Quote of the Day

"My dad is a poopie."

--Lexei Gleason (aka, my daughter)

The Iraqi Issue (again....)

I guess everyone has heard by now that the Arab League sponsored a meeting between Iraqi leaders in Cairo, and that they all came to the consensus that the US should give the Iraqis a timetable for withdrawl. I mean, how could you not hear about it? If you watch CNN, MSNBC, Fox News....

What's that? They aren't covering it? Strange....

Why do you think that is? Why is something so significant flying under the radar in the main stream media? I have a theory.

Bush doesn't want a timetable, so that explains Fox News' silence. He's given all of his reasons why. It's in his interests that the summit not be covered, that way he doesn't have to address the issue. He's said publically that we'd only be in Iraq as long as the Iraqis want us there. What he really MEANS is that we'll only be in Iraq as long as the people in charge there want us to stay, and right now that group is largely comprised of people that we helped install. Therefore, he can use that as a justification to pretend that it's not "officially" happening, regardless of what the rest of the world (and the Iraqi people) say.

So why isn't the "liberal media" screaming about this, aside from the "fact" that they've been "bushwhacked" by the administration? This is more difficult to puzzle out, but I'll give it a try.

As for the Democrats, there's something risky to using this as a rallying call to get out of Iraq. Frankly, it's politically risky to give a sense of vindication to this extra-governmental body of Iraqis as it could be seen to undermine the authority of the legitimate government. It's also risky to allow the impetus of change to be the Iraqis, rather than the Democrats here at home; it would give the American people the sense that when the Bush administration "responds to changes on the ground" that they are not doing so because of a new, strong Democrat leadership here at home. One more stipulation that I have is this: maybe the "liberal media" isn't as "liberal" as so many accuse it of being.

Of course, there's always the third perspective of why the coverage isn't out there. It hasn't been long enough. The real policy wonks out there haven't had time to really run the numbers and decide how to spin this yet, on either the right or the left, so us in the blogosphere are left to pull our hair out and ask ourselves "WTF?" while the big guys try to turn this to their political advantage.

Let's raise a glass to the bloggers, the only ones out there who are "keepin' it real!"

Trouble In Iraq?

Here's a quick, unrefined thought, before I go to work.

What do you think the likely effects would be if we pulled our security forces out of the neighborhoods where we were unwelcome and funnelled the Iraqi security forces there to fill the void? IE, redistribute our and their security forces so that we had the "cake" assignments in places like soon-to-be-renamed Iraqi Kurdistan and soon-to-be-renamed Iraqi Shiiteistan? That way, they could concentrate their soldiers and police officers on the Sunni Triangle (aka, soon-to-be-renamed Sunni Triangleistan) where there is heavy US resentment and relieve the sense that we are brutal occupiers there? I would think that we would still be responsible for carrying out military operations all throughout the country (as we have a very functional and efficient military, rather than police force) and doing things like "mop up" operations, invasions on insurgent strongholds, and border control. As for being Globocops, however, lets leave that to the Iraqis, except in the places in which we are welcome (for the most part).

It just strikes me that intelligence is the most important factor in an insurgency, and if we keep pissing off the Sunni neighborhoods, they aren't going to pass any of it along to us.

As Rodney King said, "Can't we all just get along?"

By the way, I am OPENLY SOLICITING FEEDBACK here--please post or I'll steal your first born. (unless you're fed up with the little brat, in which case I'll drop mine off for you to take care of too!)

Iraqi Sectarian Strife

The New York Times has a good article on their front page about a Shiite who traded homes with an old Sunni friend so that each could get out of a neighborhood in which they were the minority. It had gotten to the point where they were each afraid to go outside because they felt they would be the target of sectarian violence. The point of the piece was that Iraq is becoming more polarized, as Sunni and Shiite further segregate themselves, and that we are running the risk of seeing the shit hit the fan in terms of civil war.

I think that this "polarizing" tendency is something common to all mixed societies, especially in times of significant internal strife or anxiety. The difference between mixed societies that work and those that don't seem to be both political and economic. In a society where economic prosperity is hard to come by (by one or all of the different identity groups), you often get resentment brewing between the groups. I think that this was the case in the US during the depression, in the southern antebellum states, in France right now, and more dramatically in the Sudan. A lack of economic integration as they have in Singapore, in many parts of India, in the meritocracy of the wild west, in Canada (the 51st state), et cetera, can cause a serious rise in tensions between those different identity groups.

