a 'new' age of terror ... Yet neither bin Laden nor terrorism is new, and so the solutions to their threats are not only known but time-honored. Our steep initial losses ... resulted far less from any intrinsic weaknesses than from the laxity and naiveté that characterize free democratic societies during times of peace." "Bin Laden is not a figure of national liberation ... Rather, he is more one of the marginal fanatics of history, the B-team, who, long after their countries were exposed to Western culture, their heritage and future forever altered, have sought to employ terror and mysticism to rally the disaffected around a messianic figure." "Not merely terrorist leaders but terror itself has been met and trumped in the past. ... In short, throughout history, the opponents of Western civilization who have lacked its discipline and firepower have turned to terror and suicide in their struggles to even the odds. ... without exception they have been beaten by the greater terror of discipline, resolve, vigilance, new tactics, and the firepower of industrial weaponry. ... They need bases, banks, transportation, and lodging, and therefore they must have friendly host governments that can be cajoled, threatened, or destroyed if they offer sanctuary." Military " ... unlike prior invaders, Americans have been prepared to strike with no illusions about the ease of their task and with no wish for conquest, lucre, or obeisance. Our generals are neither arrogant nor naive, and we have no interest in occupying the country or in turning its people from medieval Islam to preferring the benefits of popular American culture." "Today, America’s political landscape is hardly beset by civil unrest. Instead, there is unity and recognition that our home soil has been attacked." "The last decade has witnessed a revolution in bombing, as the old banes of airpower —ineffectiveness, collateral damage, and aircraft losses—have been vastly reduced through technological breakthroughs. ... with new generations of complex ordnance and sophisticated technology, bombers can increase their already prominent role to match the importance of conventional ground forces, shorten the war, and thus save lives on both sides." Culture " ... the long tradition of the Western way of war itself. Across some 2,500 years, the real danger for a Western power has always been another Western power. ... Western nations from the Greeks to the present are not weak at war but enormously lethal, far out of proportion to their sometimes relatively small populations and territories." " ... our power ... is founded on our very ideas and values. The underpinnings of Western culture—freedom, civic militarism, capitalism, individualism, constitutional government, secular rationalism, and natural inquiry relatively immune from political audit and religious backlash—have always brought carnage to adversaries when applied on the battlefield. ... [enemies] all can usually be trumped in the long run by the systematic approach to war that is emblematic of our culture. ... This is a question not of morality per se but of military capacity." " ... civic militarism is a trademark of Western armies, whose soldiers are not serfs or tribesmen but fight as citizens with rights and responsibilities. ... In the months to come, American ground and air forces, with better weapons, better supplies, better discipline, and more imaginative commanders, audited constantly by an elected Congress and President and scrutinized by a free press, will in fact destroy the very foundations of radical Islamic fundamentalism. Indeed, virtually the only check on the terrifying power of Western armies, other than other Western armies, is not enemy spears or bullets but the voices of our own internal dissent ... " "America is not only the inheritor of the European military tradition but in many ways its most potent incarnation. Our multiracial and radically egalitarian society has taken the concepts of freedom and market capitalism to their theoretical limits, to the great worry of critics on both the left and the right. While it is easy to ridicule the crassness of our culture and the collective amnesia of our masses, we must not underestimate the lethal military dynamism that such an energetic and restless citizenry accrues. Right now, background means little in comparison with our present ambition, drive, and ingenuity. For all the talk of a cultural mosaic, we are still a nation and a melting pot, as the composition of our military and its resulting effectiveness show." "So our creed is not class, race, breeding, or propriety, but unchecked energy, as so often expressed in our machines, our competitiveness, and our unabashed audacity. These are powerful assets when we turn from the arts of production to those of destruction." Philosophy "If we are so strong, then, why have so many Americans been doubtful about the future and poorly acquainted with their past?" " ... during the International Year of Peace, 1986, a global commission of experts concluded that war was unnatural and humans themselves unwarlike. Consequently, we now tend to believe that war always results from concrete, rather than professed, injustice, especially poverty brought about by colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and so on. As a result, dialogue and mediation have been elevated to the grand science of conflict-resolution theory, a sort of divorce counseling on the international level. And such naiveté and relativism have affected the very way we look at our current conflict, when we imagine that bin Laden is either ignorant, insane, or partly justified, rather than purely evil, and that his followers can be counseled, instead of annihilated like the fascists of Germany and Japan." "Our goal is not only to replace the Taliban and dismantle terrorist networks but also, by the annihilation of the Afghanistan government, to teach the misguided and misled in the region that when they let slip the dogs of war against America, it can be a dangerous thing indeed. ... Real morality does not permit hesitating out of fear of injuring the innocent or suffering casualties but rather can require enduring that and more to ensure that thousands now and millions later will not grow up to be murdered under terror and fascism, whose fruits we know so well from the sordid history of the past century. Lincoln called such sacrifices 'the terrible arithmetic.' ... it is hard to learn from war ... 'the harsh schoolmaster.' It shatters our modernist assumption that we can change the nature of man and eliminate the Neanderthal need to resort to arms. America at the beginning of the millennium, awash in wealth, luxury, and learning, was convinced that our enemies were either ignorant, misinformed, or temporarily insane—not evil, and certainly not rationally evil. And so in place of strong military preparation and the swift responses to aggression that had been the wisdom of the ages, we wanted lawyers to handle war as a criminal matter, or we thought we could avoid it through conciliation and mediation, or by buying off our enemies with money, kindness, education, apologies, or, as a last resort, the occasional Tomahawk missile." "Those of the professional elite now between the ages of 40 and 60 have, in the last few years, often been protected through sinecures, tenure, safe suburbs, select schools, and good money from the traditional checks on utopianism: the unemployment, scant disposable income, muscular work, and physical danger that daily confront members of the working class. ... Multiculturalism, conflict-resolution theory, postmodernism, pacifism, and a host of other new isms and ologies all sought to achieve a kinder world where equality of results would be enforced rather than equality of opportunity ensured, where injustice, disagreement, and thus war itself could somehow disappear. History and literature, the age-old instructors of war, were often crowded out as the proper guides to the human condition; facts, knowledge, and even methodical inquiry were replaced in many of our schools by an ideology. The result was that now many of our cultural leaders know little of history, and they mask their ignorance with the arrogance of good intentions, fueled by the bounty of American materialism." "Our salvation will hinge on how many of our leaders read history, learn its lessons, and act out of conviction drawn from classical American wisdom and military strength." ... [more] 1:48:37 PM    comment  []

National Review Online "America's Premier Conservative Website" Left Plays Survivor by Stanley Kurtz Why the anti-war Left must be. "The anti-war Left is back ... The problem for the Left is that Sept. 11 really may have changed everything — that a near-constant state of mobilization against terror may permanently cripple the politics of multiculturalism at home and anti-globalization abroad." "If you want to understand what's really going on in the mind of the anti-war Left, pick up the March issue of Harper's. There you will find an extraordinary article by novelist and University of Massachusetts English Professor John Edgar Wideman called, 'Whose War: The Color of Terror' ... His point is that Bush has cooked up a fraudulent war abroad 'to  upstage and camouflage the real war at home' (i.e. the "war" of a racist white American society against blacks). Wideman has next to nothing to say about Islamic terrorism. He's preoccupied instead with the cultural and political effects on America of a war with 'alarmingly open-ended goals.' Bush's 'phony war,' says Wideman is being waged not 'to defend America from an external foe but to homogenize and coerce its citizens under a flag of rabid nationalism.' ... Wideman's calumny is built upon a genuine fear. The president is in fact defending us from an external foe, but that urgently necessary defense really does have the effect of cutting off the cultural and political oxygen of the Left." "Wideman's calumny is built upon a genuine fear. ... he tries to conjure away the terrorist threat with standard-issue techniques of deconstruction.  We use the word 'terrorist' ... to deny the possibility of 'reasoned exchange' with our foes, to project the evil in ourselves onto a despised 'Other.'" "Lewis Lapham's own assault on the war in the latest issue of Harper's ... We have been inventing phony wars for nigh on 60 years ... all because of our need  to prove to ourselves that we're the good guys. ... all a ridiculous and self-fulfilling fantasy of national endangerment in the service of America's utopian quest for omnipotence. ... our seemingly ineradicable capacity to warmonger, even as we convince ourselves of our peace-loving intentions." "Pity (and fear) those so ashamed of their capacity for rage that they can no longer turn even a righteous anger against some foreign foe, but must vent their rage instead in an attack on their own country." "The cultural politics of the Left is essentially  an attempt to 'one up' democracy by being 'more egalitarian than thou.' The sense of superiority; the demand for control; anger against a hated foe — all of these forms of human irrationality are abundantly present in leftist politics. Yet a right-thinking, well-brought-up, hyper- egalitarian fellow can only enjoy these guilty pleasures if they're buried inside of an attack against America itself for some imagined sin against democracy. To feel angry at, or superior to, some benighted foreign foe is just too obvious — too embarrassing — a way for a sophisticated modern leftist to gratify all of those nasty but ineradicable human longings for supremacy. So how to run a leftist political crusade when America really is under threat from a foreign and undemocratic foe? It cannot be done." "That's why left-leaning intellectuals have retreated into a stance of tortured isolation and superiority, while still suggesting to anyone who will listen that the threat of terrorism and the war itself are nothing but mass delusions. ... But the timing is off. The Democrats and the Left are panicking — speaking out against the war too sharply, too soon, and with too little justification — all because they cannot control their fear that an 'open-ended' war against terrorism will permanently shift the cultural politics of the country to the right. Their fears are well taken. This war will not have a definitive ending. Because of that, the Left now has a very serious long-term problem on its hands. That definitely does not mean that the culture war is over. The sources of America's post-sixties cultural revolution are far too broad and deep for the culture war to fade. But in ways that may last for a very long time to come, our political and cultural center of gravity has shifted several degrees to the right." ... [more] 1:42:13 PM    comment  []

Wednesday, March 06, 2002

March 6, 2002 The Core of Muslim Rage By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN "Why is it that when Hindus kill hundreds of Muslims it elicits an emotionally muted headline in the Arab media, but when Israel kills a dozen Muslims, in a war in which Muslims are also killing Jews, it inflames the entire Muslim world?" "Because the real answer is rooted in something very deep. It has to do with the contrast between Islam's self-perception as the most ideal and complete expression of the three great monotheistic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — and the conditions of poverty, repression and underdevelopment in which most Muslims live today. ... Israel — not Iraq, not India — is 'a constant reminder to Muslims of their own powerlessness.' ... when a small band of Israeli Jews kills Muslims it sparks rage — a rage that must come from Muslims having to confront the gap between their self-perception as Muslims and the reality of the Muslim world. ... it is this poverty of dignity, not a poverty of money, that is behind a lot of Muslim rage today ... " " ... those Muslims, and there are many of them, who know that the suicidal rage of their fanatics is dragging down their whole civilization." ... [more] 8:20:34 AM    comment  []

