I’ve been in Canada for the past 27 hours. What a breath of fresh air! I mean, to fly to a place (Toronto) where the airport book store puts out front of the store to attract readers a lot of books by Noam Chomsky and Patrick Cockburn already tells you you’re not in the US any more….
I had a bit of an embarrassment at the passport line there. The guy behind the counter said, “So when were you last here?” I wasn’t feeling very sharp and I’d been thinking about my kids a lot, so I recalled a family driving trip we made to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks in the (American) Rocky Mountains, back in 1993 or 1994, at the end of which we drove back east through Canada. So I said, “Oh, I think it was 1993 or 1994.” I had completely forgotten (1) a short visit I made to Windsor, Ontario, with my daughter Leila when she was living in nearby Detroit in 2001 or so, and (2) the visit I made to London, Ontario to speak to a conference in probably 2004 or so.
No wonder the guy looked at me as if I was dissembling. Forgetting is what I was doing… If I hadn’t been a White person, or if I’d been a person of Muslim origin, would he have been a lot less forgiving?
Anyway, I’m now in Victoria, BC, which is actually the capitol of BC. I had a bit of a chance to explore this morning. It seems like Wellington, New Zealand, in so many ways: Lots of water lacing in and out of the land-masses; great deep-water port; an important political capitol; bracing fresh air; fascinating attempts to come to terms with the past sufferings of the indigenous people; a very colonially “English” place in many ways.
Boy, did those British naval explorers of the 18th century know how to seize control of and develop great deep-water ports in so many handy places around the world!
I went to the Royal British Columbia Museum, which has a wonderful– and extremely poignant– exhibit on the “First Nations (indigenous peoples) of coastal BC.
It was so tragic, I almost couldn’t bear it.
One of the things that made it seem particularly tragic was that– as in the Te Papa Museum in Wellington– they had many black-and-white photographs of the First Nations people here, made in the second half of the 19th century.
Somehow seeing this very modern, and at one deep level quite “true” and irrefutable, representation of these people underlines in in an unarguable way the fact of their existence, the dignity and integrity of their existence, and the unspeakable tragedy of the fate they met from the White colonialists.
They even had a short moving-picture clip, taken in 1914, of three large Haida canoes moving over water, each with a costumed spiritual/dancing figure in front who danced on the boat while the canoeists beat on their seats with their paddles. Very eery, mysterious, and emotional. (Those must have been some of the very earliest moving-picture images ever recorded in British Columbia?)
The museum exhibited so many pieces of evidence of the cultural genocide enacted against these people, including a reproduction of a document many of them were forced to sign attesting to the fact that they had become “Christians,” would forever foreswear their traditional practices, and give no safe haven to anyone who continued to practice them.
… The main reason I came here, though, was to participate in the inaugural Board Meeting of a body called the Global Partnership for the International University of Iraq. It’s a group that I’ve been involved with for 2-3 years now. But only now– today, in fact– has the organization become properly constituted under (Canadian) law.
It is such a wonderful project! And it was a huge pleasure and honor to meet and sit down to work with the other people involved. I’ll tell you more about the people and the project, later. Let me just say, now, that it’s very important to me that it’s an determinedly international effort to work with Iraqis to build a university in Iraq (when circumstances permit) that embodies the highest qualities of academic freedom, great pedagogy, and socially relevant learning and research.
Anyway, I’m really tired. If you want to learn some very interesting things about what’s been going on in Iraq, I direct you Badger’s recent postings on his “Missing Links” blog and the latest offering from Reidar Visser.
Buddhism as a force in China, too
The Chinese citizen Tang Danhong is a poet and film-maker who lives outside her country. (Read on to discover where.) She seems to be someone who takes Buddhist teachings, especially regarding nonviolence and reincarnation, very seriously. On March 21, she published an intriguing essay about the current tragedy of violence and counter-violence in Tibet. (Chinese here, English translation here.) The translation is titled Tibet: Her pain, my shame.
Hat-tip to Tim Johnson of “China Rises.” See his commentary on Tang’s essay here.
Tang has apparently spent quite a lot of time in Tibet. Here is what she writes at what I consider the argumentational/emotional crux of her essay:
- Why can’t we [i.e. the Han Chinese] sit down with the Dalai Lama who has abandoned calls for “independence” and now advocates a “middle way,” and negotiate with him with sincerity, to achieve “stability” and “unity” through him?