Also, politically, I think that it is necessary for a mixed society to have a strong political machine to keep the order if it doesn't want to see sectarian chaos. The rise to power of Slobodan Milosovic (sp?) after the fall of the Soviet Union is a classic example of how the removal of a strong political machine that keeps the peace can lead to schisms that tear a country apart. Cyprus is another good example, where the Turks and the Greeks have interacted harmoniously when political representation was protected, but where they turned upon one another when the British withdrew. All throughout the Middle East and Africa, post-WWII, states cannibalized themselves when the colonial powers pulled out and ceased to have the stabilizing force of an outside, autocratic government. They largely broke apart along ethnic or sectarian lines.

We broke Iraq. We are responsible for fixing it. But we're not going to "fix" anything by simply blindly trusting that if we keep our troops there long enough to keep the peace that the rabble will settle down. Iraq needs security--security and economics are mutually interdependent--but they need security on their own terms. Another autocratic regime isn't good for them, us, or the region, but an alternative to such a regime has to be on their terms, not ours.

They need security. It should be their call. I don't advocate turning over operational control of our military to the Iraqis, so PLEASE don't misconstrue what I'm about to say. But I do believe that we should let THEM tell US what they want in terms of security. They're going to have elections in December. I think we should leave it up to them. If they want us to stay in significant numbers in order to provide security, I think that we owe them that, unless the situation becomes simply too untenable (which is what the debate would be about). If they want a measured draw-down of US troops, one that allows "us to stand down as the Iraqis stand up", we should give them that opportunity. If they want an immediate pull out, a "cut and run" scenario, we should honor their wishes. But as long as the Iraqi people feel that it is the Americans imposing their will, through the mechanism of our security forces, on the Iraqi people, we will always have these problems. We own the problem now; if we want to get the support and cooperation of the Iraqi society as a whole, we have to make *them* own it.

What A Week

My computer died this week, and I've just finished reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling most of the stuff that it needs to do what it is supposed to do. So I'm back. For what that's worth.

It's been an interesting week.

Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin was on C-Span this morning, and she made a lot of good points. Now, I know she's not exactly my political cup of tea, but I think she was right on with what she said this morning.

People, we have to stop making ad hominem attacks, especially about race.

Why is it that if a conservative got on television and called a Jesse Jackson a traitor to his race, people would flip out and call him a racist; and yet, people like Condaleeza Rice, Michael Steele, Clarence Thomas, Bob Parks, et al, are referred to as "house niggers", "uncle toms", "aunt jemimas" and the like with no public outcry.

Hey, I don't like what Michelle Malkin writes. I don't like Condi's policies. I disagree with every opinion that Clarence Thomas wrote that I have read. But I believe that every one of them is honest in their belief that what they are saying and doing is right for them and right for the country.

And I also think that each one of them believes, first and foremost, that they are American.

They aren't "traitors to their race". They just value a set of ideals higher than they value their ethnicity.

I think that the Left needs to realize and recognize the validity of this modus of evaluation. I think that the Left needs to rely exclusively on reason and intellectual rigor in their debates and stop tolerating the people who make ad hominem attacks on people on the "other side". I think they need to stop calling names. Attack the postion, not the person. Address the issues. Allow the debate. Anything else is intellectually weak, and it cheapens the debate.

Saddam's Trial of Tears

On his weblog, Thomas Barnett offers an interesting analysis on the Trial of the Century (and no, I'm not referring to the Michael Jackson debacle). In his November 10 post "Why Saddam's trial in Iraq is a mistake" he writes,

Saddam should be on trial in the ICC. Doesn't matter the hassle. Doesn't matter what bad things might be exposed about our intervention or occupation.

You want to use the Leviathan, you have to submit to the global rule set. We set that process in motion, getting a lot of authorship in the process (meaning, getting our way), or that process is imposed on us, and we won't like the outcome.