Tuesday, March 05, 2002

THEOLOGY AND THE CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS by Jack Miles (JACK MILES, Senior Advisor to the President at the J. Paul Getty Trust and a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, is the author of Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God) " ... Samuel P. Huntington. ... his controversial 1993 "The Clash of Civilizations ... What [he] saw was, on the one hand, economic and cultural globalization and, on the other, resistance to it by those who saw it as merely the latest form of Western, historically Christian, and at this late date specifically American imperialism. ... many non-Western powers had cast their lot with the emerging global order ... China and world Islam had not done so, might never do so, and might even join forces in a joint counteroffensive against the West." "The border separating what Muslims call dar al-islam, the "House of Submission (Islam)," from dar al- harb, the "House of Warfare" seems increasingly to define a long irregular battlefront, one that as of September 11, 2001, stretches across four continents. ... An incomplete list would include, moving from east to west: Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, Kashmir and India, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, Sudan, Eritrea, Uganda, Cyprus, Bosnia and Kosovo, Algeria, and Nigeria." " ... the umma ... the House of Islam must surely seem a civilization under siege. ... umma refers to 'religion, shared values, and common concerns' yet 'does not denote nationality, kinship, or ethnicity.' Only the umma matches the international community in internal variety, geographical dispersion, and potentially global ambition." "The clash-of-civilizations question, from the Muslim side, is whether the umma can join the international community or whether it must incorporate the international community into itself. From the Western side, the clash-of-civilizations question ... must begin with the perhaps grudging recognition that there exist, in the first place, two bona fide international communities separated by a genuine cultural border along which for a long while now there has been more war than peace. ... from the Muslim side where modernity, Christianity, and the West are a single unholy stew, all these struggles are understood to be the same  struggle. For the West, the defining struggles of the twentieth century have been, in succession, democracy vs. fascism and democracy vs. communism. But for the umma, these are simply the latest civil wars in the long, bloody history of the House of Warfare. ... Secularized Christianity, as seen from inside the House of Islam, is simply degenerate Christianity and as such is even more alien to Islam than its ancestor." "Osama bin Laden ... thought that the umma, rallying to a jihad in Afghanistan, had won the real victory and would now proceed to win a second victory over the United States itself. American astonishment at the grandiose claim and American horror at the lethal ambition may stand as a measure of the chasm that separates Western and Muslim civilization. Unless this chasm can be bridged, the world may slide into a war of terrorist reprisal and counterreprisal with no end in sight." " ... in the House  of Islam, religious leaders typically have a far greater claim on the public than do civilian leaders, and it is a fatal mistake to leave the Muslim public -- the umma -- out of the equation." " ... secretaries of state may have to learn some theology if the current clash between Western and Muslim civilization is to yield to disengagement and peaceful coexistence ... If Osama bin Laden is a spiritual leader ... the first, crucial insight should be that he and his movement must be dealt with as what they are. To suppose that we can achieve security by dealing with him as a common criminal and with the Muslim governments that harbor his movement as secular governments unconcerned with the religious dimension in his appeal is to fight this new war as if it were the last war. ... Osama bin Laden does not represent true Islam. Who does represent true Islam? 'Will the real Islam please stand up?' This is the kind of question that our military and diplomatic institutions are designed never to ask and never to notice that they are not asking. ... Engaging a jihad for the soul of Islam as if it were an international manhunt for a common criminal is a battle plan guaranteed to fail." "It is the Muslim umma as a whole that has harbored this murderous movement within it, and it is the Muslim umma as a whole that must somehow be persuaded to break with it. ... Decapitation does not deal a death blow when the enemy has many heads. Peace will come not when any one terrorist and his network of secret agents have been "surgically" excised but when an authentic alternative vision has emerged within the House of Islam that makes the vision of victory-by- terrorism irrelevant and unwelcome." "The development of such an alternative vision, however, will require a major paradigm shift in Western diplomacy. It will no longer suffice to treat religion as a mere happenstance ("I happen to be Jewish," "I happen to be Muslim") and therefore as a political irrelevancy. This method of dealing with religion politically may have served us well enough in overcoming Christianity's own hideous wars of religion. But the old way will not meet this new challenge, for it takes off the table just the topic that militant Islam finds most compelling. One can no more discuss that topic without discussing theology than one can discuss communism without discussing ideology. Theology is the ideological element in religion, and nothing at this moment could be more tragically evident than that we have ignored it to our peril." " ... the acculturated Muslim communities of North America ... why may it not be the voice of these Western Muslim communities rather than [bin Laden's] voice that is heard most loudly in the world umma? Rather than the enemy within, the Muslims of the West should be seen as the ally within. ... Is there not good reason to believe that an authentically Western and authentically Muslim voice would find a wide audience?" ... [more] 11:33:24 AM    comment  []

Battles yet to come Mar 5th 2002 "Declarations of an American military victory in Afghanistan, such a prominent feature of political and diplomatic discourse in the past few months, have suddenly begun to look premature ... " "The abrupt collapse of the Taliban regime caught almost everyone, not least the Americans themselves, by surprise. ... The discovery of so many well-armed and determined al-Qaeda and Taliban troops, months after victory in Afghanistan had seemed largely assured, raises many questions. Why has it taken so long ... to discover their existence? How many others? ... Where are Osama bin Laden and other ... leaders ... ? ... where is Mullah Omar? ... Most significantly ... how secure is the interim Afghan government?" " ... caught off guard by the scale and ferocity of the resistance ... " " ... the country is in chaos. Warlords have divided up most of the country. The remit of the UN-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai does not extend beyond Kabul, and even there its control is shaky. ... Failure to secure stability in Afghanistan would also raise serious doubts about America’s plans for pursuing its war on terrorism anywhere else." ... [more] 8:51:59 AM    comment  []

Monday, March 04, 2002

March 3, 2002 Wall of Ideas By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN "I've spent the last six weeks traveling around the Arab-Muslim world, talking with people about Sept. 11 and U.S.- Muslim relations. ... How was this iron wall of ideas built? By many hands." "Do we ever press our values — democracy, freedom, women's rights — in the Arab-Muslim world? No. We talk about them only for China or North Korea, never for countries whose oil or bases we may need. Is there any wonder some people there see us as hypocrites?" "But our Arab-Muslim allies also helped erect this wall. ... they have let their conspiracy theories about America and Israel become easy excuses for why they never have to look at themselves — why they never have to ask, How is it that we had this incredible windfall of oil wealth and have done so poorly at building societies that can tap the vast potential of our people?" ... [more] 2:48:25 PM    comment  []

Sunday, March 03, 2002

March 3, 2002 Wall of Ideas By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN    ... [more] 11:43:56 AM    comment  []

Saturday, March 02, 2002

11:23:40 AM    comment  []

Friday, March 01, 2002

Wednesday, 27 February, 2002, 13:16 GMT Poll says Muslims angry at US ... [more] ... [more] 1:37:11 PM    comment  []

Thursday, February 28, 2002

DEFENDING THE WEST Why the Muslims Misjudged Us They hate us because their culture is backward and corrupt. BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON Monday, February 25, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST "Two striking themes--one overt, one implied--characterize most Arab invective: first, that there is some sort of equivalence--political, cultural and military--between the West and the Muslim world; and second, that America has been exceptionally unkind toward the Middle East." "Consensual government is not the norm of human politics but a rare and precious idea, not imposed or bequeathed but usually purchased with the blood of heroes and patriots, whether in classical Athens, revolutionary America or more recently Eastern Europe. Democracy's lifeblood is secularism and religious tolerance, coupled with free speech and economic liberty. ... Afghan tribal councils, without written constitutions ... do not make consensual government. ... the differences are critical, because they lie unnoticed at the heart of the crisis in the Muslim world, and they explain our own tenuous relations with the regimes in the Gulf and the Middle East." " ... we are surprised at the duplicity of the Gulf States in defusing internal dissent by redirecting it against Americans, forgetting that such is the way of all dictators ... intellectuals of the Arab world ... profess support for democratic reform ... but secretly fear that, back home, truly free elections would usher in folk like the Iranian imams, who ... would thereupon destroy the very machinery that elected them. The fact is that democracy ... is an epiphenomenon--the formal icing on a pre-existing cake of egalitarianism, economic opportunity, religious tolerance and constant self-criticism. The former cannot appear in the Muslim world until gallant men and women insist upon the latter--and therein demolish the antidemocratic and medieval forces of tribalism, authoritarian traditionalism and Islamic fundamentalism. ... we must promote democracy abroad in the Muslim world; but only they, not we, can ensure its success." "The catastrophe of the Muslim world is also explicable in its failure to grasp the nature of Western success, which springs neither from luck nor resources, genes nor geography. ... the Islamic intelligentsia recognizes the Muslim world's inferiority vis-à-vis the West, but it then seeks to fault others for its own self-created fiasco. Government spokesmen in the Middle East should ... have the courage to say that they are poor because their populations are nearly half illiterate, that their governments are not free, that their economies are not open, and that their fundamentalists impede scientific inquiry, unpopular expression and cultural exchange." "Has the Muslim world gone mad in its threats and ultimatums? ... Don't they realize that nothing is more fatal to the security of a state than the divide between what it threatens and what it can deliver? There is an abyss between such rhetoric and the world we actually live in, an abyss called power. ... we should remember that the lethal, 2,500-year Western way of war is the reflection of very different ideas about personal freedom, civic militarism, individuality on the battlefield, military technology, logistics, decisive battle, group discipline, civilian audit and the dissemination and proliferation of knowledge. ... Europeans, not Ottomans, colonized ... because of their longstanding attitudes and traditions about scientific inquiry, secular thought, free markets and individual ingenuity and spontaneity. ... We are militarily strong, and the Arab world abjectly weak, not because of greater courage, superior numbers, higher IQs, more ores or better weather, but because of our culture." "Every Western intellectual knows Edward Said's much-hyped theory of "Orientalism," a purely mythical construct of how Western bias has misunderstood and distorted the Eastern "Other." In truth, the real problem is "Westernism"--the fatally erroneous idea in the Middle East that its propaganda-spewing Potemkin television stations give it a genuine understanding of the nature of America, an understanding Middle Easterners believe is deepened by the presence in their midst of a few McDonald's franchises and hired U.S. public-relations firms." "Millions in the Middle East are obsessed with Israel ... the anger derives not from the tragic tally of the fallen but from Islamic rage that Israelis have defeated Muslims on the battlefield repeatedly, decisively, at will and without modesty. ... Israel is a constant reminder that it is a nation's culture--not its geography or size or magnitude of its oil reserves--that determines its wealth or freedom. For the Middle East to make peace with Israel would be to declare war on itself, to admit that that its own fundamental way of doing business--not the Jews--makes it poor, sick and weak." "Throughout the Muslim world, myth and ignorance surround U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East. ... Saudi and Kuwaiti Westernized elites find psychological comfort in their people's anti-American rhetoric, not out of real grievance but perhaps as reassurance that their own appetite for all things Western doesn't constitute rejection of their medieval religion or their 13th-century caliphate." "So a neighborly bit of advice for our Islamic friends and their spokesmen abroad: topple your pillars of ignorance and the edifice of your anti-Americanism. Try to seek difficult answers from within to even more difficult questions without. Do not blame others for problems that are largely self-created or seek solutions over here when your answers are mostly at home. Please, think hard about what you are saying and writing about the deaths of thousands of Americans and your relationship with the United States. America has been a friend more often than not to you. But now you are on the verge of turning its people--who create, not follow, government--into an enemy: a very angry and powerful enemy that may be yours for a long, long time to come."  ... [more] 3:45:34 PM    comment  []

