Muhammad Baha' ad-Din

Angry Arab gives another example of why the much-reviled Arab media is more likely to bring democracy to the Arab world than George Bush.

The Baker Mission

Long-time Bush family ally James Baker is now in charge of settling Iraq's foreign debt. The always interesting Josh Marshall thinks there's more going on here than meets the eye. So far he's discussed Baker's oil ties to U.S. ambassador in Riyadh Robert Jordan and the fact that Iraq's largest creditors are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. I'm not sure where he's going with this, since so far it just looks like a case for why Baker is especially qualified for the mission. But I've learned to pay attention.

Brian Ulrich Gets Results!!!

Clearly, Al Gore reads my blog.

If you're still sitting on the fence, worrying that Bush will paint Dean as the new McGovern, don't. I've seen enough of this guy to know he won't be easily painted. In fact, I'd say we're getting ourselves a nominee who plans on doing a little paintin' of his own. So vote for the candidate who best embodies our values, not "electable" values. After all, our values are first and foremost American values. And the American people are smart enough to realize that.

Al-Qaeda, Iraq, and the Taliban

Unconfirmed reports from Afghanistan suggest that al-Qaeda is diverting money and manpower away from the Taliban and toward Iraq. Bin Laden reportedly said through representatives that the Taliban should stop depending on al-Qaeda and instead unite with other anti-American factions in Afghanistan. I also read reports over the summer suggesting that al-Qaeda leaders were disillusioned with the Taliban's lack of aggression against the U.S. If al-Qaeda starts playing a direct role in Iraq, that would be very bad for the U.S., as it opens the possibility of a resistance with decentralized funding sources (and hence ultimate power), much like that in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. If the former Ba'athist leadership is running the resistance, catching them won't do much good if they are simply replaced by a network of Islamic militants from overseas.

South Koreans Leave

Kos comments on the South Korean departure from Iraq after two workers were killed by the guerrillas. Kos also asks why Iraqi companies aren't being used for this work. An Iraqi-American friend of mine was asking the same question right after the war. Given that the huge unemployment rate in the country is a factor in the current instability, you'd think pumping some money into the Iraqi economy would be a good thing. Instead we're using more expensive American companies who hire guest workers.

Kyrgyzstan's War on Terror

IWPR has an interesting article on Kyrgyzstan's war against Islamic militants. The regime there is cracking down on a number of terrorist groups, while opponents argue it is merely going after dissidents by linking it to terrorism while currying favor from foreign powers. I don't know this area enough to comment in depth, but I do knew the conventional wisdom on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is that it never really recovered from the fall of the Taliban, so I question how serious a presence they could be in Kyrgyzstan. However, there were terrorist incidents in the country last May.

Dean, Iraq and Me

Last winter I was a hawk on Iraq for both humanitarian and national security reasons. I believed that given Saddam Hussein's track record, some sort of conflict was inevitable, and if we waited until he had squirmed out from under sanctions, his ability to resist an American invasion would only be greater. I also considered the sanctions themselves a morally reprehensible diplomatic weapon. Regarding weapons of mass destruction, I believed Saddam was close to possessing chemical and biological weapons, but not nuclear.

However, I never bought the alleged Saddam-al-Qaeda connection, and because I saw al-Qaeda as a larger issue, I did not want an Iraq adventure that interfered with the war against those who attacked the U.S. Furthermore, I believed that there needed to be a sound plan for what happened after the war. I doubted you'd see some ideal representative democracy; however, I thought Iraqis would be better off under a puppet controlled by Dick Cheney than the current regime. After all, Dr. Brian Borlas, my undergraduate professor for Middle East Political Systems, put it, "If Saddam Hussein is not the living incarnation of evil on the planet, he'll do." When I went to add up the total number of Saddam's post-1991 victims using Human Rights Watch stats on individual incidents, I came to 400,000 or so, though that included the probability of double-counting between missing and unidentified bodies in mass graves.

So how did I get from here to supporting Howard Dean?

If the administration had a plan for post-war Iraq, it was merely to stick Ahmed Chalabi in charge and pull out almost all our troops. The military people, of course, argued hundreds of thousands of troops would be required, but no one listened. And the administration, for all the money they spend on defense, apparently weren't willing to do the careful planning necessary to ensure their safety after the Ba'athist regime was no more. When I endorsed Dean, I mentioned the admission that Pentagon planners hadn't considered the Shi'ite factor, which everyone who knew anything about Iraq whatsoever was taking for granted. Before the war, I remember reading on Juan Cole that either Richard Perle or Paul Wolfowitz said there were no Muslim holy places in Iraq, meaning he must not have heard of Najaf and Karbala. I can certainly forgive that in my students, but not people planning to take over and run those places.

Then there's the war on terror. I'm not sure how we really know whether it's going well, but I don't buy the measure of whether there has been an attack on American soil, or we would have said it was going well on September 10, 2001. We do know that North Korea and Iran are probably trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard has intimate terrorist links, and North Korea relies on weapons proliferation to keep their economy afloat. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are making a comeback, and if the political system there fails to survive next year's election and its associated transfers of power, they will once again be the most powerful faction and potentially the only one capable of uniting the country. Al-Qaeda itself has been associated with terrorist attacks throughout the Islamic world, indicating that their network is expanding and adjusting to their new conditions. And given how we keep hearing about the U.S. government's lack of Arabic speakers, I can't believe the Iraq war didn't cause intelligence resources to be diverted from issues of terrorism.

In my Dean endorsement, I said, "I supported the war in Iraq, because I said I had faith that it would not hurt the war on terror and that the administration had adequately planned its aftermath. This faith was betrayed, the misjudgement terrible, the consequences horrendous." I've explained my betrayed faith, and the administration's misjudgement. In terms of foreign policy, the Bush administration has a history of egregious misjudgement - remember his first few months all his attention was on mindless sabre-rattling with China, while the Middle East was ignored? I still don't see Iraq as a lost cause, but even if the Bush administration somehow gets its act together and muddles through, it won't in my mind justify giving this crew another four years of responding to the inevitable foreign policy crises that arise.

When I originally ruled Dean out, it had a lot to do with his lack of experience. But he's actually impressed me with his learning curve, and he has top people available to deploy using the leadership skills he so clearly possesses. In the context of all the other facets that go into my decisions on who to vote for, his judgement and leadership at the helm of the experienced Democratic foreign policy establishment will be more than adequate to meet the challenges before us. It would be hard for him to do any worse.

UW-Madison Fall High School Quiz Bowl Tournament

Congratulations to Rufus King High School from Milwaukee, who won the Third Annual event named above, fending off an inspiring comeback attempt by second place Detroit Country Day School on the last question in the championship match. Oshkosh West High School took third over Wayland Academy - I didn't see that match. Thanks also to everyone who helped - there were a couple of confusing organizational issues, but they were partly my fault. At least one veteran attendee said this event had the best moderating he had ever seen, so congratulations on a job well done to the moderating crew of Mark Zimmer, Joel Velasco, Adam Bissen, Cathe Smith, Martin Bykowsky, Ben Auer, and Jeff Hegedus.

Education for Iraqi Women

IWPR has two articles up relating to the education of women in post-Saddam Iraq. This one tells how the destruction of women's dorms is forcing Iraqi women out of their colleges. When I was at Yarmouk University in Jordan, they told us that dorms were important for women so that parents would know their daughters' virtue was being protected while they studied. This article talks about the role of women in the revival of Shi'ite learning in the south. When you speak of learning and scholarship in Islam, you're talking about something that is at the very core of Islamic culture, and the people the American media refer to as "clerics" are more properly referred to as "Islamic scholars." The Shi'ite south is getting a lot of bad press on the women's right issue; it's good to see women playing a positive role in their cultural revival.

My Presidential Endorsement

One day a couple of summers ago, I was wandering with some friends through the streets of Madaba, Jordan, looking for a hotel. We met a man who told us we were on the wrong side of town, but who insisted on closing his shop to give us a ride, saying that he was planning to go to New York in November and hoped people there would do the same for him. On that same trip, I had a taxi driver from Irbid, who asked if it was true than in the United States Muslims, Jews and Christians all lived together peacefully. A friend said it was, and he replied that he wished he could live in a place like that. Later, I went into Syria where I met a politically minded man who had many quarrels with American policy toward Iraq, Israel and the world at large, but who also spoke about American freedom and democracy as among the highest ideals toward which the peoples of the world aspired.