Because the power difference of the two sides is too big. We are too many people, too powerful: Other than guns and money, and cultural destruction and spiritual rape, we do not know other ways to achieve “harmony.”
……
Not long ago, I read some posts by some radical Tibetans on an online forum about Tibet. These posts were roughly saying: “We do not believe in Buddhism, we do not believe in karma. But we have not forgotten that we are Tibetan. We have not forgotten our homeland. Now we believe the philosophy of you Han Chinese: Power comes out of the barrel of a gun! Why did you Han Chinese come to Tibet? Tibet belongs to Tibetans. Get out of Tibet!”
Of course behind those posts, there are an overwhelming number of posts from Han “ patriots.” Almost without exception, those replies are full of words such as “Kill them!” “Wipe them out!” “Wash them with blood!” “Dalai is a liar!” — those “passions” of the worshippers of violence that we are all so familiar with.
When I read these posts, I feel so sad. So this is karma. ……
And here is what she writes at the end:
- Tibet is disappearing. The spirit which makes her beautiful and peaceful is disappearing. She is becoming us, becoming what she does not want to become. What other choice does she have when facing the anxiety of being alienated? To hold onto her tradition and culture, and revive her ancient civilization? Or to commit suicidal acts which will only add to Han nationalists’ bloody, shameful glory?
Yes, I love Tibet. I am a Han Chinese who loves Tibet, regardless of whether she is a nation or a province, as long as she is so voluntarily. Personally, I would like to have them (Tibetans) belong to the same big family with me. I embrace relationships which come self-selected and on equal footing, not controlled or forced, both between peoples and nations. I have no interest in feeling “powerful,” to make others fear you and be forced to obey you, both between people and between nations, because what’s behind such a “feeling” is truly disgusting. I have left her (Tibet) several years ago, and missing her has become part of my daily life. I long to go back to Tibet, as a welcomed Han Chinese, to enjoy a real friendship as equal neighbor or a family member.
The fact that there are ethnic-Han Chinese who are Buddhists and who have respect and affection for Tibetan Buddhism is one that is too often ignored in the west. As is the fact that some of the nationalists in the Tibetan diaspora advocate the use of violent means; some are considerably more hard-line than the Dalai Lama, seeking full independence instead of– as he demands– real autonomy for Tibet as a part of the Chinese state; and some are harshly and openly critical of the Dalai Lama on many counts.
When I was in Beijing in April 2004, I learned a lot about the complex links that had grown up in earlier centuries between the dominant culture in imperial China and Tibetan Buddhism. (You could almost compare it to the appropriation by the conquering “west” of that very specifically Palestinian-origined– though intentionally “universal”– religion, Christianity… And there, too, many of the appropriators, having taken what they want from the appropriated culture and teachings, turn round to spit on and excoriate the earliest communities of believers, the indigenous Christians of Palestine and its neighboring countries.) And modern China also has its own very complex relationship with the memories and norms of imperial China– nowhere near as dismissive and “we can completely make the whole country over as if from nothing” as in the days of Mao’s Cultural revolution.
Thus, between today’s Han Chinese and today’s Tibetan Buddhists there are long skeins of historic affinities, of old pleasures and old resentments– in short, of relationship— that are considerably more tangled and interesting than the simple manichean view too often portrayed in the west.
I also recall that when I had the huge pleasure of working on my 2000 book The Moral Architecture of World Peace, one of the key points the Dalai Lama made in the conference on which the book was based was that he strongly valued anything Americans could do to help inform Han Chinese about Tibetan Buddhist culture.(p/102.)
But back to Tang Danhong… At the bottom of the “China Digital Times” English translation of her essay it tells us that she “moved to Israel from Chengdu in 2005, and [is] currently teaching Chinese language in Tel Aviv University.” It would be so fascinating to talk to her! Do you think she speaks English? Can any JWN readers get contact information for her, for me? (If so, send it here.) I would love to know how she would compare the Israel-Palestine situation to the China-Tibet situation. You might recall I wrote some of my own thoughts on the matter here.
Messaging chaos from Washington, Fateh, on Hamas issue
Sorry I’ve been very busy and haven’t had a moment to catch you all up with the fascinating saga of the Fateh-Hamas negotiations in Sana’a, Yemen…
Al-Jazeera English tells us that negotiators Azzam al-Ahmed (F) and Mousa Abu Marzouk (H) concluded a seven-point deal on Saturday (March 22), though the signing ceremony was on Sunday.