Know Thy Enemy Why  they hate us. By Rabbi Daniel Lapin February 25, 2002 8:50 a.m. "Why do they hate us? ... The key to understanding why these youths hate us may be their very youth." "First there is the Parenting Effect. ... It is a paradox that often the more you give to others, the more they resent you. ... The world's parent, America is always mending broken nations, pulling apart squabbling peoples, giving indulgent allowances (called foreign aid) even while our children revile us in international forums. Every time natural disaster strikes the Third World, we're on the scene immediately in mothering mode. We pay for our generosity as parents have always done: by enduring the hatred of those we benefit." "Second, there is the Bully Factor. ... Long before Sept. 11, America was bullied. ... World Trade Center bombing ... bombing of an American facility in Saudi Arabia ... bombing of Khobar Towers ... bombings of two U.S. Embassies ... bombing of the U.S.S. Cole ... after each of these ... we little or nothing in response. Young Muslims found something contemptible in this, inviting them to humiliate us." "Third ... is the Enemy Advantage. ... the first rule for building any social movement is: Create an enemy. ... Long ago, Islam established world empires by focusing its wrath on the infidel: Christians. ... deployed the Enemy Advantage to rally their young. America makes the perfect enemy because this is the most enthusiastically Christian nation in the world ... " "If we understand our foes a bit better, we should be in an improved position to defeat them." ... [more] 3:18:12 PM    comment  []

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

Sad to see America's ego intact Steve Friess, an American expat who's just returned from Beijing, offers these insights on Sept. 11, which he watched on CNN: "The world is stunned to find the legacy of Sept. 11 is an enlarged American ego, not a chastened sense that we must try to co-exist better in the global community. Others keep hearing how America has 'changed forever' and how Americans are now more cooperative and selfless. But in only five months--well short of 'forever'--that 'patriotism' has eroded what we claim are American principles and has led to more, not less, isolationism and insolence." "This newfound patriotism amounted not to an opportunity for Americans to act as better domestic or global citizens but to feel even more superior to the rest of the planet. And that is how we got into this mess in the first place." ... [more] 8:41:56 AM    comment  []

Tuesday, February 26, 2002

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel P. Huntington, Simon & Schuster, 1996 "The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the rest of the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West." "This changing international environment brought to the fore the fundamental cultural differences between Asian and American civilizations. At the broadest level the Confucian ethos pervading many Asian societies stressed the values of authority, hierarchy, the subordination of individual rights and interests, the importance of consensus, the avoidance of confrontation, 'saving face,' and, in general, the supremacy of the state over society and of society over the individual. In addition, Asians tended to think of the evolution of their societies in terms of centuries and millennia and to give priority to maximizing long-term gains. These attitudes contrasted with the primacy in American beliefs of liberty, equality, democracy, and individualism, and the American propensity to distrust government, oppose authority, promote checks and balances, encourage competition, sanctify human rights, and to forget the past, ignore the future, and focus on maximizing the immediate gains. The sources of conflict are in fundamental differences in society and culture." ... [more] ... [more] 1:45:22 PM    comment  []

"V.S. Naipaul, the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, made this appraisal of modern day Islamic fundamentalism based on his first-hand observations made during extensive visits to four countries then in the throes of 'Islamization.'" "In Islam, and especially the Islam of the fundamentalists, precedent is all. The principles of the Prophet--as divined from the Koran and the approved traditions--are for all time. They can be extended to cover all disciplines. The Prophet was reported to have said that the best Muslims were going to be his contemporaries, the second best thegeneration after, and so one, the decline continuing till the end of time. Can that be read as a condemnation of 'Darwinism'? It is what the new, educated fundamentalists say. And it is at once sound faith, and part of their rage against the civilization that encircles them and which they as a community despair of mastering." "In the fundamentalist scheme the world constantly decays and has constantly to be re-created. The only function of intellect is to assist that re-creation. It reinterprets the texts; it re-establishes divine precedent. So history has to serve theology, law is separated from the idea of equity, and learning is separated from learning. The doctrine has its attractions. To a student from the University of Karachi, from perhaps a provincial or peasant background, the old faith comes more easily than any new-fangled academic discipline. So fundamentalism takes root in the universities, and to deny education can become the approved educated act. In the days of Muslim glory Islam opened itself to the learning of the world. Now fundamentalism provides an intellectual thermostat, set low. It equalizes, comforts, shelters, and preserves." "In this way the faith pervades everything, and it is possible to understand what the fundamentalists mean when they say that Islam is a complete way of life. But what is said about Islam is true, and perhaps truer, of other religions -- like Hinduism or Buddhism or lesser tribal faiths -- that at an early stage in their history were also complete cultures, self-contained and more or less isolated with institutions, manners, and beliefs making a whole." "The Islamic fundamentalist wish is to work back to such a whole, for them a God-given whole, but with the tool of faith alone-belief, religious practices and rituals. It is to seek to re-create something like a tribal or a city-state that -- except in theological fantasy -- never was. The West, or the universal civilization it leads, is emotionally rejected. It undermines; it threatens. But at the same time it is needed, for its machines, goods, medicines, warplanes, the remittances from Islamic emigrants, the hospitals that might have a cure for calcium deficiency, the universities that will provide master's degrees in mass media. All the rejection of the West is contained within the assumption that there will always exist out there a living, creative civilization, oddly neutral, open to all to appeal to. Rejection, therefore, is not absolute rejection. It is also, for the community as a whole, a way of ceasing to strive intellectually. It is to be parasitic; parasitism is one of the unacknowledged fruits of fundamentalism." 1:37:46 PM    comment  []

Our Islamic Fifth Column by Farrukh Dhondy, November 11, 2001 "The creed that leads these vandals to disown and destroy anything that is deemed 'un-Islamic' leads them to a mission to challenge and convert the world, through terror if necessary. They don’t for a moment consider that the world doesn’t want a religion that suppresses women, adopts a medieval creed of crime and punishment, forces people to prayer at the behest of the police, forbids the writing of novels, the making of films, and the playing of music, and destroys the minds of its young and leads them to fanatical acts of suicidal terror in which they murder upward of 6,000 innocents." "They must see that an interpretation of the Quran that belittles all preceding human history and that refuses to be modified by the discoveries of the Enlightenment, of scientific advance and social liberty, cannot coexist with the rest of the modern world." "True, passages in the Quran urge believers to 'kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them' and to wagte war on neighboring infidels. But ... " ... [more] 1:34:05 PM    comment  []

Crusade Propaganda By Thomas F. Madden, the author of A Concise History of the Crusades and coauthor of The Fourth Crusade,  associate professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. November 2, 2001 "The rise of the West was due to something completely new and totally unpredictable that was happening in Europe. A new civilization, built on the old to be sure, was forming around ideas like individualism and capitalism. Europeans expanded on a global scale, leaving behind the Mediterranean world, seeking to understand and explore the entire planet. Great wealth in a commercial economy led to a fundamental change in almost every aspect of Western life, culminating in industrialization. The Enlightenment turned Western attention away from Heaven and toward the things of this world. Soon religion in the West became simply a matter of personal preference. Crusades became unthinkable—a foolishness of a civilization’s childhood." "As for the Islamic world, it was left behind. Even today Muslim countries struggle to catch up. It is a difficult task, for they are seeking to reconcile their own culture with modern concepts that are uniquely western. Invariably this tension has led to charges among Muslims that their religion and their world is being sold out. Those Muslim leaders who have dealt with the West have been labeled apostates and sometimes targeted by jihad warriors. Indeed, the vast majority of Islamist terrorism over the last century has been aimed at other Muslims. The division, starkly put, is between those who wish to adopt the benefits of Western culture while retaining a devotion to Islam and those who consider any concession to the West to be an abjuration of faith. In short, it is a division between the medieval and the modern worlds." ... [more] 1:29:02 PM    comment  []

"Unfortunately, it seems t me that a true clash is quite likely to happen, as the war goes on and as more and more pictures of civilian casualties come out of Afghanistan. I fear that while Sept. 11 united the West, the response to Sept. 11 will unite the Muslim world." "The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness." – Samuel P. Huntington 1:24:38 PM    comment  []

"We are now in a horrible dilemma. If we ‘bring him to justice’ and put him on trial we will provide him with a platform for global propaganda. If we assassinate him – perhaps ‘shot while trying to escape’ – he will be a martyr. If he escapes he will be a Robin Hood. He can’t lose. And even if he is eliminated, it is hard to believe that a global network that apparently consisting of people as intelligent and well-educated as they are dedicated and ruthless will not continue to function effectively until they are traced and dug out by patient and long-term operations of police and intelligence forces, whose activities will not, and certainly should not, hit the headlines. Such a process as that may well take decades." "The danger of nuclear war, at least on a global scale, has now thank God ebbed, if only for the moment, but it has been replaced by another, and one no less alarming; the likelihood of an on-going and continuous confrontation of cultures, that will not only divide the world but shatter the internal cohesion of our increasingly multi-cultural societies. And the longer the overt war continues against ‘terrorism’, in Afghanistan or anywhere else, the greater is the danger of that happening." "The difference today is that such leaders (as bin Lauden) can recruit followers from all over the world, and can strike back anywhere in the world. They are neither representative of Islam nor approved by Islam, but the roots of their appeal lies in a peculiarly Islamic predicament that has only intensified over the last half of the twentieth century: the challenge to Islamic culture and values posed by the secular and materialistic culture of the West, and their inability to come to terms with it." -- Sir Michael Howard, Historian 1:23:06 PM    comment  []