I've always been a bit skeptical of whether that man in Madaba would have gotten rides from random New Yorkers, but he and the others I have just mentioned were onto something about America, something highlighted even more a few weeks later on September 11, 2001. That day, 19 members of a terrorist organization whom many would see as the face of Islam killed 3000 Americans at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

One of my professors was at a conference in Istanbul that day. When he returned, he told us that one thing he had noticed there was that people who had always seen the U.S. through a lens of flashy Hollywood movies and newscasts saw this country in a way they never had before, as for the first time the politicians and action heroes were displaced by police and firemen and medical workers. And even a cursory glance through the media shows that on that day, the world mourned as flowers were left at embassies, moments of silence were observed, and Arab students sitting in a Gulf classroom angrily denounced the attacks as haram, a word the use of which would normally be punished but on this day was not as people who knew very well that al-Qaeda's threats extended to more than just the U.S. wondered who might be next, and as all could see that the victims of these attacks were of a multitude of creeds and nationalities, drawn to these shores by a dream and an idea with which this nation is forever associated.

That idea, the idea touched upon by the Irbid taxi driver, the Madaba shopkeeper, the Syrian idealist and many others I have met over the years is community. All democracy is based on community. At the core of our being, Americans are builders of communities, and all our many debates revolve around one single question: How do we make our communities better. Oh, we have not always succeeded in our quest, and to this day our past mistakes reach ugly fingers into the present as we strive to overcome the legacy of slavery and racism, to aid our Native American communities and to ensure that women have equal oppotunity in all areas of our society. Yet this idea of building communities lies at the core of our national traditions, embedded in such stories as the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, the coming together of the 13 colonies, and nostalgic films like It's a Wonderful Life. It is what Americans celebrate when we take pride in our role as a force for peace in the community of nations or our heritage as a "melting pot."

Today, one candidate has this clear vision of America, a vision which lies at the core of his ideology and agenda and which has survived all the alterations one undergoes in the course of a political career. Indeed without him, I likely would not have articulated it in the same way. It is a vision which will serve as the basis of a far-sighted and responsive government a this key hour in our nation's history, and one that allows us to look beyond the sundry programs and small promises of the present to chart a bold future for the next generation. And for that reason, I have decided to support Howard Brush Dean for the office of President of the United States.

Up until now, I've talked mostly about the outside world, and to that I shall return. But the problems which worry most Americans are closer to home. I just said this was a key moment in our history. Howard Dean said in a recent pamphlet, "Our history has been the story of change. The struggle to live up to our founding ideals—justice and equality—has been an ongoing one. When we have seen injustice and inequality in our institutions and our laws, the American people have risen time and again to challenge them."

Today, change is afoot everywhere we look. The economy is changing. Our manufacturing sector is being crushed between the twin walls of globalization and mechanization, leaving many Americans adrift and out of work. President Bush's policies in these areas have failed. One hundred years after Henry Ford proved that the way you grow the American economy is to lift up the American worker so they can buy the products that make the rich rich, George Bush is waging a war on labor, ensuring that when people finally do find jobs they are low-paid workers with no benefits who spend all their time just trying to put food on the table. And while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, Bush gives a tax cut to the rich to go with the corporate welfare that only increases the tuition and property taxes for the rest of us while CEO's send jobs overseas and take the huge profits to line their own pockets. Howard Dean understands the need for a strong labor movement that will fight for worker's rights, and that the ongoing process of globalization needs to be managed in a way that leaves Americans with opportunities while the system is still adjusting.

Closely linked to the economic issue is one of health care. The richest nation in the world insures a smaller percentage of its citizens than Costa Rica. Howard Dean, once a physician by trade, understands that serious health problems for the uninsured can ruin lives and families. As President, he will extend health care coverage to every American below the age of 25 using two existing federal programs. He will offer use a combination of tax credits and aid to small businesses to move the adult population closer to universal coverage and at long last fulfill the promise of Harry Truman, ending this as a national issue once and for all. He will also address the needs of seniors with a real prescription drug benefit, as well as implement long-needed malpractice reform so that claims are vetted by a panel of experts before trial, ending the burden of frivolous lawsuits while preserving people's rights to a day in court.

At the same time, under Howard Dean, the United States will invest in the American infrastructure. On energy, George Bush believes that we need to drill for oil in Alaska to end dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Perhaps he hasn't heard, but the U.S. isn't dependent on Middle Eastern oil, a region which supplies only about 10% of our needs. And if it's oil itself he's worried about, then he should know that the oil in Alaska is merely a drop in the bucket of the world's supply, and will have no effect on prices whatsoever. We need to stop handing over our environment to the people responsible for our high gas prices and instead invest in truly independent sources of energy - solar power, wind power, ethanol, and biomass - leading to an American energy sector that will create good blue-collar jobs for American workers.

Getting a high-paying job today means forking over thousands of dollars in tuition, an amount increasing faster than ever thanks to George Bush's failed budget policies. We need to make it possible for every qualified American to get a college degree, which Howard Dean will do by guaranteeing access to $10,000 a year in financial aid and placing limits on how much income can be taken up with student loan repayments. This way, poor and lower middle class parents will understand that college is a realistic option and encourage their kids on the path to success, rather than being intimidated by the "sticker price" of high tuition rates like too many I knew in high school. He will also endorse a voluntary early childhood intervention program so that young parents will understand their child's needs and the available resources, sharply limiting those problems which have their roots in early childhood experiences.

These are just some of the issues which we can address under a Dean administration. But the most important duties of any President lie in the realm of foreign policy. The next President of the United States will take the helm of a nation at war. This war did not begin on September 11, but years earlier when terrorists first targeted this nation and its people. It is not George Bush's fault that they broke through during his watch, but that breakthrough brought the war home to the American people. George Bush did the right thing by choosing to pursue it vigorously in Afghanistan, but too quickly became side-tracked by think-tank advisors into pursuing long-held foreign policy goals under its guise.

I supported the war in Iraq, because I said I had faith that it would not hurt the war on terror and that the administration had adequately planned its aftermath. This faith was betrayed, the misjudgement terrible, the consequences horrendous. As the most powerful military nation the world has ever seen, we could not help but win our way easily to Baghdad, but since then out policy has lurched around blindly while Pentagon planners admit things like they didn't realize the Shi'ites would become a factor after the war. The administration's failure to understand and maintain our international alliances forced us to go it alone, and now our soldiers are performing nation-building duties for which conservatives long insisted we not train them.

As a result of this short-sightedness, patriotic American soldiers are dying on an almost daily basis while Iraq hovers on the tip of a rifle between a responsive government and total chaos. Meanwhile, the Taliban are growing stronger, threatening to emerge again if corruption, warlordism, and outside meddling again tear the nation apart. Al-Qaeda has not struck again on American soil, but it has been linked to an unending series of attacks from Morocco to Kenya, Indonesia to Turkey, attacks which threaten our allies and point to an increasingly dangerous cooperation among formerly disparate militant groups. And among our putative allies from Egypt to Uzbekistan, dictatorial governments step up their oppression under the guise of the American war on terror just like in the 1970's the last Shah of Iran stepped up his under the guise of our war on communism.

This is not a recipe for making Americans safer. George Bush began the war on terror, but he does not know how to fight it, and he has largely abandoned his duty to do so, hiding behind pretty speeches and photo ops and relying on Americans not to notice his real policies. He did not have the patience or the skill to bring to our side those angry students in that Gulf classroom I talked about earlier. He has damaged our relationships with many of our oldest allies. Even those first responders whose fame reached Istanbul on September 11 still lack much of what they need to prepare for terrorist attacks of the future. This President has got to go. Howard Dean does not have personal foreign policy experience, a reason I initially ruled him out of serious consideration. However, Dean does have a quality Bush sorely lacks: judgement. Dean has shown judgement in his choice of advisors, such as Danny Sebright, who reported directly to Donald Rumsfeld as a coordinator of the war in Afghanistan, and more recently Bill Richardson, one of the most experienced foreign policy hands in the Democratic party. As President, Howard Dean will pursue a course of wisdom rather than brashness, working to repair our tattered network of alliances while providing the leadership skills necessary to rally us again to the virtues which have made this country great.