The AJE report tells us it was a seven-point agreement, and presents it to us as such, though sadly it lists only these SIX points:
- • Gaza must be returned to how it was prior to the Hamas takeover last June
• Agreement to hold early elections
• Resumption of dialogue on the basis of the 2005 Cairo agreement and the Mecca agreement of 2007
• Respecting the Palestinian Law and Basic Law and adherence to it by all parties
• Reconstruction of the Palestinian security institutions
• All Palestinian institutions to be free of any factional discrimination, subject to the law and the executive authorities.
Well, seven points or six points– almost immediately after agreement was announced, some people in Abu Mazen’s office denounced and repudiated it. This, though Azzam Ahmed is a serious political figure within Fateh. Monsters & Critics tells us that Abu Mazen aide Nimr Hammad huffed that Ahmed “had not been authorized” to sign the Sana’a Agreement. Israel’s Y-net News had a quote from Abu Mazen aide Yasser Abed Rabboo criticizing Ahmed, too.
That latter report, which I think was an AP report, quoted Abu Ala’ (Ahmed Qurei’) as saying that Azzam Ahmed had been trying to get through to Abu Mazen by phone to discuss some fine points in the agreement but couldn’t because Abu Mazen was busy meeting with– you guessed it, Dick Cheney, at the time.
So this is where the picture becomes a little clearer for me. Cheney and Condi Rice have, after all, been modeling for their eager students and proteges in Fateh just how to ‘run’ a diplomatic effort through legerdemain and completely chaotic messaging.
Remember how, earlier this month, the secretary of State was in Brussels telling a press conference that she supported Egypt’s efforts to mediate a ceasefire-plus agreement between Israel and Hamas?
Well, now, apparently Cheney’s gone to the Middle East to say the administration doesn’t support any effort to engage with Hamas, after all.
If the Israeli government wants a deal with Hamas, I am sure it will just go ahead and nail one down, Dick Cheney or no Dick Cheney. In Tuesday’s Ha’aretz, Amos Harel and Yuval Azoulay tell us that an Egypt-mediated “calm for calm” situation has been generally holding for some days now across the Gaza-Israel border. Or rather, that Hamas and Israel are abiding by it, “even though Islamic Jihad occasionally launches rockets into Israel.”
Other portions of that report indicate that some people in the Israeli Defense Ministry are pursuing an intense campaign to “lower expectations” about any kind of more solid ceasefire emerging with Gaza. But if Hamas does succeed in keeping the Gaza-Israel border calm (i.e. no rockets), what would be the justification for Israel’s continued maintenance of the siege?
NYT is only 13 days behind JWN on the Hamas-Israel story
The NYT’s handsomely compensated diplomatic reporter Helene Cooper is “only” 13 days behind Just World News in reporting that Egypt has gotten some support from the US State Department in its continuing efforts to negotiate an Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Strengths of my reporting over hers:
- 1. I had a reference and a link to the extremely revealing comment Rice made in a March 6 press conference in Brussels, when she said she “had talked to the Egyptian leaders and expressed confidence that their efforts could promote the US-backed peace talks.” I also linked to the AFP report that spelled out that Rice’s remarks were in response to a question “about reported talks between Cairo and Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad.” Cooper made no mention of this at all, though it was the most public (even if still slightly guarded) expression of support any administration official has ever made for the Israel-Hamas negotiations, and was therefore key to her story. And it’s all there in the public record!
2. I had links and references to some excellent reporting by Al-Masry al-Yawm’s Fathiya Dakhakhni that spelled out Hamas’s negotiating position in some detail. Cooper seemingly couldn’t give a toss.
3. I explored in some detail Egypt’s reasons for undertaking this mediating role despite the considerable reservations that President Mubarak entertains towards Hamas. (With lots of hyperlinks.) No toss here from Cooper, either.
4. I scooped her by 13 days.
Strengths of her reporting over mine:
- 1. She wrote her piece after mine and therefore was able to incorporate into it the whole “story” about the trouble the State Department got into by publishing on a sort of “quasi-official” blog a question about whether the US government should seek to “engage” Hamas, and the furious response that elicited from a Congressman who’s on the House Appropriations Committee and expressed outrage that the question had even been asked. (The State Dept spokesman rapidly put up a comment to the effect that they were merely asking the question, not defining policy.)