A Sense of American Unfairness Erodes Support in Gulf States by Warren Hoge, October 2, 2001 [quotes from interviews in middle east] “The story is not bin Laden. The story is the injustice to the Palestinian people.” – Ghanim Alnajjar, director of Kuwait University’s Center for Strategic and Future Studies "If Israeli killings of Palestinians continue most of us will certainly have to reconsider our role in the coalition.” – Sheik Abdullah bin Zaid al-Nahayan, Information Minister UAE " ... expressing fear of a 'clash of civilizations' between the West and Islam." “Who stood to profit from the attacks? Israel, of course. This is how we feel here." – Ibrahim A. L. Hadban, Political Science Professor, Kuwait University  "The United States 'has directed its efforts at only one aspect – gangs of terrorists who are Muslim – while ignoring the state terrorism of Israel. There is a general conviction that the U.S. is unfair.'" – Abdulnabi Mansour, head of the Bahrain Research and Study Center ... [more] 1:17:21 PM    comment  []

Mr. Gerges, Arab Scholar "Arab leadership has failed to create accountable political institutions, ensure civil liberties and provide their people with a measure of social justice and economic equity. These failings are the major reasons for the lack of Arab development, yet few Arabs take moral or personal responsibility for their predicament." 1:11:17 PM    comment  []

"Maladies at the heart of the Arab system: tyrannical regimes, rejection of modernity and individual rights, rigidly hierarchical social structures and lack of freedom." 1:10:16 PM    comment  []

"To most people in the Islamic and Arab worlds the official U.S is synonymous with arrogant power, known mainly for its sanctimoniously munificent support not only of Israel but of numerous repressive Arab regimes and its inattentiveness even to the possibility of dialogue with secular movements and people who have real grievances." Edward Said, Arab Intellectual "Anti-Americanism in this context is not based on a hatred of modernity or technology envy. Rather, it is based on a narrative of concrete interventions, specific depredations and, in the cases of the Iraqi people’s suffering under U.S.-imposed sanctions and U.S. support for the 34-year-old Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, cruel and inhumane policies administered with stony coldness."  "Mr. Said sees imperial designs in the United States’ threatened military attack on Afghanistan as well, arguing that it would help solidify its control of oil 'from the gulf to the northern oil fields.'" 1:09:13 PM    comment  []

"What they abominate about “the West”: its emancipated women, its scientific inquiry, its separation of religion from the state." 1:04:24 PM    comment  []

"The humiliation and rage that spawn terrorist groups “of a global reach” are real. But they are the result of a long-term historic failure, not of recent events. We are eating the fruit of three centuries of bitterness between a dominant West and an enfeebled Islamic world."--Martin Wolf: The economic failure of Islam ... [more] 1:02:37 PM    comment  []

"Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism. The war against secularism is conscious and explicit . . . The war against modernity is for the most part neither conscious nor explicit, and is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more." – Bernard Lewis [historian of the Islamic world] 12:58:19 PM    comment  []

"The origins of Islamic hatred of the West are complicated: a history of struggles going back almost 14 centuries, the fear of modernity felt by “right wing” theocratic fundamentalists, the countries’ widespread poverty conjoined with demagogic clerics and wealthy rulers. This rage is also directed against Arab regimes in which secular life reigns over the religious realm. The cadres of the new jihad make it very apparent that their quarrel is with Judaism and secularism on principle, not with (or not just with) Zionism." 12:57:27 PM    comment  []

"Postmodernism: Challenge assertions that truth and ethical judgement have any objective validity.  Pomo is an attempt to question the fundamental philosophical and political premises of the West. It argues that many of the concepts like truth, morality and objectivity are culturally “constructed,” for instance, the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, who has challenged objective notions of truth. Pomo rejects universal values and ideals, however, it establishes its own universal: Western imperialism becomes a variety of Original Sin. The implication is that any act against the West by a postcolonial power can be seen as a reaction to an act by the West."  "Postcolonialism: The seemingly universalist principles of the West are ideological constructs. One culture, particularly the West, cannot reliably condemn another, that a form of relativism must rule. Western claims of objectivity are put into question. A governing perspective of Poco is opposition to the West’s “myth of universality,” which is supposed to be little more than a “strategy of imperial control.” However, Poco’s rejections of universal values and ideals leave little room for unqualified condemnations of a terrorist attack. Such an attack can be seen as a horrifying airing of a legitimate cultural grievance. Military responses can seem no different. And so the conflict becomes a series of symmetrical confrontations (i.e. Isreal/Palestinian)."  "The values latent in Pomo and Poco—an insistence that differing perspectives be accounted for and that the other be comprehended—are consequences of the very ideas of the Western Enlightenment—reason and universality—that these values work to undo." 12:56:15 PM    comment  []

Toqueville was speaking of the French revolutionaries when he said that their “salient characteristic” was a loss of faith that upset their “mental equilibrium.” The vacuum in their soul was promptly filled by the ideal of the perfectibility of man. “They had a fanatical faith in their vocation—that of transforming the social system, root and branch, and regenerating the whole human race.” They adored the human intellect and had supreme confidence in its power to transform laws, institutions, and customs. But the intellect they adored was only their own.  [Like the US universalism attempting to change world culture and civilization, customs and values circa 2001?] 12:51:50 PM    comment  []

Monday, February 25, 2002

Occidentalism By Avishai Margalit, Ian Buruma The New York Review of Books, January 17, 2002 " ... now fighting a 'holy war' to liberate Asia from the West and purify Asian minds of Western ideas. Part of the holy war was, as it were, an exercise in philosophical cleansing. ... But what was 'the West' which had to be purged? What needed to be 'overcome'? ... They are ... materialism, liberalism, capitalism, individualism, humanism, rationalism, socialism, decadence, and moral laxity. ... The key characteristics of the Japanese or "Asian" spirit were self-sacrifice, discipline, austerity, individual submission to the collective good, worship of divine leadership, and a deep faith in the superiority of instinct over reason. ... the Japanese were 'intrinsically quite different from so-called citizens of Western nations,' because the divine imperial bloodlines had remained unbroken ... 'Subjects have no mind apart from the will of the Emperor. Their individual selves are merged with the Emperor. If they act according to the mind of the Emperor, they can realize their true nature and attain the moral ideal.' Of such stuff are holy warriors made." "War against the West is partly a war against a particular concept of citizenship and community. ... Oswald Spengler ... claimed that after 1918 the Russians had become "Asiatic" again ... [and] The West ... would go under because white people had become soft, decadent, addicted to safety and comfort. As he put it: 'Jazz music and nigger dances are the death march of a great civilization.'" "East and West are not necessarily geographical territories. Rather, Occidentalism ... is a cluster of images and ideas of the West in the minds of its haters. Four features of Occidentalism ... the City, the Bourgeois, Reason, and Feminism. Each contains a set of attributes, such as arrogance, feebleness, greed, depravity, and decadence, which are invoked as typically Western, or even American, characteristics. ... The things Occidentalists hate about the West are not always the ones that inspire hatred of the US. The two issues should not be conflated. ... Anti-Americanism is an important political issue, related to Occidentalism but not quite the same thing." "Anti-liberal revolts ... contain a deep hatred of the City, that is to say, everything represented by urban civilization: commerce, mixed populations, artistic freedom, sexual license, scientific pursuits, leisure, personal safety, wealth, ... power. [versus] the simple life of the pious peasant, pure at heart, uncorrupted by city pleasures, used to hard work and self-denial, tied to the soil, and obedient to authority. Behind the idyll of rural simplicity lies the desire to control masses of people, but also an old religious rage ... The 'holy men' of the three monotheistic religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—denounced Babylon as the sinful city-state whose politics, military might, and very urban civilization posed an arrogant challenge to God. ... there is a recurring theme in movies from poor countries in which a young person from a remote village goes to the big city, forced by circumstances or eager to seek a new life in a wider, more affluent world. Things quickly go wrong. The young man or woman is lonely, adrift, and falls into poverty, crime, or prostitution. Usually, the story ends in a gesture of terrible violence, a vengeful attempt to bring down the pillars of the arrogant, indifferent, alien city." "The modern city, representing all that shimmers just out of our reach, all the glittering arrogance and harlotry of the West, has found its icon in the Manhattan skyline ... plastered all over the world. You cannot escape it. ... It excites longing, envy, and sometimes blinding rage. The [Islamic extremists] ... have tried to create a world of purity where visions of Babylon can no longer disturb them." "In big, anonymous cities, separation between the private and the public makes hypocrisy possible. Indeed, in Occidentalist eyes, the image of the West, populated by city-dwellers, is marked by artificiality and hypocrisy, in contrast to the honesty and purity of a Bedouin shepherd's life. Riyadh, and its grandiose Arabian palaces, is the epitome of hypocrisy. Its typical denizens behave like puritanical Wahhabites in public and greedy Westerners at home. To an Islamic radical, then, urban hypocrisy is like keeping the West inside one like a worm rotting the apple from within. ... Those who hate ... see the marketplace as the source of greed, selfishness, and foreign corruption, [they] also hate those who are thought to benefit from it most: immigrants and minorities who can only better their fortunes by trade. When purity must be restored, and foreign blood removed from the native soil, it is these people who must be purged ... " "Whatever Israel does, it will remain the alien grit in the eyes of Muslim purists. And the US will always be intolerable to its enemies. In bin Laden's terms, "the crusader-Jewish alliance, led by the US and Israel," cannot do right. The hatred is unconditional. ... [bin Laden:] 'Every grown-up Muslim hates Americans, Jews, and Christians. It is our belief and religion. Since I was a boy I have been at war with and harboring hatred towards the Americans.' ... Since the Manhattan skyline is seen as a provocation, its Babylonian towers had to come down." "Worshipers of tribal gods, or even of allegedly universal ones ... have a tendency to believe that infidels either have corrupt souls or have no souls at all. ... Christian missionaries speak of saving souls. In extreme cases ... justification to kill unbelievers with impunity. Soul is a recurring theme of Occidentalism. ... Occidentalists extol soul or spirit but despise intellectuals and intellectual life. They regard the intellectual life as fragmented, indeed as a higher form of idiocy, with no sense of "totality," the "absolute," and what is truly important in life. It is a fairly common belief among all peoples that 'others' don't have the same feelings that we do. ... idea we have heard expressed many times in China, India, Japan, and Egypt that Westerners are dry, rational, cold, and lacking in warm human feelings. ... The post-Enlightenment Anglo-Franco- Judeo-American West sees itself as governed by secular political institutions and the behavior of all citizens as bound by secular laws. Religious belief and other matters of the spirit are private. ... the West is not governed by spiritual leaders who seek to mediate between us and the divine world above. Our laws do not come from divine revelation, but are drawn up by jurists." "Societies in which Caesars are also high priests ... use a different political language. ... Whereas the Allies ... fought the Japanese in the name of freedom, the Japanese holy war in Asia was fought in the name of divine justice and peace. ... Islamists, too, aim to unite the world under one peaceful roof, once the infidels and their towers have been destroyed. When politics and religion merge, collective aims ... tend to encompass the whole world ... The state is a secular construct. ... the US and other Western democracies are examples of what Ferdinand Toennies termed a Gesellschaft, whose members are bound by a social contract. The other kind of community, the Gemeinschaft, is based on a common faith, or racial kinship, or on deep feelings ... Edgar Jung, described World War I as a clash between the Intellect (the West) and the Soul (Germany)." "Enemies of the West usually aspire to be heroes. ...  Islamism, Nazism, fascism, communism are all heroic creeds. ... The common enemy of revolutionary heroes is the settled bourgeois, the city dweller, the petty clerk, the plump stockbroker ... the kind of person ... who might have been working in an office in the World Trade Center. It is a peculiar trait of the bourgeoisie, perhaps the most successful class in history ... to be hated so intensely ... Lack of heroism in the bourgeois ethos ... has a great deal to do with this peculiarity. The hero courts death. The bourgeois is addicted to personal safety. The hero counts death tolls, the bourgeois counts money. ... German social scientists before World War II were fascinated by the juxtaposition of the hero and the bourgeois ... The bourgeois, he wrote, is forever hiding himself in a life without peril. ... 'Happiness lies only in sacrificial death.' ... a young Afghan warrior was quoted ... 'The Americans," he said, "love Pepsi Cola, but we love death.'" " ... the democratic West ... the lack of grandeur, the intellectual conformity, and the cultural mediocrity that is supposed to be inherent in our systems of government. Democracy, Tocqueville warned, could easily become the tyranny of the majority. ... when contempt for bourgeois creature comforts becomes contempt for life you know the West is under attack. This contempt ... appeals to those who feel impotent, marginalized, excluded, or denigrated ... " "Liberalism, wrote an early Nazi theorist ... is the 'liberty for everybody to be a mediocre man.' The way out of mediocrity ... is to submerge one's petty ego into a mass movement, whose awesome energies will be unleashed to create greatness in the name of the Führer, the Emperor, God, or Allah.  ... What is the mere life of one, two, or a thousand men, if higher things are at stake? This is a license for great violence against others: ... whoever must be purged to make way for a greater, grander world. ... the truest holy warrior [is] the kamikaze pilot. Self-sacrifice is the highest honor in the war against the West. It is the absolute opposite of the bourgeois fear for his life." " ... 'the trend towards the emancipation of women [is] keenly distinctive of the West.' ... [Orientals believe] Female emancipation leads to bourgeois decadence. The proper role for women is to be breeders of heroic men. ... Bin Laden is equally obsessed with manliness and women. ... The West, in his account, is determined 'to deprive us of our manhood. We believe we are men.' ... To all those who see military discipline, self-sacrifice, austerity, and worship of the Leader as the highest social ideals, the power of female sexuality will be seen as a dire threat. ... Women's freedom is incompatible with a death cult. Indeed, open displays of female sexuality are a provocation ... but to all repressed people whose only way to exaltation is death for a higher cause. Pictures of partly naked Western women advertising Hollywood movies, or soft drinks, or whatever, by suggesting sexual acts, are as ubiquitous in the world as those images of the Manhattan skyline." "There is no clash of civilizations. ... The current conflict ... is not between East and West, Anglo-America and the rest, or Judeo-Christianity and Islam. The death cult is a deadly virus which now thrives, for all manner of historical and political reasons, in extreme forms of Islam. Occidentalism is the creed of Islamist revolutionaries. Their aim is to create one Islamic world guided by the sharia (Islamic law), as interpreted by trusted scholars who have proved themselves in jihad (read "revolution"). This is a call to purify the Islamic world of the idolatrous West, exemplified by America. The aim is to strike at American heathen shrines, and show, in the most spectacular fashion, that the US is vulnerable, a "paper tiger" in revolutionary jargon. Through such "propaganda by action" against the arrogant US, the forces of jihad will unite and then impose their revolution on the Islamic world." "We can expect more 'propaganda by action' against the US and US installations, accompanied by crude Occidentalist propaganda. The West ... should counter this intelligently with the full force of calculating bourgeois anti-heroism. ... we should not counter Occidentalism with a nasty form of Orientalism. Once we fall for that temptation, the virus has infected us too." ... [more] 3:53:37 PM    comment  []