I agree with what he says, that Saddam should be on trial in the International Criminal Court, but there's a serious problem with us making that claim. We don't right now have the moral authority to demand that. The idea of the ICC, the idea of the Leviathan, is a concept that all people of all nations in this economic, political, and ideological state of "interconnectivity" submit to a single, universal rules set. Institutions like the ICC, the UN, the IAEA, and the World Bank are attempts to establish that universal rules set, a "new world order" if you will. As are the Geneva Conventions, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, ad infinitum.

But there's one problem with us insisting that others adhere to these rules sets. We consistently do not.

Under an autocratic regime such as Saddam's, a dictator is not guilty of "breaking the law," because there is no law in his nation that binds him to not act in any certain manner. The state of Iraq cannot try him for crimes that he committed if there were no laws on the books prohibiting his actions. I could be wrong; I'm not a scholar of Iraqi law. Maybe in the case of Saddam he is guilty of breaking Iraqi law. I'm just trying to make a point about autocratic regimes in general.

So we need another set of Laws. Not just feelings about how things should be, but on-the-book, honest to god Laws. War, chemical weapons, nukes, genocide, and systematic oppression of gender/racial/religious groups are all reprehensible, but are they illegal? According to whom?

The United States of America has a shrinking window of opportunity to be the most dominant player in the international dialogue. We, right now and for a limited time, have more of a say in the international community than just about anyone else. What we do with this time is critical to the way the world will look in the next twenty years.

This is what I submit to you, my loyal readers (all three of you): We have a choice, right now, to create the Leviathan in our image and insist that everyone jump on board, or to let it, and us, and the universal rule of law (something that our founding fathers would have been proud to see as their progeny) slip by the side of the road.

We have a fundamental obligation to bind ourselves to the rule of international law. We have a fundamental obligation to subject ourselves to the burden of releasing some of our autonomy in service to the ideal of something greater. Right now the fact that we are bucking the system in so many ways serves to embolden our critics, who make the claim that we are hypocrits in demanding that other states submit to international restrictions. We want the IAEA in North Korea? Excellent idea! So why don't we let them in here? We want international human rights observers to witness elections in Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia? Great! But why can't they evaluate our elections? We want Iraq to stop using chemical weapons? Why don't we agree to the same international definitions and descriptions of chemical weapons and agree to not use those things that are internationally accepted? Do we need Napalm and Willie Pete so badly that our troops will get slaughtered if we don't have them at our disposal? How about depleted uranium?

Or is it just easier to invade than to "let the French tell us what we can and can't do"?

Well, I guess that's a moot point. We invaded and shut down that line of dialogue.

Don't get me wrong here; I don't think that signing the international convention against torture (and then ADHERING to it) would stop Mubarak from using his old tactics. But let me say this: we're on the cusp of a new international balance of power. The last one was dipolar, the US and the USSR. This new one is going to be tripolar, the US, the EU, and China. We ALL KNOW about China's ideas on "human rights". We share a tradition of rights and laws with Europe. If we don't band together with Europe now and set the framework for the future, if we continue to play the part of the morally grey actor, we're going to find ourselves in a future where we are unable to get Europe to cooperate with us when we need to counterbalance rising Chinese military and economic might.

We've lost the moral high ground. We "had to play dirty to defeat the commies". Now, we need to regain that moral high ground. We should be sending a hundred thousand troops into Darfur to stop the Janjaweed, who have the support of the Sudanese government, from killing another couple hundred thousand black Muslims. We should do it not because we want their enormous natural resources (you can make glass out of sand, right?) We should do it because it's the morally right thing to do. But until we get an international system in place to share the burden, and to agree on when and how we should act, anything we do is going to be criticized and undermined.

If we want the world to be held to a universal standard of right and wrong, we must subject ourselves to that same standard.

My thoughts on the troops

My mother raised me a liberal. A hippie wannabe. I had to un-brainwash myself just to get to the point where I didn't see "the troops" as traitors to an American ideal.

Now I'm a moderate (a Democrat, but a moderate). And I'm staunchly anti-war. I believe that war is ALWAYS bad. But sometimes it's better than the alternative.

And if there are times where war is necessary, it is always necessary to have a military.