2. She got direct quotes from two Israelis who have been in Washington and support the idea of engaging with Hamas. (I could have gotten those quotes but I’ve been busy with a bunch of other things, as attentive readers will be aware.)
3. She got paid for her work on this story. (H’mm, I’m not actually sure if this makes her work better or not. Probably it’s a wash.)
One intriguing thing that is underlined yet again by Cooper’s story is the extreme difficulty any US administration will always have even talking about thinking about engaging with Hamas– unless the Government of Israel has already done so first.
This is so like the whole story of the PLO back in the 1980s and early 1990s! Back then, it was the Norwegians, bless their dear misguided hearts, who did the preparatory intermediation. Nowadays its the Egyptians. I actually explored some of the strange and– from the American point of view– completely dysfunctional dimensions of that tail-wags-dog phenomenon in my article in The Nation last November.
Maybe Helene Cooper could helpfully go read that one, too?
Bush’s inflammatory and inaccurate accusations against Iran
On Wednesday– the same day Dick Cheney was blowing off the recent, much less alarmist National Intelligence Estimate on Iran– our president was making an audiotape to be broadcast into Iran in which he claimed, fallaciously, that Iran has “declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people” and that the Islamic Republic could be hiding a secret nuclear weapons program.
McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay has written an excellent short analysis of this issue. Over at the WaPo, Robin Wright notes the escalatory potential of Bush’s utterance. She quotes Iran specialist Suzanne Maloney, who worked at the State Department until recently, as saying that “The bellicose rhetoric from one side only produces the same from the other.” Bush’s rhetorical escalation has also been accompanied by further moves to tighten the sanction against Iranian financial institutions.
Bush seems to be in a strange (and to me very scary) kind of gung-ho-ish mood these days, one that seems far removed from the grim realities of a US military that is tautly over-stretched between Iraq and Afghanistan, a US diplomacy that is facing vast new problems, including crucally from its own NATO allies, and a US economy that is sputtering very seriously and threatened with further, even more explosive breakdown.
I am really wondering what is causing his present mood of apparent elation. Worrying, too, about what disasters it might lead us all into.
By the way, happy Nowruz, happy Easter, and happy Passover– oops, sorry, make that Purim–, everyone. (If you celebrate a feast at this time of year that I haven’t mentioned, happy that, too. As for us Quakers, we don’t have a liturgical calendar so we just get to appreciate the passage of the seasons on this beautiful earth. May we find a way to save it, and ourselves– including from any further terrible wars.)
New book, ‘Re-engage’ goes to press; website launched!
So here we are! The great folks at Paradigm Publishers told me my upcoming book Re-engage! America and the World After Bush went to press today– and we are now also launching the website for the book.
Here’s the cover:
And here’s the website for it.
It has been a thrilling project. Two weeks ago I got to hold a copy of “bound galleys” in my hand, and all the work and the crazy deadlines seemed worthwhile… That, even though the bound galleys were not yet the final version of the book. The cover looks a lot stronger now; the layout of the book’s 20 or so charts has been upgraded; the remaining typos have all (we hope) now been corrected; and various other small tweaks made.
It has been just a little over nine months since I first had the conversation with Jennifer Knerr and her colleagues at Paradigm that set the whole project in train. They have done a superb job– in editing, in production, in speed, vision, and every other respect.
The cover price is $14.95 and the official publication date is May 15. However, if they really have gone to press today then I imagine that finished copies should be available much sooner than that.
So okay, JWN readers, here’s where I would really love your help– especially if you live in the United States. Can I ask you to help us promote the book??
This is fairly urgent. The book will be out very soon now, and given the topic its optimal shelf-life may be fairly short: let’s say somewhere between nine and 18 months.
It has been written and produced to be as topical and up-to-date as possible. That means we need to hit the ground running promotion-wise. And I’ve a confession to make: I’ve been so busy writing and revising the book that I haven’t yet done as much as I’d wanted to, to set up promotion activities for it. Paradigm and the Friends Committee on National Legislation will be helping, but neither of them have the kind of deep pockets that the big New York publishing houses put into promoting their books. And anyway, this is much more of a citizen-based, grassroots venture.
So here are some ideas of how you could help us out with this:
- * You can order a copy of the book (instructions at the second button down on the website’s left sidebar.)