Fall of the Muslim empire by Sol Schindler Published 2/5/2002 "For more than 1,000 years Islam had been in the ascendant with the Mediterranean a virtual Islamic lake. Muslim armies had marched through North Africa and the Iberian peninsula; Sicily and even parts of mainland Italy had come under the crescent; in the east, the Ottoman Empire had replaced the Byzantine and all the Balkans paid homage. The sultan commanded the most powerful armies, the greatest treasury and the largest collection of centers of learning. Constantinople was a magnet that drew both traders and scholars, and considered itself the hub around which the rest of the world revolved. ... For most of its existence, Islam was more egalitarian than the rigidly hierarchical kingdoms of Christendom, which was one of the causes of its great success." "In the West, class and caste distinctions were more dominant and not so easily overcome. In time, however, the West changed. Inductive replaced deductive reasoning, and civilization turned more pragmatic. ... The utility of one's beliefs became important considerations. While the West became more elastic in its approach, a kind of cultural arteriosclerosis developed in the Middle East. ... the secular state, a concept which arose in the West and was made palatable by the Christian belief of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's, is a critical distinction. In the Muslim empires, God and Caesar were the same. The sultan (temporal leader) and the caliph (spiritual leader) were the same man." "Modern Turkey, which rose from the shambles of the Ottoman Empire, abolished the office of the caliph and today identifies itself as a secular state, the only Middle Eastern country with a majority Muslim population to do so. ... They reasoned that if they wanted to improve their lot they had to be the ones to take action. They had to look to themselves, acknowledge their mistakes and rectify them. Only then could there be any progress towards attainable goals." "The rest of the Middle East, however, did the reverse and played the blame game. First it was the Mongols, then the Ottomans, and then the French and English who were to blame for all shortcomings. Now it is the United States and Israel. ... If, however, the Islamic world continues to play the role of victim it will continue in a downward spiral of hate and violence leading to the chaos that invites foreign intervention. The choice is theirs, and they are the only ones who can make it." ... [more] 2:47:44 PM    comment  []

Sunday, February 24, 2002

The Historical Realist Doctrine [discussed in Beyond Jihad Vs. McWorld by Benjamin R. Barber, link below] The historical realist doctrine was firmly grounded in an international politics of sovereign states pursuing their interests in a setting of shifting alliances where principles could only obstruct the achievement of sovereign ends that interests alone defined and served. Its mantras--the clichés of Lord Acton, Henry Morgenthau, George Kennan or, for that matter, Henry Kissinger--had it that: nations have neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies but only permanent interests; that the enemies of our enemies are always our friends; that the pursuit of democratic ideals or human rights can often obfuscate our true interests; that coalitions and alliances in war or peace are tolerable only to the degree that we retain our sovereign independence in all critical decisions and policies; and that international institutions are to be embraced, ignored or discarded exclusively on the basis of how well they serve our sovereign national interests, which are entirely separable from the objectives of such institutions. ... [more] 3:27:04 PM    comment  []

Setting Right a Dangerous World By JOHN LEWIS GADDIS (January 11, 2002) "Few other nations have worried so little for so long about what is coming to be called 'homeland security.' ... define this lack of concern as a central feature of the American character. 'Free security' ... had done as much to shape Americans' view of themselves as had the availability of free, or almost free, land. ... in America, homeland security could be taken for granted ... [now] Americans have entered a new stage in their history, in which they can no longer take security for granted: It is no longer free -- anywhere, or at any time. ... Security, therefore, has a new meaning, for which little in our history and even less in our planning has prepared us." [author's italics] "our foreign policy since the cold war ended has insufficiently served our interests. [author's italics] ... deficiencies in the American approach to the world during the post-cold-war era that are clearer now than they were then. ... One ... was unilateralism, an occupational hazard of sole surviving superpowers. ... second ... We neglected the cultivation of great-power relationships. ... third ... a preference for justice at the expense of order. ... fourth ... the inconsistency with which we pursued regional justice. ... fifth ... our tendency to regard our economic system as a model to be applied throughout the world, without regard to differences in local conditions and with little sense of the effects it would have in generating inequality. ... Finally ... the United States emphasized the advantages, while neglecting the dangers, of globalization." "What connects these shortcomings is a failure of strategic vision: the ability to see how the parts of one's policy combine to form the whole, and to avoid the illusion that one can pursue particular policies in particular places without their interacting with one another. It means remembering that actions have consequences: that for every action there will be a reaction, the nature of which won't always be predictable. It means accepting the fact that there's not always a linear relationship between input and output: that vast efforts can produce minimal results in some situations, and that minimal efforts can produce vast consequences in others. It means thinking about the implications of such asymmetries for the relationship between ends and means, always the central problem of strategy. Leverage is important, and our adversaries have so far proved more successful than we in using it. Finally, it requires effective national leadership, a quality for which American foreign policy during the post-cold-war era is unlikely to be remembered." ... [more] 3:15:28 PM    comment  []

Is Israel more secure now? by Edward Said (3 January 2002) "Israeli F-16s (generously supplied by the US) have regularly bombed and strafed Palestinian towns and villages, Guernica style ... After eight years of barren peace discussions 50 per cent of Palestinians are unemployed and 70 per cent live on less than 2 dollars a day. ... the obese old warmonger [Sharon] has the gall to keep repeating that Israel has been the victim of the same terrorism as that meted out by Bin Laden. ... The crucial point in all this is that Israel has been in illegal military occupation since 1967; it is the longest such occupation in history, and the only one anywhere in the world today: this is the original and continuing violence against which all the Palestinian acts of violence have been directed." " ... Israeli security to the exclusion of anything else has become the recognised international priority ... the endless grinding away of Palestinian aspirations, minute by minute, for the past 35 years. ... Arafat is hemmed in on all sides ... Arafat has shilly-shallied with the idea of calling new [elections], which would almost certainly challenge his authority and popularity in a serious way. ... Arafat's presence has been an organising focus for Palestinian politics, in which millions of other Arabs and Muslims have a very large stake." " ... the secular nationalists have hardly been noticed by the vast number of Western experts and Orientalists who take bin Laden – rather than the much larger number of Muslim and non-Muslim secular Arabs who detest what he does – to be the paradigm Muslim. ... the extremism of the religious groups – most of whom are more interested in the regulation of personal behaviour than they are in matters like globalisation or producing electricity and jobs." " ... Israel should be the state of all of its citizens not just of the Jewish people. For the first time, a major Palestinian challenge is being mounted inside Israel ... The moral high ground will soon be reclaimed from Israel, as the occupation becomes the focus of attention, and as more and more Israelis realise that it won't be possible to keep it going indefinitely. Besides, as the US war against terrorism spreads, more unrest is almost certain: far from closing things down, US power is likely to stir them up in ways that may not be containable. It's no mean irony that the renewed attention on Palestine came about because the anti- Taliban coalition made it necessary." ... [more] 2:57:40 PM    comment  []