I began this post by talking about community, a vision of America which Dean has made the moral centerpiece of his campaign. As he once wrote, "The American people have a capacity for great things. We must once again set ourselves on a course to achieve them—based on those values that have sustained America throughout the centuries." Over twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan called upon Republicans to remember the values for which their party stood, and force the American people to choose in a contest of ideas. Today, Howard Dean challenges Democrats to do the same thing, to remember who we are, why we believe the things we do, and go confidently before the American people and ask them to choose.

Many insist he cannot win. Over 200 years ago, Thomas Paine wrote, "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom." Howard Dean is tough, articulate, and politically skilled enough to win this election. He won my vote despite my emphasis on foreign policy experience and my frequent, too often ill-fated run-ins with his supporters. It is time we tried standing on our principles with a strong candidate at a moment in history when the choices have never been clearer. Arrayed on one side will be fear and anger toward the outside world and the core elements of a social darwinism which consigns too many Americans to a reject pile if they can't get in on Bush's corporate game. Arrayed on the other will be hope and friendship as we strive to promote our values of community at home and abroad. This is the way America has always succeeded.

My favorite Thomas Paine quote has always been, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." My friends, there are no more worthy values than those we stand for. In the political history of the earth, there has never been a cause greater than this American experiment, which has shone like a beacon of hope and possibility for over 200 years. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln said, "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation." I believe this generation of Americans can acquit ourselves with honor, bearing our message of hope to the world and inspiring those people I mentioned in the first paragraph by living out our ideals while rising to the challenges of the present age and opening the gates to our exciting future. And Howard Dean is just the leader we need to take us there.

Dean-Blogging will henceforth become a regular feature of this site.

UPDATE: Matt Bruce has the stats on this post.

More on Afghan Warlords

Al-Jazeera has an article up on the economic power of Afghanistan's warlords which you must read. Ismail Khan is collecting more in taxes in Herat than the Karzai government which ostensibly rules the entire country. Another interesting note was that putative American ally Uzbekistan is supporting Abd ar-Rashid Dostum, who has been only questionably supportive of Karzai. One thing I definitely fear is that neighboring powers will keep the rival warlords around so they can avoid having to negotiate with a central government in Kabul. This can only be bad for future stability.

Islamic Republic of Iraq

Tom Friedman has this exactly right.

Multilateralism

Opponents of a multilateral foreign policy often make the case that international organizations constrain the U.S., and that those who insist on trying to work with allies are just touchy-feely types who always worry about offending people. However, as Wesley Clark explains in this book excerpt, there's much more to it than that. A sample:

"The United States exercised leverage through international institutions and arrangements, initially through a frame of security treaties: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for European allies, bilateral agreements with Japan and South Korea. Acting with allies, the United States was able to redistribute the financial, military, and political burdens of its global security interests. In Europe, NATO member states provided most of the ground manpower in the event of war. Independent French nuclear programs provided a backstop for Cold War NATO nuclear decision-making. Britain assisted in the Persian Gulf until the late 1960s. France and Belgium were active in Africa. And Japan not only came to develop surprisingly modern and effective self-defense capabilities; it paid a significant portion of the operating expenses of U.S. forces stationed there."

Kramer vs. Yale

Martin Kramer attacked this Yale Daily News editorial opposing the creation of the Title VI advisory board. He does this mainly by linking it to this other opinion piece (which I admit seems rather attackable) and going on to say:

"So the newspaper is dutifully following the lead of the administration and faculty. It reminds me of how Pravda picked up signals from the Politburo and amplified them—including the crude falsehoods...So Yale is running a deliberately misleading campaign, relying on distortions, incitement, and the pliant editors of the campus newspaper, in order to leverage Sen. Dodd into opposing the bill."

Kramer must not be a Yale Daily News regular, however, or he would have seen this and maybe this, which do not exactly cater to the hard left of campus. In fact, the first article could merit the charge of distortion as easily as Benita Singh's as it keeps pushing Stanley Kurtz's mischaracterization of Edward Said's influence on the field. (See here for my Said post.)

True, the advisory board as written into the bill does not have the power to make regulations or hand down sanctions of some kind. However, there is a larger context to this: The advisory board is being pushed for by a specific group as a tool to advance a specific agenda. As quoted by, well, Yale Daily News, Kurtz said in his testimony: "If you read something that is more mainstream -- [it would represent] the role of the United States as a builder of democracy, and that's what [Congress] wants to see at colleges." If the people pushing for this committee are later appointed to it, it will simply become a platform for pushing their agenda in the same way Campus Watch is, only this time on the taxpayers' dollar as part of the United States government. And given what these groups have sometimes called for, that really might put us on the road to government supervision of curriculum as the government effectively gains a right to have support for whatever policies it wants taught in universities lest the "advisory board" deem the funding programs which sustain international studies useless.

Here is a list of Senators in a position to affect this bill. If none of them are your state, I suggest to e-mail Presidenial candidate John Edwards and let him know how you feel.

UPDATE: I just have to add something. Does anyone else find it hard to picture a student newspaper taking marching orders from its school's administration?

Warlords and Presidential Politics

According to Ahmed Zia Masood, Afghanistan's ambassador to Russia, prominent Afghan warlords have decided to support Burhanuddin Rabbani against Hamid Karzai in the 2004 Presidential elections. Rabbani was a top anti-communist leader and the last President before the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. Perhaps ominously, during the 1980's Rabbani scuttled a temporary accord among mujahadeen factions by refusing to leave office as part of a power-sharing agreement. Maybe I'm being paranoid here, but I think actually holding elections in Afghanistan will only be half the battle...the key test will be what happens afterward.

South Iraq Army

I haven't formed an opinion on U.S. plans for a militia in southern Iraq made from the paramilitary units of Iraqi political parties. Josh Marshall, however, has concerns about what this says of the direction the occupation is moving, while Angry Arab sees parallels with Israel's "South Lebanon Army" that didn't work out so well.

Palestinian Identity

Imshin claims no one ever questions whether the Palestinians exist as a people. Well, actually, they do that all the time, as a common right-wing argument is that the Jews have been a people for millennia and deserve everything from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, while the Palestinians are just like all the other Arabs and should melt into the great undifferentiated Arab mass. To be honest, however, I totally agree with the key point of Imshin's post, if from a slightly different perspective - the situation today is what it is, and trying to argue about what should have been isn't really that productive.

Did the Palestinians have a national identity before Israel? I'm not normally an intellectual snob, but with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I stay glued to the mainstream scholarship as much as possible just because there's so much polemic out there representing the deeply held convictions of one side or another about their own past, often carefully cited with their selected evidence so that to a non-specialist it all looks perfectly irrefutable, until you look at the opposing viewpoint. Anyway, according to page 123 of Malcolm Yapp's The Near East Since the First World War:

"Before 1918 there was very little idea of Palestine among them although they were conscious of a certain common interest in opposing Zionist settlement. Nor was Arabism so prominent in Palestine as it was in Syria. In 1918, Palestinian Arabs faced the same dilemma as other Ottoman Arabs: what political identity and goals should replace their lost Ottoman personality. Those in Nablus looked to Faysal in Damascus and accepted the view of Palestine as southern Syria; those in Jerusalem were less anxious to acknowledge Faysal's rule. Most Palestinians organized themselves as local communities through the Muslim-Christian associations. In July 1920 the southern Syrian option was excluded by the fall of Faysal and Palestinians were obliged to choose again. Under the leadership of the Husaynis they emphasized a Palestinian identity which permitted Muslim-Christian cooperation, was acceptable to Britain and fitted the political arena in which they operated. The Palestinian Arab identity was very much an elite choice, however, and it had little appeal to the masses. When peasants and the lower classes in towns became drawn into the political struggle during the 1930's the most powerful bond proved to be Islam. Also during the 1930's, with the rise of other Arab states, the appeal of pan-Arabism strengthened again. Even in 1948, Palestinian Arabs still thought of themselves primarily as members of families or of local, religious or ethnic communities rather than as Palestinians. Nevertheless, during the mandate Palestinians had acquired Palestinian institutions and the habit of working in and with these institutions had promoted in some measure the growth of a Palestinian identity. For, during the mandate government institutions were Palestinian Arab institutions, the Yishuv having opted out."