Now that I'm an adult in my own right, I believe that the greatest service that one can give to his or her country is to sacrafice their lives for the defense of their nation. No matter how much I may disagree with any particular war, any particular administration, or any particular foreign military policy, I have the UTMOST RESPECT for the lowest common denomenator that takes that chance on dying to defend my country. To me that means that no matter whether or not he's a dumb ass with an 80 IQ, who is incapable of understanding the difference between "red state" and "blue state", who believes that if you don't like the policies of the US government that you should "love it or leave it", and who calls people of the Middle East "Sand (insert racial epithet here)", he has STILL committed himself to a greater personal and moral sacrifice than I have.

As a nation, I believe that the greatest measure of our moral value is what we do to protect those who are incapable of protecting themselves. After the children, I believe that our GREATEST MORAL RESPONSIBILITY is to take care of those who have sacrificed themselves for the good of the nation. There are so many who have lost limbs, lives, or their sanity in service to the protection of our country. They deserve to be taken care of in a way that HONORS them, for as long as they need us.

On Pen and Sword, Jeff Huber records a chlling account of our Congress' tribute to our veterans, under his post "Happy Veteran's Day". Read it, and be disturbed.

I want to say I'm sorry to all of the veterans out there. I'm sorry because only a small segment of our culture really understands and appreciates what it means to be a vet. I'm sorry because, as a vet, it looks like you have a high likelihood of suffering from something horrible directly caused by your service to our country, and it looks like you're going to suffer because of your sacrifice. I'm sorry because you deserve more.

I can hate the policies of the current administration or the Clinton administration or the Bush I or Reagan or Carter administrations, but I have the utmost respect for a Marine who is willing to die so that I can eat a cheeseburger and criticize why he died in the peace and comfort that our armed services afford us through their sacrifice.

Happy birthday, USMC.

Al-Urdan

Last night, three terrorist attacks killed at least 53 and wounded 300 in hotels in Jordan (according to the New York Times). Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is suspected. Apparantly, he's kind of pissed at the Jordanian government, since they're about our number one source for intelligence against insurgents in Iraq. Sandmonkey, as usual, has a great post on the subject.

I know that this isn't a "wake up call" to the Jordanians, because Jordan, by and large, is supportive of the US. But what struck me was that the owners of the Radisson were Palestinian-Jordanians, and they have come out in condemnation of al-Qaeda (as I'm sure you would come out against anyone who was responsible for destroying your business). The owner had this to say:

May you enjoy the hell that is awaiting you, where, to your dismay, you will be greeted by seven demons instead of your long-awaited virgins! May you rot in hell over and over again along with Zarqawi, Bin Laden, Bin Shit and all those that support you. Nothing in the world can justify this. Those that try to justify this can rot in hell as well! May God protect my country and my people. May God bless the souls of those barbarically massacred today. We will never forget!

This is the second attack in the past week against Islamic countries who are in support of the US, the first being that against Morocco. And this is the second time I've heard reports of people gathering in the streets, chanting anti-al-Qaeda slogans (the first being well reported on Gateway Pundit. And this is the second time I've missed reporting of the demonstrations in the American Media.

Why? We couldn't ask for a better news story here.

Anything that al-Qaeda does to damage their reputation with moderate Arab Muslims (which are by far the silent majority of Arab Muslims) serves our interests in wanting to see al-Qaeda weakened and destabilized. We CAN'T stop al-Qaeda; only the people in the countries in which al-Qaeda operates can keep them from operating there. We also can't keep them from recruiting and reconstituting their ranks. As long as there are people motivated to such extreme positions, there will be a functional al-Qaeda.

Fighting the War on Terror is fighting a losing battle. We can't "win" a war on terror. What are we going to do? Kill everyone who wants to become a terrorist? How? How will we find them? How will we distinguish them from the decent citizens? Will we just carpet bomb the Middle East?

Folks, we're treating like a war what we should be treating like an international police investigation. We should be turning this over to the CIA, the FBI, and Interpol, and actively seeking the cooperation of foreign police and internal intelligence organizations. We should be working closely with the people on the ground rather than alienating them. As long as it's a military operation, a "war", we're not going to get the intelligence we need to stop this shit.