11 September Some L[ondon] R[eview of] B[ooks] writers reflect on the reasons and consequences [October 4, 2001] Tariq Ali, London "What made them propagandists of the deed? The bombing of Iraq, economic sanctions, the presence of American Forces on Saudi soil. Politicians in the West have turned a blind eye to this, as they have to the occupation of Palestine and the crimes of Israel. Without profound change in the Middle East, Osama bin Laden, dead or alive, is of little significance." "In the West, Saudi Arabia is simply a source of oil. We prefer not to notice the scale of social and religious oppression, the widespread dejection and anxiety, the growing discontent among Saudis. ... Denied any secular openings, dissenting graduates have turned to radical Islam, accusing the Saudi royal family of hypocrisy, corruption and subservience to America. ... the real organisers are untouchable. Their tentacles reach into the heart of Saudi society ... " Neal Ascherson, London "It was the most open atrocity of all time, a simple demonstration written on the sky which everyone in the world was invited to watch. This is how much we hate you." Mary Beard, Cambridge " ... the cowboy President ... the feeling that, however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming. That is, of course, what many people openly or privately think. World bullies, even if their heart is in the right place, will in the end pay the price. ... glib definitions of 'terrorism' and its refusal to listen to what the 'terrorists' have to say. ... using the word 'terrorism' as an alibi for thinking what drives it ... " James Buchan, Norfolk "The news from the Middle East is not all bad. ... [Iran] Since Muhammad Khatami was elected President in a landslide in 1997, Iran has stumbled towards accommodation, first with the Arab countries, then with Western Europe and even its old bugbear, Britain. Out on the horizon is the US. The vast majority of Iranians have forgotten their grievance against the US, have shed many of their complexes about Western intrigue and want nothing more than to join the mainstream of world affairs. ... The chastened revolutionaries around Khatami see a 'historic opportunity' - that is the phrase that keeps recurring - to break out of their corner and restore relations with the United States." Amit Chaudhuri, Calcutta " ... America has been a great, self-appointed proponent of democracy in the modern world, while, in actuality, it has treated it as a nuisance and an obstruction when it gets in the way of its self-interest. ... For years, America's foreign policy ... has been concerned solely with extending its own sphere of influence, whatever the cost." Terry Eagleton, Dublin " ... there is no conscious hypocrisy in believing yourself the great bastion of freedom while massacring Cambodians, financing terrorist thugs like the Contras, embargoing Iraqi children to death and being in effect a one-party state ... " "America's only hope is to see itself in the eyes of others, but globalisation, which means that one of the most fearfully parochial nations in the world now stretches to every corner of the earth, shatters the mirrors in which it might contemplate its own estranged visage. As the globe is flattened into a single space, it is by the same stroke carved rigorously down the middle. Civility now confronts barbarism ... In the conflict between capitalism and the Koran, or a version of it, one transnational movement confronts another." Eric Foner, New York " ... the United States has directly or indirectly visited a great deal of violence on the Middle East ... the list of states that harbour terrorism includes some close allies of the United States. ... our European allies are unenthusiastic about the prospect of an open-ended war against the Islamic world. Americans reluctant to embark on an armed 'crusade' to rid the world of evil are now relying on our allies to impose some restraint on the White House." Paul Foot, London " ... there will be millions of poor and exploited people everywhere who, whatever they say out loud, will secretly rejoice at the breach of what had seemed to be America's impregnable military defence and intelligence. ... And just as the signs were growing of a renewed confidence in the world anti-capitalist movement, the attention of the world's leaders is focused on a single, dreadful act that gives them the excuse they need to gun the engines of oppression." Hal Foster, New York " ... For the first time many Americans have experienced extreme loss and grief, the daily bread of myriad people who resent this country so passionately. We must accept our responsibility for misery elsewhere ... " Charles Glass, Jerusalem " ... in Libya, when American warplanes punished people who were asleep and unarmed; in Iraq, when America sent explosive messages to the dictator, killing the people that an American President had called on to arise and depose him; in Lebanon, when an American battleship pounded the shore and blew up mountain houses; in Somalia, when the American Government decided its arms would save the Somalis from one another; and in the Palestinian territories that the Israel Defence Forces occupied in 1967 and where American weapons and money have enabled it to plant settlers, confiscate land and dictate its will to the natives. All those people must have imagined vengeance. America has come to stand in the same relation to the Third World, especially its Muslim corners, as Israel stands to its Palestinian subjects. When Palestinians demand rights, the Israeli Government ignores them. When Palestinians attack Israeli settlers and the soldiers conscripted to defend their illegal colonies, Israel bombs and besieges Palestinian villages. It also assassinates Palestinian activists. No one, least of all the United States, compels Israel to listen to the Palestinians. And nobody, least of all Britain, dares tell the United States to do, or not do, anything. Palestinians fall back on a tactic, not simply of the fanatic, but of the weak. The kamikaze is no one's weapon of choice." Stephen Holmes, New York " ... see the United States as a giant who walks unthinkingly across the earth, barely noticing the small peoples it crushes. ... Any action we take, especially if it inflicts Muslim civilian casualties, will recruit more foot-soldiers to the jihad. ... failed states incubate terrorism. Therefore, bullying these states, ignoring the need of weak governments for domestic political support, will be devastatingly counterproductive. ... Americans now see their own destiny at risk in such distant goings-on ... " Robert Irwin, London "Western observers of Islam ... once Communism had collapsed, it was possible to present Islam as the last great adversary. ... the alignments in the coming conflicts will demonstrate the precise opposite of the Huntington thesis [Clash of Civilizations]. ... the Islamists' struggle against the global hegemony of the United States." Fredric Jameson, North Carolina " ... the wholesale massacres of the Left systematically encouraged and directed by the Americans in an even earlier period. The physical extermination of the Iraqi and the Indonesian Communist Parties ... were crimes as abominable as any contemporary genocide. ... the resultant absence of any Left alternative means that popular revolt and resistance in the Third World have nowhere to go but into religious and 'fundamentalist' forms." R.W. Johnson, Durban "The big point about the present crisis is globalisation. The US says it cannot respond to this terrorism by simply 'going home' and has therefore declared the whole planet off- limits to terrorism. It will be an epic struggle. ... why worry if your [Muslim] casualties are worse then theirs? In the end they'll get fed up and go away and then you'll have won everything. ... The terrorists believe the US can still 'go home'. By which they mean, pull out of the Middle East, stop supporting Israel, stop harassing Gaddafi and Iraq. But America's dependence on Middle Eastern oil means that such a retreat would imply a de facto retreat from superpower status. Underneath the dreadful images lie these enormous strategic choices." Yitzhak Laor, Tel Aviv " ... Western nihilism, too, knows no limits; it switches, almost whimsically, its definitions of 'freedom' and 'terror', 'moderates' and 'extremists', and everything solid melts into air. ... At last Israel's victim status can be properly understood - no need to mention the Holocaust - while as perpetrators, we are unseen again. And the Arabs? They are criminals: no more chance for them to be seen as victims. We are in, they are out. We, the Jews, belong with you, dear Old West. Dear sponsors, we - like you - are victims." Thomas Laqueur, Berkeley "The chances of success in a war against terrorism are about the same as those in the war on drugs, which has destroyed the political and economic lives of several Latin American countries and left hundreds of thousands of people, mostly minorities, in jail here without affecting drug use very much. One thinks of the disastrous Afghan Wars of the British Empire ... there has been almost no serious attention paid to what this bombing says about the geopolitical and historical place of the United States in the world today." Michael Rogin, Paris " ... the Americans envied around the globe for once join so many of the world's other arbitrary victims of massive unmerited violence. ... attribute to the mass murderers any goal but to harm the American hegemon symbolically by acts that are bloodily real. No political response should anaesthetise the shock of the catastrophe in all its singularity." Richard Rorty, Virginia " ... our grandchildren will probably, for lack of a better term, use 'war' to describe the threat hanging over them, the situation that requires them to live in a garrison state: a nation in which everybody is accustomed to people in uniform roaring in, closing down buildings and public spaces, and arresting suspicious-looking people, without advance warning." Jacqueline Rose, London " ... pausing for thought. Acknowledging that those who behave unjustly, you could say 'inexcusably', may even so, in terms of the distribution of the globe's resources, also have justice on their side. The victims of injustice - last week, unequivocally, the US - are not always, automatically, just. ... We talk of infinite compassion or mercy. But if, instead, infinity has been claimed for our hold over justice, then we are in danger of believing - like the Islam now held accountable for all the ills in the world - that our justice, and our justice alone, is divinely sanctioned and follows the path of God. Then infinite justice is most likely to mean - with dreadful and unpredictable consequences for some of the poorest, most deprived, peoples of the world - being struck ad infinitum (the struggle, we are told, will be long), being pounded over and over again." Edward Said, New York " ... seven million Muslim Americans (only two million of them Arab)" Charles Simic, New Hampshire "Our engagement in the Middle East is scarcely mentioned when the causes of the tragedy are discussed." ... [more] 12:54:22 PM    comment  []

Saturday, February 23, 2002

A FARMERS’ INTERNATIONAL? By JOSÉ BOVÉ "Of course the US completely dominates the IMF and the World Bank, and its will is hegemonic within the Security Council. But the US government, in turn, is just a tool of the big companies. Its political  function is simply to relay the economic interests of the major firms—which is why, in the last elections, many people didn’t see any choice between Bush and Gore. Ralph Nader’s campaign highlighted the real nature of American politics. Candidates are effectively elected to be the representatives of financial or industrial groups. The system is entirely at the service of economic interests, which retain the real power. One can see this happening in detailed ways at the level of the federal administration: the power of the multinationals imposes itself directly on the running of the machine. The US state functions as a motor of support for them, institutionally and ideologically." "With the bombardment of Afghanistan, we are seeing the domestic propaganda needs of the United States being elevated to war aims,  inflicting revenge on an innocent people already suffering miseries of deprivation, while threatening further destabilization in that part of the world. There is also no doubt that the US wants access to oil wells outside the control of OPEC, and may have its eye on reserves in the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia." "September 11 should have been a chance to take stock of the sort of social and ideological costs  this regime has been exacting, and to call for its radical reform. Instead, they are seeking to reinforce their global domination, escalating the dangers of wider international conflict. As neoliberalism increases the balance of misery in the world, it just augments the numbers of those desperate enough to throw themselves into fanatical, suicidal attacks against it." ... [more] 3:54:10 PM    comment  []