This doesn't sound like something that fits neat ideological agendas, which is unsurprising considering that the concept of national identity arose in Europe under specific historical circumstances that were not present in the Arab world, which was following its own path. Even if for many there was not an "imagined community" of Palestinians, there was either one of Arabs that included the spot where they were living, or perhaps just of Jerusalemites, made up of those who were proud to live in the holy city and its hinterland where the Prophets walked and Muhammad went on his Night Journey. Today, none of that matters...just as Israeli Arabs now count themselves members of a Jewish state, so Palestinians too developed a concept of themselves as a people and are now seen by others as one. Everything else is just water under the bridge.

The world of the British mandate is no more, and the actions taken by people 50 years ago - short in the longer scheme of history but an eternity here - cannot be held against those now cast as their heirs in cultural forms of which the leaders of yesteryear might not have conceptualized. Argue the conflict all you want, but to base all your arguments on the past and what might have been is to pay homage to ideologies that don't lead to anything constructive.

Professional Standards

On Oxblog, I found a poll showing that 59% of Americans believe college professors have high or very high ethical standards, ranking them behind only a bunch of medical fields. I guess the Campus Watch crowd hasn't had as much of an impact as I thought. Actually, though, I'd have trouble with this poll because I'm not sure some professions are really more ethical than others. Auto mechanics, for example, take a bad rap, yet I've had only a couple of bad experiences with them and several very good ones. And I know motivation is not necessarily a good indicator of ethics, but I've known just as many med students who seemed to be doing it for money/status as I have lawyers, and just as many who are trying to find a comfortable career in their natural area of interest. Still, perceptions are interesting.

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias has more.

Disarmament Near Mazar-e Sharif

Afghan warlords Atta Muhammad and Abd ar-Rashid Dostum are handing their heavy weapons over to the Afghan National Army, a sign of concrete disarmament that shows there may be hope after all that stability can return to the region around Mazar-e Sharif. The whole article is rather interesting, as it gives insight into the complexities of current Afghan politics. It may be that the creation of a central government, even Karzai's weak one, is creating a domain where conflict can spread but through which it can be contained as rivals gain access to non-military tools of competition which make politics possible.

Rabi'a of Basra

Maryam has posted a new Scholar of the Month: Rabi'a of Basra (not yet archived). Be sure to check it out at the bottom of the sidebar.

Reverses

So in about an hour this evening I went from being convinced I was watching the last days of Wisconsin quiz bowl to having hope that we might be on the edge of a new Golden Age. I wonder if the brief rant I snapped out helped or hurt. All well...hopefully things will once again come together for us.

Geneva Accords

I feel like I should blog about the Geneva Accords, but to be honest I can't see why they matter. So they've established that a peace between Israelis and Palestinians is plausible. Except we already knew that already, and those who disagreed won't be swayed by negotiations for a plan that everyone knew would never actually be implemented. According to Imshin, the reaction in Israel is rather muted, and I can't imagine Palestinians are taking them that seriously either, despite Arafat's efforts to use them as a propaganda tool. Pieces of paper are nice, but I'm more interested in actions which change the ground situation, and these remain elusive.

Doings in Bahrain

King Hamad of Bahrain has been flexing his reformist credentials lately. Here he ordered his government to drop a legal case against a play criticizing the royal family, while here it says you can now hold on-line debates with members of the Shura, the appointed upper house of Bahrain's Parliament. Unfortunately, I'm not really convinced this amounts to anything. The first part merely serves as a safety valve to contain Shi'ite dissent, while the second seems to me an attempt to co-opt democratic reforms rather than implement them. The King is giving the people a direct line to his appointees, whom he can then claim are responsive to their interests. Meanwhile, he gets to keep all the power because these consultations will eliminate some of the pressure for greater democracy. It's basically a computerized version of the traditional Arab audience state as described here with reference to Saudi Arabia.

Israeli Politics

Israel's Meretz party has joined with Yossi Beilin's Shahar movement to form a new political party called Ya'ad. The new party seems largely dedicated to supporting the Geneva accords, and from here looks like it could in time challenge Labor as the main opposition party or play the same role as the Liberal Democrats in the UK and make Labor into the centrist option. The effects of all this on the peace process are difficult to predict.

Sistani's Views on Government

David Asednik of Oxblog wants the media to do more to examine Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani's views on government. One way to find these out, of course, might be to ask him. On a more serious note, however, I'm not sure such an examination would reveal much, simply because it's unclear to me whether Sistani has really developed his views on proper government. I doubt that branch of jurisprudence was encouraged under Saddam Hussein. The only things I know for sure are that he rejects Ayatollah Khomeini's doctrine of velayat-e faqih (rule of the jurist) and wants Iraqi law to be based on Islamic law. This rules out an Iranian-style theocracy, and suggests something similar to the constitution currently being worked on for Afghanistan, or maybe an Iran without the Faqih and Council of Guardians, which is basically where the Reformists there are heading. The only alternatives I can think of would be a monarchy or military rule of some kind, which doesn't seem likely. As it is, Sistani is mainly reacting to things others are proposing, and it may be that's all he really plans on or has interest in.

UPDATE: Swopa's thoughts are also worth reading.

Thanksgiving

As you probably guessed, I've been away for Thanksgiving. It was good. A few random notes:

1.) I saw the extended DVD version of The Two Towers, and it was good. I also watched a bit of the appendices. There were defensible story-telling reasons for the Osgiliath diversion, and the Ents were better with the cut scenes. In fact, if you've never read the books, I recommend the extended version because there are a few expository scenes that will really help you out.

2.) As I was pulling out of Fazoli's for lunch, I turned on my radio and they were playing "Stairway to Heaven." That was rare.

3.) Life's unexpected developments: I stopped by to visit my old French horn teacher's widow, and learned that a girl who in high school had been our official far-left somewhat anti-religious could-have-used-a-Nader girl is now in a convent taking up the religious life as a convert to Catholicism.

4.) There are a couple of very uninspiring James Bond movies. I saw The World is Not Enough, which was fine, but Never Say Never Again had me flipping around a lot despite my desire that night to simply watch a movie without worrying about it. I also watched A Christmas Story all the way through, which was mostly an experience in seeing how different scenes I already knew related to each other.

5.) If you ever develop a bit of car trouble on I-39 in northern Illinois, I recommend a place called Oscar's by the city hall in Oglesby.

UPDATE: Crescat Sententia's Will Baude questions my taste in Bond movies. I admit I'm not a connoisseur of Bond films, as I didn't see my first until two or three years ago and most of my viewing since has been stuff I've randomly caught on TNN/Spike TV. However, Never Say Never Again reminded me a lot of Moonraker, which I also disliked, in its reliance on cheap slapstick humor, plus the entire first hour with the new bureaucratic MI6 sort of put me too sleep. The part with the captured American pilot also kept giving me flashbacks to The Manchurian Candidate, and looked weak in comparison.

Small World Project

This is sort of fun and interesting.

Producing Doctorates

Martin Kramer has a new post about the Title VI controversy in which he uses all the predictable loaded terms to attack a pro-Title VI op ed in the Los Angeles Times. A lot of his arguments are things I've refuted before, but one I haven't gotten around to yet is the argument that because Title VI money partly provides fellowships for doctoral students, it is useless in producing people who go into government service. A couple of easy points, however:

1.) Kramer says interviews of doctoral students reveal they don't plan on going into careers in government. Fine, but do they wind up going into government anyway? After all, the academic job market is notoriously harsh, and many people wind up outside their preferred careers.

2.) Those who do remain in academics don't exactly leave this plane of existence. They work in universities teaching and developing courses in Middle East Studies. As I mentioned here, part of the problem finding Arabic translators is the lack of Arabic instructors, who are ideally people with a Ph.D. in Arabic. The same goes with any other area of cultural knowledge we might need. Kramer and his associates regularly conflate scholars' research interest with what they teach, but in the real world those people examining 19th-century Arabic poetry probably have jobs where they teach the Arabic language - this is true with all Arabic lit people at UW-Madison.