* Or you could consider ordering three or four copies– they make great gifts for anyone you know who’s graduating high school or college.
* Could you go to your local bookstore and tell them how excited you are about the book? If you do, take in a couple of the fliers for the book, that you can download and print from the website. Order your own copy or copies of Re-engage! through the bookstore– and urge the bookstore to get in a load of additional copies, too.
* While you’re about it, you could print up a bunch of fliers and use them to help tell your friends and neighbors about the book…
* Would you like me to come to your town or community and gives some talks or speeches about the book? We are just working on some book-tour ideas right now. Best plan: scratch your head and think of as many local groups, colleges, organizations, and media outlets as may be interested in having me do something for them– any time between May and the end of the year. See if any of these groups could help with airfare or other expenses. Coordinate with my schedule early on. (Email me here.) I’m definitely thinking of doing a west coast tour in early fall… maybe try to hit Chicago and some midwest cities in mid-fall… and just about anywhere on the east coast is easy for me to get to in spring, summer, or fall.
* Could you write a review of the book for any media outlet with which you’re connected? Mention it in a Letter to the Editor?
* Of course, if you have a blog, or contribute to online discussions elsewhere, it would be great to get the book mentioned and discussed in the blogosphere as often as possible!
Well, y’all must have some other good ideas of how to get the word out, too…
By the way, the ‘Re-engage’ website has its own little blog attached to it over there. I’m not sure how much of my blogging I’ll be doing over there in the months ahead, and how much here. But check it out. I’m looking forward to having some good discussions over there, too.
But mainly, at this point– a big thanks for anything you can do to help get the work out about Re-engage! When you’ve had a chance to read it I’ll be really interested to hear your reactions.
(For now, though, at least you can go to the website and admire the fine set of blurbs the book has gotten from some very interesting people who have read it. Did I mention Lee Hamilton???)
Problems inside Egypt’s ruling party?
Egypt’s landmark local elections are coming up April 8. As noted in my ‘Delicious’ comments over recent weeks, the Mubarak regime has gone to great lengths to prevent representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition parties from registering as candidates. This Reuters report quotes MB leaders as saying that only 498 of the 5,754 candidates they had tried to register had been able to do so. You can get further details of the official obstructionism here.
Not all is wonderful for the ruling “National Democratic Party”, either. Indeed, it seems to be suffering from an advanced attack of what we might call “Fateh-style internal collapse syndrome.” Just today, Al-Masry al-Yawm reports that:
- — There has been considerable turmoil within the NDP in various areas, over the choices made for which candidates to run in the elections. Including this:
- Party members in Zarqa, Damietta and Kafr Saad started to collect signatures to withdraw confidence from Secretaries Nabil el-Daly, Mansour Atwa and Essam el-Sharaydi for ignoring prominent figures and replacing them with others, which they called clear favoritism…
NDP Shura Council Member Magdy el-Sonbati has resigned in protest against ignoring his choices.
In Aswan, 50 NDP members staged a sit-in at the party headquarters in protest against the party’s choices. They demanded the dismissal of Secretary Said Khalaf and Organization Secretary Refaat Abdallah…
–In Beheira and Dakahlia unrest among younger members of the NDP has erupted into a full-blown insurrection, with some recent university graduates announcing the formation of an “NDP Salvation Front.”
— There is more on the crisis of resignations within the NDP, here.
— The NDP in el-Salam suddenly realized– and this was after the deadline for registering candidacies– it had failed to register enough candidates there (!) and that two MB candidates were about to be elected unopposed there… so they quickly (and not entirely legally) threw ten more NDP candidates into that race.
I vividly recall an evening when we were in Egypt last year, when we were being hosted by an old friend who is a leading figure within the NDP; and I said to him, “You know, I would love to know what it is that the NDP stands for?” And his only answer was a dismissive, though jolly, laugh. The NDP seems, like Fateh, to have become little more than an (increasingly creaky) patronage machine… And in a time of mounting socioeconomic and political challenges in Egypt, that may no longer be sufficient.
The war anniversary: a poignant Iraqi view
McClatchy Baghdad bureau’s Correspondent Jenan has blogged what may be the most heart-rending short essay by any Iraqi anywhere on the fifth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.