Many Arabs Say Bush Misreads Their History and Goals [January 31, 2002] " ... American officials do not appreciate that Muslims feel picked on by the United States, or how deep feelings run for the Palestinian cause — or just how heavily history weighs here. ... 'The United States says that U.N. resolutions should be applied everywhere in the world except Israel. Why?' ... Across the Middle East ... the Afghan conflict and American support for Israel in the intensifying Arab-Israeli crisis have clearly left a sour aftertaste. ... the United States appears to be making Islam its enemy." "The authoritarian governments, many allied with Washington, would prefer that their people forget that the United States Army is deployed in Muslim nations like Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan ... pro-bin Laden feelings are impossible to miss. ... 'Anyone who is a Muslim who says 'No' to the United States is a hero. Every day you turn on the television and you see the Israelis killing Palestinians with U.S. weapons. No matter how much the U.S. tries to change its image in the Arab world, what we are seeing with our own eyes is much stronger.' ... 'All Arabs and Muslims are proud of bin Laden. He raised the flag of Islam and the Arabs very high.' ... 'The whole Muslim world is watching this with shock and horror ... Among the young, new animosities are created and there are new calls for revenge. This is dangerous; this is the atmosphere that creates terrorism, creates extremism.'" ... [more] 3:47:49 PM    comment  []

What Is America's Place in the World Now? " ... pretty much every cherished notion about America's role in the world must be revised  ... 'The idea that national security is national, or homeland security, is a revolution in strategic thinking.' ... 'A new imperial moment has arrived ... The chaos out there in the world is too threatening to ignore, and the existing tools for dealing with chaos have been tried and found wanting.'" "The logic for a new kind of imperialism ... the decolonalization of the 1940's and 1950's left a power vacuum in much of the world. The principal mechanisms the world has devised to deal with them — foreign aid, nongovernmental institutions, the World Bank, the United Nations — have not succeeded in dealing with the most troublesome and difficult cases. 'The problem isn't going away ... World population is going to go from six to eight billion. All that growth is going to happen in poor countries. You are going to get more state failures. They do threaten our interests: drugs in Columbia and Afghanistan, the diamond trade in Sierra Leone, with the criminal elements that come from clandestine trade. After Sept. 11, these are not things we can simply ignore.'" " ... neo-imperialists ... see a world in which readiness to send troops to distant parts of the world to maintain or re-establish order becomes increasingly common. ... 'Whatever else you can say about empire, it had the advantage of maintaining order and suppressing anarchy'" " ... other thinkers argue that extending American power is precisely the problem. ... 'an ironic possibility: that the very preponderance of American power may now make us not more secure but less secure ... failed states are not just a humanitarian problem, they are a national security problem ... States that have virtually collapsed ... are breeding grounds of instability, mass migration and murder as well as terrorism.'" "Power is the currency of the international system ... and the United States should use it when it sees fit. To [others] that definition of power is too narrow. American influence in the world ... rests as much on culture — democracy, human rights, feminism, movies, consumerism — as on military hardware. ... what the terrorists 'really object to is American ideas, American culture.' Ultimately, the differences between the multilateralists the unilateralists, the neo-imperialists, the minimalists and all the others "ists" may not be as sharp as many make out. ... democracy in the third world has emerged as a major diplomatic issue. 'It's increasingly clear that the failure of the Arab states to improve the lives of their citizens has created a great fund of discontent and the solution is ultimately democratization' ... " ... [more] 2:07:39 PM    comment  []

America and Anti-Americans By SALMAN RUSHDIE " ... America finds itself facing a broader ideological adversary that may turn out to be as hard to defeat as militant Islam: anti-Americanism, which is presently becoming more evident everywhere. ... the effectiveness of the American campaign may have made some parts of the world hate America more than they did before." " ... anti-American radicalism feeds off widespread anger over the plight of the Palestinians ... anti-Americanism ... has become too useful a smokescreen for Muslim nations' many defects — their corruption, their incompetence, their oppression of their citizens, their economic, scientific and cultural stagnation. America-hating ... contains a strong streak of hypocrisy, hating most what it desires most ... " " ... Britain and Europe ... the depth of anti-American feeling among large segments of the population. Western anti-Americanism is an altogether more petulant phenomenon than its Islamic counterpart and far more personalized. ... American patriotism, obesity, emotionality, self-centeredness: these are the crucial issues." ... [more] 1:45:04 PM    comment  []

Friday, February 22, 2002

" ... in recent months, we have come to value the common good over individualism and are perhaps more bent on rediscovering humanist values rather than challenging what's left of the status quo." --[Ceci N'est Pas Surrealism] 3:02:44 PM    comment  []

Thursday, February 21, 2002

The Saudi Challenge " ... the oil boom over, the Saudi economy can no longer afford the welfare net ... population has exploded from 7 million to 19 million ... per-capita oil income has fallen from $19,000 ... in 1981, to about $7,300 today. ... several million Saudis are now unemployed, underemployed or taking jobs they never would have before." " ... Saudi Arabia will be able to thrive only if it can reform its schools to build young people who can innovate and create wealth from their minds — not just from their wells. That means revamping the overcrowded Saudi universities ... revamping the Saudi legal system ... That means real transparency, rule of law, independent courts and anti-corruption measures. ... 40 percent of the population is under 14 ... " "' The problem here is not Islam. The problem is too many young men with no job and no university and nowhere to go except to the mosque, where some [radical preachers] fill their heads with anger for America. Every home now has two or three not working. This is the real problem.'" ... [more] 1:57:20 PM    comment  []

Tariq Ramadan: The Muslim Martin Luther? The author of "To Be a European Muslim" discusses terrorism, the problem of Saudi Arabia and whether Islam can peacefully coexist with the West. " ... Islam's encounter with the modern world. Can the youngest of the world's three great monotheisms co-exist harmoniously with the Western world and its Enlightenment legacy? Or is it fated to be reactionary, closed off from the world, an excuse for terrorism and failure?" " ... focus on the growth of Muslim populations in Western Europe ... Can they ... be true, genuine and complete citizens, giving allegiance ... to a non-Islamic country?" "At the start of the 21st century, there can be few more important questions." ... [more] 1:48:42 PM    comment  []

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

Why Islam went into decline [book review] " ... the right question to ask today is not, 'What has Islam done to the Muslims?' but 'What have the Muslims done to Islam?'" "He ends with a warning. 'If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression, culminating sooner or later in yet another alien domination; perhaps from a new Europe reverting to old ways, perhaps from a resurgent Russia, perhaps from some new expanding superpower in the East.'" "It's a sobering picture, delivered with persuasive detail and respect. Bernard Lewis comes not to bury Islam, but to praise what it once was - and might be again." ... [more] 5:04:35 PM    comment  []

Thursday, February 14, 2002

An Israeli-American scholar, Martin Kramer, has declared war on Middle East academe in the U.S., and the mortarboards are flying. ... [more] Not Academic: The Middle East Studies Association Wards Off Rebukes ... [more] Exposing Esposito: How the academy infected intelligence. ... [more] 4:41:58 PM    comment  []

Why the Muslims Misjudged Us "Middle Easterners fatally misunderstood the culture that makes us strong." ... "So a neighborly bit of advice for our Islamic friends and their spokesmen abroad: topple your pillars of ignorance and the edifice of your anti-Americanism. Try to seek difficult answers from within to even more difficult questions without. Do not blame others for problems that are largely self-created or seek solutions over here when your answers are mostly at home." ... [more] 4:38:57 PM    comment  []

Bernard Lewis Asks 'What Went Wrong?' Between Islam and the West "America: Laissez-faire economics cultural pluralism political democracy" " ... traditional societies having to come to terms with the forces of modernization. ... a badly damaged though powerful and religiously driven order is locked in confrontation with global trends ... one of the greatest cultural and political divides in modern history." "around 1760, Britain, then France and America took off to another world, one that was increasingly secular, democratic, industrial and tolerant ... while the Muslim world rested on its laurels ... " "West's cultural messages, especially about democracy ... Muslim societies found it impossible to contemplate the separation of religion and state, or admit to a changed place in society for women or permit the free exchange of ideas ... even more to it than that ... [Muslims] shown little interest in how others think, write, compose; ...  [the Muslim world] has never really cared." " ... Ottoman and Arab and Iranian scholars who, from the 18th century onward, called with growing alarm for change. ...  reformers split into two ... camps: the Western-oriented movements, which sought adaptation, imitation and accommodation with modernity, though within a moderately Muslim order of things; and the conservatives, who angrily claimed that the reason for the decline was traitorous forces within their own societies, those who had strayed from the true path of the prophet." "What, then, is to be done? ... the answer lies within the Muslim world itself. Either its societies ... will continue in ''a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression' or 'they can abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences and join their talents, energies and resources in a common creative endeavor' to the benefit of themselves and the rest of our planet." ... [more] 4:29:25 PM    comment  []

Crazier Than Thou By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN " ... America needs to launch a serious effort to end Israeli-Palestinian violence, because it's undermining any hope of U.S.-Arab cooperation." ... [more] 3:22:24 PM    comment  []

Wednesday, February 13, 2002

American Democracy: R.I.P The Emergence of the Fascist American Theocratic State "Historians will record that between November 2000 and February 2002, democracy—as envisioned by the creators of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution—effectively came to an end. As democracy died, the Fascist American Theocratic State ["The State"] was born. ... the greatest tragedy ... was that the public and media embraced fascism’s coming." "Three events accelerated the demise of American Democracy. The Election of 2000 ..., the 911 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon ..., and the spate of corporate bankruptcies (Enron), which provided clear evididence ... that the American democratic process was a sham. ... other Enron-like collapses began being reported ... " "Not since the witch hunting days of Joe McCarthy and the execution of the Rosenbergs had the country been swept up in a tempest of quick accusations of traitorous activities." " ... the overarching influence of oil over The State’s foreign policy ..." "Under the guise of a war that would never end, The State became brazen in its mission." "The defense budget ballooned to $400 billion while the wealthiest individuals and organizations received tax reductions and bailouts from the government." " ...  freedom was to be defined as the ability to wealth maximize. In this form of raw materialism ..." " ... in the aftermath of 911, with the media now indistinguishable from the "war effort" and the public instructed to fly and buy for patriotism, The State achieved in a mere 15 months, the utter decimation of American democracy."   3:35:54 PM    comment  []

Washington Post series on Saudi Arabia: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 "The two countries no longer share the same evaluation of the strategic situation in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has achieved a new detente with its traditionally hostile neighbor, Iran, which the United States still considers a hostile power. The Saudis do not believe a weakened Saddam Hussein can threaten them, while Americans debate whether to invade Iraq (a move Saudis say would cause a crisis in relations with the United States). And the Saudis are staunch defenders of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, and his cause." "In the face of persistent differences ... U.S. administrations and Saudi governments have created a veneer of comity that tends to hide small and large disagreements alike. 'When there are disagreements, they go unresolved because resolving them would require contention and debate and argument ... What we have is a relationship that is based not on shared values, but on shared interests' -- security, and oil." 3:10:56 PM    comment  []