I have two friends from grad school who took a terminal masters and went into the military, armed with language and important cultural knowledge that will serve them well on the ground. And they have it because of dedicated faculty who, regardless of political views, taught them what they needed to know. Let's support programs which help our troops, not take advantage of the situation to attack them for political purposes.

UPDATE: Although Kramer links to the LA Times piece, he has it set up so it's tough to link to. You can read it here.

UPDATE II: See also the discussion at Daily Kos.

Hizbullah in Iraq

The New York Times has an article about the presence of Hizbullah agents in southern Iraq. I actually know something about this topic, as I wrote an early graduate school paper on the political mobilization of the Shi'ites in southern Lebanon. Much of what I have to say, however, has already been pointed out by Juan Cole. One thing the article did over an over was treat Hizbullah as simply an Iranian puppet, which is simply not true; their relationship is more about collaboration in areas of common interest than anything else. As Cole points out, the Lebanese Shi'ite leaders come from Najaf, and that's where their personal and ideological connections are. Tehran is mostly a bank account useful for building social services and obtaining weapons to use against Israel. Especially since everyone admits Hizbullah isn't doing anything hostile to the U.S., I think analysts should fold their presence into the larger issue of Iraq's Shi'ites and their attitudes toward the occupation - Hizbullah can support the Iraqi Shi'ites, but is unlikely to lead them anywhere.

Diplomacy

By day, I am a graduate student in Middle Eastern history. By night, however, I am the Czar of Russia. Given the current state of the world there's not that much to do, and the work is interesting. If only it weren't for those pesky English...

Kennedy and the Middle East

Afghan Voice has an interesting round-up of Middle Eastern reactions to the Kennedy assassination. One can approach this issue from a number of directions. How have things changed since then? Is there really an irrevocable Arab hatred of the West? And to what degree can the U.S. inspire the world when we remain true to our founding ideals?

Frustrations

Do you ever go through periods where you have a serious need to blow off steam, but can't find a safe outlet? This is my mood at present. There are a whole host of reasons both large and small, but unfortunately the large issues I have to be patient with, and I don't want to have an out-of-proportion reaction to one of the small ones. Such is life.

What's Up With al-Qaeda?

Zvi Bar'el has a column in Haaretz examining the ways in which al-Qaeda now seems to turn up in discussions of every terrorist attack. A key graft:

"The problem is that the organization has developed into a kind of worldwide lexicon of terrorism. So, when two vehicles blow up on the same day in the same place, it's taken to be "a characteristic operating method of al-Qaida." Every terrorist who was ever in Afghanistan or Pakistan is automatically a member of the organization. Every extremist preacher in a remote mosque is from al-Qaida, and every Arab regime that wants to arrest opponents of the regime can do so very comfortably by declaring that the detainees have ties to al-Qaida."

I don't think we should look at terrorist organizations as closed compartments, but rather networks. I believe the key phrase is "tied to al-Qaeda," not "members of al-Qaeda"; the latter may be few, but the former are many. Most traditional Islamic institutions did not have the sort of formalized institutional structures you see in the West, and while terrorist groups are in no way a traditional Islamic institution, my thought is that they follow the same pattern. The key to understanding them is not a leadership structure per se, but rather the pattern of personal ties (based partly on priority of targets) and money flows through which Islamic fundamentalist terrorism is linked together.

Democracy in America

I've seen Tommy Franks's comments about suspending the Constitution in the event of a serious terrorist attack, but hadn't thought much of them just because they seemed so removed from reality. Juan Cole has taken them up, though, and I guess the mere fact a high-ranking general would say such things should be sending alarm bells all through society. Let's put a stop to this sort of talk right now.

Georgian Revolution

On Oxblog I read that there is a revolution taking place in Georgia. Opposition protestors have taken over the Parliament building, and outgoing Parliament speaker Nino Burjanadze has declared herself interim President. Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze has threatened to call in the military to restore order.

The War Continues

While the U.S. tries to get a handle on Iraq, the war against those linked to the September 11 attacks continues:

"The Afghan base at the Khost airport came under heavy attack last night by Taliban Mujahideen who, instead of firing rockets and slipping in the forests, waged a continuous operation using heavy weapons. The attack started at Suhoor, the morning meal before Muslims fast for the day during Ramadan, and lasted for three hours. Jasarat is reporting fourteen soldiers in the base were killed and another 23 wounded."

Brian News

My major work project of the week has been getting off an application to AU-Beirut for a visiting scholars program. Unfortunately, I might have to come in this weekend to do it, because I have precisely none of the information I need.

The December 6 UW high school quiz bowl tournament looks like it's coming together. Unfortunately for the team, nothing else is.

I'm going through a period of really just wanting to be done with grad school and out living in a community I can call home as a productive member of the workforce. My dissertation itself seems kind of listless...I've done a fair amount of work, but it doesn't feel like it adds up to anything.

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving. I have an intense craving for turkey stuffing. Not the turkey, just the stuffing. I could also use a piece of pumpkin pie and some cranberry sauce. I need to remember to stop by Sentry and pick up a kringle before I go.

That's all for now.

Newspaper Corrections

This is hilarious. Found via Matt Bruce.

Egyptian Reform

In the past, I've suggested that if the U.S. were serious about democratic reforms in the Middle East, they would put pressure on Husni Mubarak to open up the political situation in Egypt, which is probably the most important cultural and intellectual powerhouse in the Arab world. Now, I see in al-Ahram Weekly that members of the ruling party are denying accusations that the regime's recent discussions about liberalization are a response to American pressure. Absolutely no one quoted in the article saw democratization under American pressure as a good thing. Unfortunately, I don't have enough context to discuss what other factors might be in play among these different parties.

Hard-Boiled Arabs

Today I read an article by M. Daniel Beaumont in the scholarly journal Studia Islamica about the literary structure of early Islamic historical narrative which pointed out close parallels between our extant sources and the fiction of Ernest Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett. I have to admit this was an interesting analogy. Beaumont even went so far as to say that this style came from a similar historical environment, as the "hard-boiled" American literary style came when post-World War I disillusionment made writers decide to react against the romantic trends of the 19th century, while in the late 8th century when the Islamic historical tradition took its surviving form Muslims were disillusioned because of the Abbasid Revolution and reacted against the literary styles of the Umayyads and pre-Islamic Arabia with their heroic tales and romantic poetry. I think he's way far out on a limb there, but I have to admit my perceptions of the early caliphs have been permanently affected.

Sense

From the New York Times:

"The Bush administration, which was wary earlier this year of installing a government dominated by Shiites in Iraq, has concluded that such a development is virtually inevitable and not necessarily harmful to American interests, administration officials said Wednesday.

"The officials said that fears of an Iranian-style — and Iranian-influenced — theocracy in Baghdad have faded because it has become clear that Iraq's Shiite population is not a monolithic bloc and not necessarily dominated by Tehran.

" 'Our basic position is that as we get to know more of Iraqi society, we're more comfortable with a democratic process, and if that emerges with a predominant Shiite role, so be it,' said an administration official. 'There's been a steady education process here.' "

This does not change my position that we should have gotten to know the basics of Iraqi society before we invaded.

Dating Techniques

Diotima points to this New Yorker review of a book on using marketing techniques to find husbands. The suggestions include direct mail marketing:

"Greenwald suggests that a single woman send, to a hundred or more friends, greeting cards bearing photographs of herself being witty or playing golf, and include the message 'This year, I would like to find someone wonderful to spend my life with. Do you know any single men you could introduce me to?'"

And here I thought women were all about subtlety. Please note that as a guy, I find the immediate leap to "spend my life" with a total stranger a bit over the top. But then I'm not 35 yet.

Iraq's Labor Issues

After a bit of googling, I found this article about how the economic policies imposed by the U.S. are affecting Iraq's workers. Under Saddam Hussein, industry was generally government-controlled, and the U.S. has been privatizing it on the (correct) theory that it will lead to more foreign investment. Unfortunately, in order to make it attractive to corporations, the CPA is taking positions on workers' rights which would not fly even among conservatives in the U.S. Forming unions is illegal, for example, and there is no right to strike or demonstrate peacefully about working conditions. CPA permission is required for businesses to get raises, and in some cases non-salary benefits have been eliminated. Unemployment is currently around 70%, and this is before privatization really gets going, which most feel will lead to further lay-offs. With workers organizing anyway, however, the U.S. will either have to adjust its plans to take into account the everyday realities for millions of Iraqis or face a staggering level of unrest which will have far more popular roots than Ba'athist remnants.