In four short paragraphs she sums up the strength of the desire she had, on March 18, 2003, for what she actually calls “salvation” from Saddam, and the depth of her disappointment now, five years later:
- Really I can say I was flying with my great expectation of what will happen tomorrow. I wasn’t wait war. I was waiting for new life that fills with justice, fair, happy, hopes and love. I was waiting for the war of change. Even I vowed to God sacrifice sheep if we get rid of Saddam occupation of Iraq that what we believe at that time we were living under Saddam’s occupation. I was happy, exciting, and optimist. Yes I was optimist at that time. I believed all the pretexts of war because I was look like the drowned who is cling to a straw thinking that it will save him.
Unfortunately now I feel that I’m drowning more and more. I discovered that I was deceived and now I believe the old saying “the devil that you know is better than the devil that you don’t know”
Jenan, I wish I could tell you that better days are coming. More peaceful days. Your dignity restored. A time when you and your family can live in security and in harmony with your compatriots and neighbors. A day free of occupation by any military force, whether homegrown or imposed by foreigners.
Well, honestly, I do believe we can bring such days to Iraqis. But only if all of us, Iraqis and non-Iraqis but most especially Americans, focus on the true goal: Days of dignity, calm, and hope. Days marked by friendly cooperation among all nations rather than the attempt by any one or more nations to exercise brute force and tight control over others.
Obama’s speech confirms his leadership qualities
Today, in the (Quaker-founded) City of Brotherly Love, Sen. Barack Obama gave what is probably the most important speech of his entire presidential campaign. It was wise, thoughtful, honest, redemptive, hope-filled, and intensely focused on the central issue of his campaign: the need to bring the US citizenry together in the search for a more just social order.
The speech confirmed, for me, that Obama does indeed have the wisdom required to lead this nation in the complex years ahead.
The main challenge he was confronting in making the speech was the way that race issues have started infiltrating into the Democratic nomination race in a very insidious way. There were Geraldine’s Ferraro’s (actually quite bizarre) recent comments to the effect that Obama had gotten as far as he has gotten only because of his race; and there has been much muttering and dissemination of anti-Obama innuendo based on video clips of some sermons given by his long-time pastor in Chicago, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Wright retired some time ago from the pastroship at Obama’s church and is no longer his pastor.
Obama dealt in what I thought was a fair-minded, clear, yet generous-spirited way with the issues raised by and about both Ferraro and Wright. Regarding Wright, Obama went to some lengths to express his strong criticism of some of the specific things Wright has said (and therefore, done), while notably not disaffirming him totally as a person, a valued former mentor, and a friend.
To me, this is a very important move for anyone to make. People need to be able to criticize the actions (or words) of other people without disaffirming them as people. We certainly all need to the hold to the idea that people, all people, including ourselves, are capable of doing both good things and bad things; (and we should hope that we ourselves end up doing more good than bad.)
Obama spoke quite a lot about what Wright and his UCC church have meant to him over the years. He also, as I’ve said, criticized some of Wright’s specific utterances. Then, he paired this view of Wright, and Wright’s occasional (but, it turns out, well documented) explosions of anti-white anger, with his view of his own white grandmother. He says of Wright:
- I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother – a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love…
This is indeed a fascinating look into what makes Obama tick. In essence, because of the multiracial character of his upbringing and his family, Obama has an “insider’s view” into the way that many white Americans talk among themselves about race issues, and of the way that many black Americans talk among themselves. Within each community, these are generally viewed as “dirty little secrets.” But keeping them secret rather than airing and discussing these fears, concerns, and accusations more openly has allowed them to fester.
He promises us something different. More honesty, more national unity, and more focus on the many very urgent tasks of social (re-)building that our country faces at the twilight of the George W. Bush years.
This is an amazing and important speech. The only small flaw– a concession, no doubt, to the problems that many strongly pro-Likud people have been foisting onto him– was his specific disavowal of an argument that Rev. Wright apparently made, to the effect that the conflicts in the Middle East have been rooted primarily in the actions of Israel (described by Obama as a “stalwart ally”–“instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”
Well, my view is that the actions of Israel and the hateful ideologies of some (but not all) of the proponents of radical Islam have both contributed to the conflicts in the Middle East. And so, in an even greater way, have the actions of the US government. So Obama’s flaw there doesn’t seem major to me.
His speech is primarily about inter-group relations here in the U.S. It is a great one.