Tuesday, February 12, 2002

Thomas Firedman re Muslims vs West " ... reasons why the Arab- Muslim world has fallen behind in economic development, education, science and democratization. ... whenever a people reduces all its problems to a conspiracy by someone else, it absolves itself and its leaders of any responsibility for its predicament — and any need for self-examination. No civilization has ever prospered with that approach. ... Only in a society that embraces self-criticism can the political process produce real facts to cope with real problems." "America is successful and wealthy because of its values, not despite them. It is prosperous because of the way it respects freedom, individualism and women's rights and the way it nurtures creativity and experimentation. Those values are our inexhaustible oil wells." ... [more] 3:09:22 PM    comment  []

Afghanistan, the Taliban and the Bush Oil Team from the Centre for Research on Globalisation [against?] 3:03:38 PM    comment  []

Sunday, February 10, 2002

"According to Afghan, Iranian, and Turkish government sources, Hamid Karzai, the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was a top adviser to the El Segundo, California-based UNOCAL Corporation which was negotiating with the Taliban to construct a Central Asia Gas (CentGas) pipeline from Turkmenistan through western Afghanistan to Pakistan." "Karzai, the leader of the southern Afghan Pashtun Durrani tribe, was a member of the mujaheddin that fought the Soviets during the 1980s. He was a top contact for the CIA and maintained close relations with CIA Director William Casey, Vice President George Bush, and their Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) Service interlocutors. Later, Karzai and a number of his brothers moved to the United States under the auspices of the CIA. Karzai continued to serve the agency's interests, as well as those of the Bush Family and their oil friends in negotiating the CentGas deal, according to Middle East and South Asian sources." "When one peers beyond all of the rhetoric of the White House and Pentagon concerning the Taliban, a clear pattern emerges showing that construction of the trans-Afghan pipeline was a top priority of the Bush administration from the outset. Although UNOCAL claims it abandoned the pipeline project in December 1998, the series of meetings held between U.S., Pakistani, and Taliban officials after 1998, indicates the project was never off the table." "Quite to the contrary, recent meetings between U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlain and that country's oil minister Usman Aminuddin indicate the pipeline project is international Project Number One for the Bush administration. Chamberlain, who maintains close ties to the Saudi ambassador to Pakistan (a one- time chief money conduit for the Taliban), has been pushing Pakistan to begin work on its Arabian Sea oil terminus for the pipeline." ... [more] 11:33:14 AM    comment  []

Tuesday, February 05, 2002

IMF loaning Turkey $16 billion over 3 years. 1:38:22 PM    comment  []

Monday, February 04, 2002

World Economic Forum "Much of the discussion focused on the growing economic and technological disparities in the world and how to remedy them. 'We need a global society, not merely a global economy,' said Soros. I was impressed by Fukuyama and Brzezinski in particular. 'If it were poverty that shapes terrorism,' said Fukuyama, 'all the terrorists would be coming from sub- Saharan Africa. We need to consider the role religion and culture is playing in shaping the development of the world.'" [Davos Newbies, 2-3-02] 1:09:40 PM    comment  []

Sunday, February 03, 2002

HOW CAN RUSSIA MAINTAIN ITS POSITION IN CENTRAL ASIA? [Pravda] 12:28:57 PM    comment  []

Crown Prince Abdullah revealed a stunningly common misconception in the third world, particularly among Muslims, when he said America was founded on principles of "righteousness, equity and concern for eliminating evil and decadence and corruption." The prince should realize that America was founded on none of these. Our country was founded on the simple principle of freedom. By granting each citizen the freedom to think, worship and do as he or she pleases, we created an incredibly productive and stable society. We know that only as a consequence of respecting freedom can a country be prosperous, equitable, just and uncorrupt. Curtail or ignore freedom, and you end up poor, corrupt and unstable — like most Muslim countries.  MATTHEW ZOBIAN State College, Pa., Jan. 29, 2002 [letter to editor, NYT] 12:05:17 PM    comment  []

Thursday, January 31, 2002

The current heat in the near east is all about oil. Part 2. From Part 1: "It's enlightening to note that all countries or regions which happen to be an impediment to Pipelineistan routes towards the West have been subjected either to a direct interference or to all-out war: Chechnya, Georgia, Kurdistan, Yugoslavia and Macedonia." "More, much more than Afghanistan is involved. What's at stake is Eurasia. ... Eurasia: Seventy-five percent of the world population, most of its material riches, 60 percent of the world's GNP, 75 percent of sources of energy, and behind the US, the six most prosperous economies and the six largest military budgets." "So Pipelineistan, in the Caucasus and in Central Asia - for the West and Japan but especially for America itself - cannot but be the strategic-military No 1 goal." "Bush II appointed his special envoy to Afghanistan. It comes as no surprise he is Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad - a former aide to the Californian energy giant UNOCAL. ... The so-called brand-new American "Afghan policy" is being conducted by people intimately connected to oil industry interests in Central Asia. ... In 1997, UNOCAL led an international consortium - Centgas ... UNOCAL also has a project to build the so-called Central Asian Oil Pipeline ... " "Khalilzad is a very interesting character indeed. ... Khalilzad was undersecretary of defense for Bush I, during the war against Iraq. After a stint at the Rand Corp think tank, he headed the Bush-Cheney transition team for the Defense Department and advised Donald Rumsfeld. ... Senate confirmation would raise extremely uncomfortable questions about his role as UNOCAL adviser and staunch Taliban defender. He was assigned instead to the National Security Council ... where he reports to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Rice herself is a former oil-company consultant. During Bush I, from 1989-92, she was on the board of directors of Chevron, and was its main expert on Kazakhstan. Chevron has invested more than $20 billion in Kazakhstan alone." "So everybody in the ruling plutocracy knows the rules of the ruthless game: Central Asia is crucial to Washington's worldwide petro-strategy. So is a "friendly" government in Afghanistan - now led by the always impeccably dressed and fluent English speaker Hamid Karzai. It does not matter that independent minds from Central Asia in exile in Europe unanimously ridicule Karzai as nothing else than a Taliban himself, and his Northern Alliance ministers as a bunch of crooks." From Part 2: "Two months ago (was) the official opening of the first new pipeline of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium. ... This $2.65 billion pipeline links the enormous Tengiz oilfield in northwestern Kazakhstan to the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea ...  Bush II ...  is developing 'a network of multiple Caspian pipelines that also include the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan, Baku-Supsa, and Baku-Novorossiyisk oil pipelines, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline'. So one of the key nodes in the American petrostrategy is composed by Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey. "The pipeline consortium for Baku-Ceyhan, led by British Petroleum, is represented by the law firm Baker & Botts. The principal attorney is none other than Texan superstar James Baker." "Texas-based, scandal-prone Enron, together with Amoco, Chevron, Mobil, UNOCAL and British Petroleum, were all spending billions of dollars to pump the reserves of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan." "Controlling the transport route is controlling the product." "Considering the strategic relationship between Turkey and Israel, the Israeli game remains preventing Turkish strategic dependence on Iran. ... a murderous project to reduce the flow of water to Iraq by diverting water from the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers to southeastern Turkey. ... Enron - the biggest donor to the Bush campaign of 2000 - was ubiquitious: it conducted the feasibility study for the $2.5 billion trans-Caspian pipeline being built under a joint venture signed almost three years ago between Turkmenistan and Bechtel and General Electric. ... The intrincate relationship between Israel, Turkey and the US means that as much as the trans-Caspian pipeline, the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline is also absolutely crucial. It could be extended to bring oil directly to thirsty Israel." "Russia will never let go of its sphere of influence without a tremendous fight. The Central Asian republics are on its borders, Russia has dominated them for centuries and they are home to millions of Russians. Russian is still the language they all use to do business with each other." "Iran assumes, not entirely without reason, that it is the rightful guardian of Central Asia because of centuries of ethnic, historical, linguistic and religious ties. And Iran is very conscious that American military links and now physical presence in Central Asia are part of a strategy to encircle it." "... pipelines from Central Asia will also reach China's Xinjiang. Oil sources in Singapore stress that this will certainly spell a slump for the sea routes across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. Washington is more than aware through its think tanks of the consequences: an extremely likely strategic realignment between China, Japan and Korea. "The Chinese have their sights on only one terrifying prospect: the encirclement of China by the US. UNOCAL is dreaming about profits. Washington is thinking about the robust Chinese economy. Whatever "war against terror" distractions, China remains the key strategic competitor to the US in the 21st century." "All the regional players now know America is in Central Asia to stay, as Washington itself has been stridently repeating these last few weeks, and it will be influencing or disturbing the economy and geopolitics of the region. The wider world is absolutely oblivious to these real stakes in the New Great Game." "... the American design to establish bases on the Arabian peninsula on the convenient pretext of helping poor Arab sheikhs against the Iraqi Evil Monster ... Saddam will not be attacked, because Saddam is the ultimate reason for American military bases in the Gulf ... " "Pipelineistan is not an end in itself. Oil and gas by themselves are not the US's ultimate aim. It's all about control. ... Michel Collon wrote: 'If you want to rule the world, you need to control oil. All the oil. Anywhere.' If the US controls the sources of energy of its rivals - Europe, Japan, China and other nations aspiring to be more independent - they win. This explains why pipelines from the Caucasus to the West have to be America-friendly - ie Turkish or Macedonian - and not "unreliable", meaning Russian-controled. Washington, always, has to control everything ... " "There's no business like war business. Thanks to war against Iraq, the US has its military bases in the Persian Gulf. Thanks to war against Yugoslavia, the US has its military bases in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia. Thanks to war against the Taliban, the US is now in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Not to mention the base in Incirlik, Turkey. The US is also in the Caucasus - in Georgia and Azerbaijan. Iran, China and Russia are practically encircled." 3:33:50 PM    comment  []

Tuesday, January 29, 2002

The current heat in the near east is all about oil. Part 2. 3:31:42 PM    comment  []

Monday, January 28, 2002

What comes after capitalism? "The war against terrorism is worthy, but it is really a war to protect Americans." The issue that has dogged us through the last 200 years and fostered the Cold War remains: How do you achieve the just distribution of wealth in society? The central issue bedeviling most emerging and less developed economies: ownership. 4:35:43 PM    comment  []

Saturday, January 26, 2002

Bernard Lewis Asks 'What Went Wrong?' Between Islam and the West. 9:43:47 AM    comment  []

Wednesday, January 23, 2002

Postcolonial Friedman (NYT) tours the middle east and reports on muslim/arabic attitudes re 9/11. 12:09:29 PM    comment  []

Postcolonial Discussion of democracy and freedom in the middle east in relation to 9/11. 11:49:20 AM    comment  []