Arabic Speakers

According to this article, the U.S. army has only 1300 active duty soldiers "who can speak or read some Arabic." That's rather amazing, considering how long this region has been considered an area of "strategic importance." I wonder, though if there's even more to the story than this: One person I know who could actually communicate well with native speakers and had spent a lot of time in Jordan and Yemen was called up into the army after September 11 and told me he spent all his time assigned to vehicle maintenance. I know a couple of other people who have joined the military in the past year, but my guess is they're still in training. Another aspect here is the vast gap between the "Modern Standard Arabic" most university students learn and the colloquial speech of any country, which is usually taught as a separate course, if at all. And I can pretty much guarantee the Iraqi dialect wasn't commonly taught until maybe very recently, just because it wasn't a place most students saw themselves going.

What's the solution? In the short term, I can't think of one. Part of this is a pipeline problem, as in order to get more Arabic speakers you first need qualified Arabic teachers. Relying on willing native speakers is probably the best option. As far as the future goes, however, I think this makes the case for why the U.S. has a national interest in generating knowledge throughout society of different languages and cultures throughout the world. In my undergraduate education courses, I learned the standard thinking among educators was that multicultural issues should ideally be introduced in middle school, though there are seldom the resources to do that. But imagine how much better off we might be if more soldiers had basic knowledge of Middle Eastern culture from their general education before they even thought of joining the military. And you never know where the next major crisis might arise...

Theorist Quiz

Apparently I haven't been in grad school long enough...


You are an undergraduate! Your mind has not yet warped into the utter oddness of contemporary theory. If you put down the beer bong, and start reading dreafully weird theory, you'll probably have a better chance of not getting the answer designed to make fun of you.


What 20th Century Theorist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Iraq and al-Qaeda

Juan Cole has a very good analysis of the alleged Saddam-a-Qaeda connections, explaining why the recently leaked memo means nothing, and why such links are almost impossible to begin with. The permalinks aren't working, so you have to scroll to the bottom November 19 issue. It will be worth it.

Nizar Hamdoon

Via Angry Arab, I've found a Middle East Quarterly profile of Nizar Hamdoon, who served as Iraqi Foreign Minister in the last year's of the Ba'ath party. I didn't read through the whole thing, but admittedly it does contain some interesting points. I just find it really bizarre that a right-wing publication would promote a Saddam loyalist. The ones involved with this piece are also some of those involved in this outfit.

Surprise Elimination

Gee, the process of picking a Presidential candidate makes me feel like I'm on Joe Millionaire. Anyway, in a decision which really surprises me considering how I felt here and here, I have decided that I will not be voting for Dick Gephardt in the 2004 Democratic primaries. I like Gephardt a lot. I think he's much more authentic than people give him credit for, and that the way congressional seats are currently set up it's hard for to generate major swings as far as which party has control. We have the same major areas of concern as far as issues go, his interest groups are my interest groups, and in this campaign's flagship issue of foreign policy he combines the key element of experience with overall positions I generally support. The problem? He's wrong too much, and seems out of touch with the latest ideas. I saw him on TV yesterday, and he was talking about how he's learned from the mistakes he's made, which caused me to realize just how many there were. This may be why even though I said a year ago I wanted Gephardt in the Presidential race, he still hasn't locked down my vote. So, in a decision I really feel strange about, I thank him for a good career in Congress fighting for the working people of America, but feel that for the nation's highest office, I must look elsewhere. It's now down to Wesley Clark and Howard Dean.

(And yes, I'm frustrated that both Anique and Petra got eliminated tonight.)

Founding Father Quiz

Which Founding Father Are You?

Via Invisible Adjunct

Death Penalty in Iraq

IWPR has a story on the debate over the death penalty in Iraq. The CPA abolished capital punishment soon after taking over, but many Iraqis say it should be reinstated to punish former Ba'athists. Some also cite religious reasons why the death penalty should be on the books, though others suggest that the judiciary it currently too unreliable to risk executing people. The Bush administration has been notorious about imposing conservative agendas in Iraq; I kind of wonder how the politics worked on this one.

The Quest for Troops: Fiji

Some time ago I blogged about American efforts to get Fiji to increase their troop commitment in Afghanistan. Now, Washington is also begging the Pacific island nation to help out in Iraq. Fiji, however, wants the U.S. to foot the entire bill, including troops' salaries, which we are refusing. I also see that Fijian troops are apparently considered among the world's finest peacekeepers, which I hadn't heard before.

Arabic Education

Via Ed Cohn I see this New York Times story on Arabic education in the U.S. The point that a bottleneck is developing at higher levels is definitely true...here at UW we have basically three - two years followed by an "Advanced Readings in Arabic" that takes third and above and in which I'm now sitting in as one of eight students. Numberwise, there are almost 60 students in first year and close to 30 in second year, so something has got to give.

An interesting aside to this article, of course, is the federal funding currently under attack from the right. A highly reliable source whom I didn't get permission to quote told me several weeks ago that Democrats led by Ron Kind of Wisconsin had proposed extending FLAS funding (scholarships for foreign language study currently available to graduate students) to undergraduates in certain target languages, but that Republicans had blocked it. This debate came amidst the Campus Watch-inspired assault on Title VI, which basically makes area studies in the U.S. possible. Some of the Campus Watch folks have predicted that if the current "advisory board" goes through (preferably with themselves appointed to it), it will find Title VI is not useful for "America's national interest" as they define it, and that Congress will decide to better spend the money elsewhere; presumably they would want to block something that made it even more useful than it already is. Many Republicans, of course, already want to eliminate the Department of Education, and attacking area and foreign language studies would help chip away at that. Such are the people now wrapping themselves in the flag on their righteous quest to make sure conservative governments get a de facto right to have people in academics support them, regardless of the intellectual merits.

Interesting Links

I often run across interesting things which I don't blog about just because I don't have much to say or they don't fit in with my generally discussed mix of topics. Nonetheless, I've seen enough of these recently, I've decided to just point some out...

Over at Crescat Sententia, Will Baude discusses the University of Chicago's abhorrent suicide policy.

Ed Cohn, a Ph.D. candidate in Soviet history, is posting on the Soviet role in the Six Day War.

At Ideofact, you can read about the story of the publication of Franz Kafka's novels, which is apparently more interesting than just the Max Brod stuff.

Daily Kos posts a new poll of the Wisconsin democratic primary.

Josh Marshall has analyses of our current relationship with South Korea here and here.

Academia's "Prestige Principle"

Invisible Adjunct has a post up on the prestige principle in academic hiring decisions. I'm not yet at a point where I can say much about this, but I thought I'd call it to people's attention. One thing I've noticed about academics is that it tends to have more peculiar quirks than I perceive in most professions, though in this case it may just be a combination of the importance of personal networks in hiring decisions and the better resources available at usually wealthy "prestige institions."

Istanbul Bombings

Car bombs exploded outside two synagogues in Istanbul today, killing 24 people. Turkey and Israel both say they believe al-Qaeda had a hand in the attacks, although a local group called the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders' Front has claimed responsibility. Both of these could be true, as I think it would be a mistake to consider terrorist networks as sealed compartments, and al-Qaeda could have links to this Turkish group the say way they do with Ansar al-Islam in Iraq and the JI in Indonesia.

Bamiyan Buddhas

Everyone now agrees we can't rebuild the giant Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban at Bamiyan, but now a Swiss expert wants to recast them in concrete. UNESCO is opposed to this idea, as in the past such attempts have apparently not worked, and they wish to keep the site as a memorial to cultural destruction. I'm thinking, however, that in order for future generations to really understand the destruction, they should have some sense of what was destroyed. So I'd say make new Buddhas, let them be somewhat cheesy, and stick somewhere nearby to give people a better emotional grasp of the scale of what is lost.

Camel Cheese

Despite our amusing manner of talking, Wisconsin proudly boasts having the best cheese in the country. (Although in 2000 Howard Dean led Vermont to an upset victory in that competition) However, we might soon have competition from Mauritanian imports.