Adventures of the neoconquistadores
Last week, the Pentagon contractors at the “Institute for Defense Analyses” published a scrubbed-for-public-view version (here in PDF) of their report on the links between Saddam Hussein’s regime and international terrorism. It was based overwhelmingly on documents captured after the March 2003 invasion of Iraq that was, we can recall, justified by the Bush administration on the two main grounds that (1) the Iraqi regime had a significant arsenal of WMDs, and (2) the regime had significant ties to Al-Qaeda.
War justification #1 turned out to have no basis in fact.
Many of us had argued all along (as I did here, back in February 2003) that War justification #2 had no basis in fact, either.
Now, the Pentagon and its contractor have confirmed our judgment. The IDA report stated (p.ES-1) that: “This study found no ‘smoking gun’ (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.”
But, and this is a big “but”– it went on to add: “The Iraqi regime was involved in regional and international terrorist operations prior to OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. The predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq.”
President Bush was fast to seize on this new formulation, and a day or so after the IDA report surfaced he made a speech claiming that the US invasion of Iraq had in fact been justified because of the “state terror” that Saddam had perpetrated against his own citizens. Thus, the concept of “state terror” was handily conscripted there to shift the conversation from Saddam’s alleged “links with al-Qaeda” to his regime’s abusive treatment of its own citizens.
Now, it is indubitably true that Saddam Hussein perpetrated numerous atrocities against his own people. Those fell under the headings of both crimes against humanity and, most likely, genocide. To call them “terrorism” is probably to stretch the definition of “terrorism” further than it should be stretched. Anyway, in international law “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” are far more useful categories.
I note that many US allies have also committed such acts against their own people– in Central America, in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere.
Indeed, when Saddam was committing the worst of his acts against Iraq’s Kurdish citizens, in the 1980s, he was acting in an informal but but very real alliance with the US. (That was when Donald Rumsfeld made his visit to Iraq.) But by early 2003, Saddam’s regime had become tightly overstretched as a result of 12 years of extremely punishing US-led sanctions imposed on the people and government of Iraq; and his regime was probably the least abusive it had ever been.
But now, as the fifth anniversary of the invasion approaches, Bush presents us with this “liberationist” description of what the invasion was all about.
The first time a western government decided to use the force of arms to invade and “remake” to its own design a non-western country, and justified this act as being completely “in the true [i.e. invader-defined] interests of the invaded peoples” was when Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella sent Christopher Columbus west to “remake” as much of the newly discovered “New World” of the Americas as he could reach.
From that perspective, the key development was not in 1492 when Columbus made landfall on the Caribbean island he named “Hispaniola”, thinking at the time that he had already reached Asia. It was when Ferdinand and Isabella sent him back to Hispaniola the following year, to govern it just as he pleased. (Details here.)
Columbus turned out to be a lousy administrator– perhaps because he used wanton violence against Hispaniola’s indigenous Tainos people, reducing their numbers in just a few years from “hundreds of thousands” to around 60,000.
Two decades later, further generations of (better organized) Conquistadores launched their “liberationist” projects on the mainland of Central and North-Central America. This time they were better backed up by cohorts of Dominicans and other “cultural genocidaires” whose job was to remake the peoples of Central America as Spanish-style Catholics who would always be obedient to the diktats of the (Spanish-dominated) Catholic hierarchy.
The means the Conquistadores used to bring about their “conversions”– which of course were always described as being “for the good of the natives themselves”– were the time-honored means that colonial invaders always use: brute violence, divide-and-rule, and the spreading of both weapons and distrust. Including, many of the same means the Dominicans were using back home in Spain in their Inquisition against suspected unbelievers there.
Well, at least now we can have a richer idea of what the “con” in the word “neocon” stands for. But I still feel fairly sickened whenever I hear President Bush or other gung-ho supporters of the bloody and so destructive invasion of Iraq appropriating the noble discourse of “liberation” and trying to justify the invasion on those grounds.
Perhaps I should get over just feeling sickened by this, and try harder to really understand that Bush and his supporters probably do, in all seriousness, still feel that they have done “a good thing” in Iraq. How, then, can we get into a conversation with such people and point out to them, in a way that “works”, that noble though their intentions may have been, the effects of their actions have been very far indeed from the meliorist project they might have had in mind… And that therefore, they should be much more open than they have been thus far to ideas for Iraq other than just going ahead blindly with the application of continuing amounts of military force?