Dean's Foreign Policy

For some time now, I've said that Dean's lack of foreign policy experience bothers me, and that I've at the very least wanted to know who his advisors were. I couldn't find a record of this anywhere, and I came to the conclusion he simply didn't have any. However, I recently found this article about Democratic foreign policy advisors in general, and learned that one Danny Sebright has been arranging for meetings between Dean and various foreign policy luminaries, none of whom they are willing to name.

There are two obvious questions, here. The first: Who is Danny Sebright, who seems to be Dean's version of Condoleezza Rice? Turns out he's a DoD civil servant who worked first in the Clinton administration as the DoD's man on the Middle East peace process and a coordinator of arms sales to Israel. (This gives his title then as "Israel Country Director.") Later, he worked on Bush's missile defense policy and later in Donald Rumsfeld's office as the "Director of the Executive Secretariat for Enduring Freedom," where he helped oversee the war in Afghanistan. In February 2002, he became Associate Vice President of the Cohen Group, a consulting firm headed by William Cohen, former GOP Senator from Maine and Clinton's Secretary of Defense.

The second is why Dean won't name those he's been meeting with. The only other name I could turn up was Maria Echeveste, whom I can't find stuff on as readily. One possibility is that for some reason Dean doesn't want to reveal meeting with people who aren't committed to him, but that didn't stop him from claiming to have been meeting with Wesley Clark before Clark entered the race. A more likely possibility is that Dean is deploying this stuff strategically. Dean's reputation as a liberal comes mainly from his opposition to the Iraq war. However, Dean's actual record of foreign policy views is rather hawkish, and the cynic in me still wonders if he largely saw opposing the Iraq war as a way to stand out in a crowded primary field. This guy is very shrewd - it's on thing I like about him - and it may be he's waiting until after the primaries to sketch out a "Scoop" Jacksonish foreign policy to appeal to the broad center, the groundwork for which is now being laid as he mentions his support for the war in Afghanistan and 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In any event, these are my thoughts for the day. I now need to let all this filter around in my head before I decide whom to vote for. I would also definitely be interested in hearing from anyone who knows how these things work.

UPDATE: I cross-posted this to Daily Kos, where there is now an actual discussion thread.

Imshin on Haaretz

Non-piscean Israeli blogger Imshin has some comments on the English version of Haaretz, to which I link regularly. Her point (I think) is that the paper has a strong liberal and pro-peace bias that puts it outside the Israeli mainstream, perhaps a bit like NPR in the United States. On the UW Middle East Studies web site we have media page which links to a semi-random sampling of news sources from around the region, including Israel. To be honest, the main reasons I go mainly to Haaretz are the fact those labelled "centrist" tend to be in Hebrew, Arutz Sheva would drive me up the wall (a corollary to the unspoken fact I tend to agree with Haaretz), and every time I try to read the Jerusalem Post it seems like I have some technical issue of one kind or another. Still, if anyone has a solid English-language "mainstream" Israeli news source they'd recommend, I'd like to find out about it.

Polygamy in Uzbekistan

IWPR reports that polygamy is on the rise in Uzbekistan. The two factors leading to this are an economic decline which in the Uzbek social climate hurts women far more than men and a growing trend among males to see wives as status symbols. I don't have a lot to add in the way of analysis, but thought I'd point it out.

Arabs and Chinese

I spent this afternoon in the library looking mainly at archaeological reports, when I stumbled across an article by Zhang Jun-yan about early relations between China and the Middle East. It never ceases to amaze me how interconnected much of the world was even with medieval transportation. Chinese sources mention that during the 5th century, vessels from the Liu-Sung dynasty frequently sailed to the Persian Gulf and traded with the Lakhmids near their capital in al-Hira. With the expansion of Islam into Central Asia, contacts only increased, and Arabs traders in China settled down and in at least one case took the civil service exams and entered the Tang bureaucracy. The Abbasids sent military forces to China to help put down the An Lushan Rebellion, and they wound up staying in China. Even when relations deteriorated, such as with an event called the Battle of the Talas, there was cultural exchange: Chinese prisoners from the battle were settled in Samarkand, where they introduced paper into the Islamic world.

Angry Arab

In a remote corner of the blogosphere, I have found an Angry Arab.

Ansar al-Islam and the Media

It is an undeniable fact that Ansar al-Islam, a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda, had a headquarters in the Kurdish-controlled area of Iraq. The administration tried to use this to link Saddam to al-Qaeda, anyway, and still are. Some people I know keep insisting the administration's alleged lies are all the Democrats twisting what they said. I think, however, that this Center for American Progress article by Matthew Yglesias gives a good round-up of what's been going down, and the press's complacency therein.

New Iraq Strategy

The U.S. is now moving toward having local elections for an Iraqi transitional government early in 2004. Regular readers will suspect correctly that I support this move, which will be an important signal that the U.S. ultimately wants Iraqis to control their own country. I do not think this counts as "cutting and running," and may speed the process of winning the war for reasons I discussed yesterday. Some government officials worry that Shi'ite Muslims will try to write a theocratic constitution. Those officials are dumb and should be ignored.

Yeesh!!!

Juan Cole reports that a U.S. soldier shot at the car of prominent IGC member Ayatollah Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum as he was entering U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, wounding the driver. It occurs to me that if I could pick the worst possible blunder for the U.S. to make, shooting a relatively pro-American ayatollah on the IGC would be it.

Dean Can Win

Hawken Blog's Nitin Julka has taken note of the debate on Howard Dean's electability. The major reason people say Dean can't win is because of his stance against the Iraq invasion. I'm not convinced this does him in, both because Dean has conservative stands on issues like gun control that will make it hard to portray him as a radical leftist, and because he is a very shrewd politician who can probably sell his views on a war the American people will see as either over or a potential quagmire, depending on how things go during the next year.

I don't agree with Dick Morris on a lot of policy, but he is an extremely astute political observer, and he has made two points I think are relevant to Dean's chances. One is that Presidents lose because they are successful as often as because they fail, simply because in basic terms whatever job they became identified with no longer needs doing. In this case, if Iraq turns into a Bush success, people will turn to other issues, and if it appears to be failing, that failure will become an issue. The second is that having the most money - which Bush will - does not guarantee victory; what matters is having enough money to get your message out to a national audience and rely on voters to sort out the issues regardless of the relative number of ads they see. The first point relates to shaping issues, the second to internal campaign management. I believe Dean can do both of these - he has already shown he can be strong on offense, and his fund-raising edge among Democrats came after he rose in the polls, not before, showing he knows what he's doing. Would he be favored against Bush? I'm not so sure. But don't count him out.

(Julka also mentions the Confederate flag flap, but I don't think enough people are following the election in detail right now for it to matter.)

Who is the Enemy?

Josh Chafetz, Matthew Yglesias, and Sebastian Holsclaw have all recently touched upon the identity of the people in Iraq presently using violence to oppose the CPA, with consequences for what U.S. policy should regarding troop levels and internationalization. I think, however, that the question of our enemies' identity is far from conclusively answered, if there is even a united opposition in the first place.

Juan Cole today says they are "Sunni Arab nationalists and Sunni radicals in Iraq", which he then generalizes into "the Iraqi people." I'm not sure he can really do that, as the two categories he named don't include all the Iraqi people, and in fact seems to support the line about Saddam loyalists which often comes out of the administration. (They may not technically want Saddam back, but they are the same people who formed the base of his regime.) Hiwa Osman of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting suggests that they are a mix of former Ba'athists and Muslim militants who are gaining new recruits from the Iraqi population. This article describes a group called "Muhammad's Army" which claimed responsibility for the blast at the UN heaquarters, and apparently tried to coordinate the dispersed Ba'athist remnants behind its own program.

There is clearly a growing coordination behind these attacks, so I can't buy the notion that a nationalist resistance has simply sprung from nowhere without the coordinating hand of either a noteworthy Islamic militant group or leaders of Saddam's old regime. However, if they are recruiting significantly from the population at large, internationalization would help reduce that pool of recruits by allaying Iraqi fears of a new colonial era and by providing reconstruction aid to give jobs to Iraqis, thus reducing the number who will turn to the resistance out of financial desparation. This in turn would give us a finite number of enemies with central coordination, and presumably make winning the war easier.

UPDATE: I knew I was forgetting something. A couple of posts down, Juan Cole discusses an Iraqi political scientist's observations that Turkmen and Christians are among those killed fighting the U.S. forces, suggesting a nationalist resistance directed mainly at driving out the U.S. If true, that might support the "Iraqi people" line mentioned above. I should also add caution against seeing "Muhammad's Army" as some new umbrella group for the resistance...when I was paying more attention to the Eurasia Geopolitics Yahoo Group over the summer, I saw claims of responsibility and calls to arms from lots of miscellaneously named groups that may or may not have been important.

Aging Rapidly

In about 45 minutes, I will have reached the advanced age of 27. Somehow this isn't as big a psychological leap as turning 26 was.

Middle Eastern Democracy

Martin Kramer dissents from President Bush's goal of supporting the democratization of the Muslim Middle East on the grounds that such democracies would oppose U.S. interests and human rights. However, his reference to Iran seems a weak case: Any problems with human rights in Iran stem from its lack of full democracy, and its anti-Americanism came largely because of U.S. support for the Shah. Kramer also links to an address he gave in 2002 in which he mentions Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority as examples of pluralist societies in which Islamist radicals have gained influence. However, I don't think you can really discuss those cases without reference again to the corruption of Arafat's regime, Syrian influence in Lebanon, and the Israeli occupations in south Lebanon and the West Bank.

The real problem I have with such thinking, however, is that over the long term support for these dictators is likely to be a losing strategy. The crux of Kramer's argument is this: "I do not claim here that the Arab world is imprisoned by Islam, as some might argue. I do claim that it is burdened by its history—history transmuted into memory, and preserved as a mindset. And I would summarize the mindset in a simple axiom: rule or die...In the Arab world, civil society is very thin on the ground. And the reason is this: civil society is regarded everywhere as a form of political opposition. The state therefore seeks to destroy or co-opt it. And the people? They also suspect the institutions of civil society, which cannot protect them from the state, and whose sponsors are often distrusted."

One issue here is the extent to which the conditions he cites are conditions created by dictatorship itself. The only way to build a habit of ideological tolerance is to force regimes to tolerate more diverse perspectives. In the short term, this may give rise to anti-American revolutionary fervor in some areas; however, I disagree that this would be universal, and in the long term is the only way to ensure the future stability and prosperity of the region. Iran may be more repressive culturally than under the Shah, but there is far more open political discourse across the nation as a whole rather than just key urban areas, and this makes a better platform from which to approach true democracy than the Shah's repression. Adopting Kramer's strategy would seem to keep the Muslim Middle East in dictatorships for all eternity.

In addition, I think some of these civil society institutions do exist in terms of Egyptian trade associations, for example. In addition, the description of the Arab press is something of a MEMRI caricature which does not capture the full range of Arab debate in contains. (See Abu Aardvark for more on MEMRI.) I haven't talked to anyone in the field who thinks democracy is right around the corner, but the building blocks are starting to appear. The U.S. needs to be on the right side of history and support them whenever possible.

Afghan Hindus

IWPR has an article about the problems Hindus are facing attempting to reclaim old sacred sites in Afghanistan, especially cremation grounds. Since these grounds were last used, neighborhoods have expanded close to them, and now the residents say they don't want to live next to cremation grounds. The residents say their concerns are not religious, which I find sort of interesting. We've heard a lot about Afghanistan's conservative Islamic culture, but it also strikes me as more old traditions surviving than the ideological Islamism found in places like Saudi Arabia. I'd be interested in learning more about the history of intercommunal relations in the Afghan context, where other religions would have long been part of the social landscape.

Joe Millionaire

So after seeing most of the episodes of The Next Joe Millionaire, I've figured out that reality TV gets better as you near the end. The first couple of episodes were horribly boring; tonight's two actually had me interested. I think it's because so much depends on getting to know the characters, and before any eliminations take place it's just a random cacophony of voices you really can't form an opinion about. As it stands, though, I have to admit I'm happy with where the series stands now, as Olinda (whom I could barely stand) is gone while Anique (my favorite) surprisingly remains, along with the highly likable Petra and sympathetic Cat. (Yes, I know Petra lied about smoking...for some reason that bounced off me. And "favorite" here indicates she's the one I like the most, and hence whom I hope winds up with David since that's her goal, as I like her attitude there as much as anything else. I haven't the foggiest idea who would actually make the best match.)

Of course next week they're having someone return. Let's just hope this doesn't turn out like the ALCS and NLCS ultimately did.

Anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism

Allison Kaplan Sommer mention an incident at the Kristallnacht commemoration in Vienna and asks how those who differentiate anti-Israeli violence from anti-Semitic violence would explain it. I would say simply that all anti-Semites are by definition anti-Israeli, but that does not mean that all opposition to Israel is based on anti-Semitism. I oppose many policies of the Israeli government, yet find Judaism interesting and have Jewish friends (some of whom agree with me). This is pretty much the same as my approach to Syria or Egypt, the main difference being that at least some people think Israel shouldn't exist anymore. I can't answer for them.

Part of me also wonders if there's a difference here between Europe and the United States. Without having studied it out in detail, it seems like anti-Semitic parties and rhetoric continue to be significant forces in many European countries, and this anti-Semitism easily tips into opposition to the Jewish state. By contrast, anti-Semitism in the United States seems much more limited in scope, and doesn't make it into the public sphere at all unless you already believe all opposition to Israel is veiled anti-Semitism. The issue might be somewhat complicated by the fact that some people dislike those who don't share their political views, and if they're strongly opposed to Israel may dislike Jews as people who tend to support Israel, as many Jews, especially of the older generation, take this as an important aspect of Jewish identity. (Please note that I place the flaw here in those who engage in this sort of "shadow anti-Semitism," and in no way wish to insinuate that it is the Jews' fault.) But in an interesting irony, the disengagement of younger American Jews from Israel may indicate the security they feel in this country: If they felt there was a chance they could face a campaign of anti-Jewish violence of some kind, they'd probably be more likely to support the state which would seek to protect their interests and to which they could ultimately flee, if necessary.

Arabs and Democracy

The media tends to be lazy in reporting Arab public opinion and reaction to things, giving rise to the impression on the street that a lot of Arabs simply want to live in theocratic or dictatorial societies. Is "Is Islam compatible with democracy?" meme also springs from this. Oxblog's Patrick Belton points this out in how different media outlets responded to President Bush's speech about democracy in the Middle East.

More on Olives

Uzi Benzamin has a column in Haaretz explaining why the settlers' destruction of Palestinian olive trees represents an important part of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'll have a bit more to say on this later. On the other hand, for those in the mood for a little optimism, Jonathan Edelstein brings up olive growing in Israel as a model of Arab-Jewish cooperation. (This includes recipes!)

Egyptian Opposition

Arab Street Bum speaks out about the tortured Egyptian dissident:

"I may not agree with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, but I think that the hakooma (government) has been committing these crimes against humanity long enough. Torture has become the modus operandi for the GOE, most especially since the unfortunately unsuccessful attempt on Don Mubarak's life in Ethiopia. So this man might have expressed contempt for the thieves and charlatans that call themselves our government, or perhaps voiced support for Hamas or Hizbullah? Did he hurt anyone? If we discount hurting the President's feelings, probably not. But for his defiance, he was beaten, starved, electrocuted, burned, and otherwise abused until one day, he died. Who is the criminal?"

Terrorism in Riyadh

Saudi Arabia has been cracking down on Islamic militants in the country, and now it would seem the militants have struck back with an attack on a residential compound in Riyadh. The early suggestions that this was an al-Qaeda operation are of course merely speculation at this point, but I think it's likely to be born out.

Wanted: Iraqi Government

According to the Washington Post, the U.S. is looking for a new leadership group to replace the Iraqi Governing Council, which they deem ineffective. The U.S. has accused council members of following their own political interests rather than focusing on collective action for Iraq's future. The leading alternative seems to be holding a national assembly similar to that which chose Afghanistan's interim government, a plan backed by other nations on the Security Council. Personally, I think that's a good idea, as it would give the Iraqi grassroots a feeling of ownership in the new regime.