Think of it this way: if a cop came up to you and asked you about a suspicious person in your neighborhood, and you knew that they were gathering information on that person in order to find out if he was planning on harming people in your community, would you give him the information he asked for? How about if he was wearing a military uniform instead of a police officer's uniform?

People in other countries are suspicious of the intent of our military, especially in the Middle East. But they don't have the same prejudice against Interpol or the FBI. It's because police organizations work within the boundaries of the law (well, maybe not in the Middle East). If we transformed this into an intelligence and law enforcement operation we would seriously cut down on the heightened tensions between us and the rest of the world and we would start to see more cooperation.

Look folks, we need them. We REALLY, REALLY need them. We need the cooperation of the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Germans, the French, the Italians, and the Iraqis. Especially the Iraqis. But it's like any negotiation; we're not going to get anything out of them unless we give them something that we want. I'm not advocating negotiating with the terrorists; rather, negotiate with the PEOPLE. If the people JUST SO HAPPEN to want the same thing that the terrorists want, DON'T use that as a reason not to give it to them. Just control the dialogue.

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Update: CNN is RIGHT NOW holding a one hour long special on Jordan. They're interviewing Jordan's Deputy Prime Minister. Stay tuned, boys and girls....

Darfur

War is always a bad thing, but sometimes its better than the alternatives.

There is an excellent article on the Daily Scorecard, titled Hitchens - Darfur Rwanda in Slow Motion, that addresses the issue in Darfur. Below is a quote within Mike Nargizian's article, attributed to Johann Hari of the London Independent:

"At last, some good news from Darfur: the genocide in western Sudan is nearly over. There's only one problem—it's drawing to an end only because there are no black people left to cleanse or kill."

By some reliable estimates, the Sudanese government or "National Islamic Front" has slain as many as 400,000 of its black co-religionists—known contemptuously as zurga ("niggers")—and expelled perhaps 2 million more.

There are few cases in which I personally believe that the use of force in another country on a large scale--ie, war, or as they like to call it now, "peacekeeping"--is the best thing to do. War is always messy, always dangerous, and always has disasterous consequences. But sometimes its better than the alternatives.

This, I believe, should be the primary role of the UN Bluehats. When a government is unable or unwilling to prevent clear human rights violations that are well documented, the international community should step it. This is genocide, pure and simple, and our unwillingness to address and put a stop to it, by force if necessary, is a black eye for the entire world.

On a similar note, this incident brings up a serious problem with the UN--the veto. Having five nations with veto power, all of whom often have conflicting interests, causes serious issues for the UN in its ability to do anything effectively. It may have been necessary in the post-World War II climate, but since the end of the Cold War the veto has not done anything but silence voices of dissent and reason. When France or China can veto something in our interests, and when we or Britain can veto something in theirs, we're never going to get anything DONE unless it's CLEARLY of benefit to humanity. And if this doesn't qualify, I don't know what would.

Religious Tolerance

While espousing my usual hippie crap on Big Pharoah's blog, I got an interesting response from Stehpinkeln to a comment I had made on a thread titled "Good News For Americans & Joooooz":

I'm confused and need a little help. Religous tolorance is a good thing , right? So is it ok to tolorate a religion that practices human sacrifice? Would a modern society put up with a religion that laid people out on a rock and cut their heart out?
Why do we tolorate a religion that cuts people's head off? What is the difference?
See why I'm confused.

Religious tolerance is not just a good thing, it's socially responsible. Failure to be tolerant of other peoples' identities causes you to alienate them, leading to outbursts like this. You can tolerate a religion but not agree with everything in it. In Judeism, it is permissable to stone women to death if they are caught prostituting themselves, but that isn't our characterization of Judeism, nor do we allow it in modern society. We also don't let people kill adulterers, as the Torah allows. Which is also the Bible. Which speaks to all three faiths of the book. Besides, when we have things like the Waco debacle we don't say that Christianity is to blame for the actions of religious extremists.

From the inside of a culture, it's easy for us to disown our religious wackos, and there are people all around the Muslim world who look at the Islamists, the Fundamentalists, the Terrorists, or whatever you want to call them as being completely rotton in the gourd. Influential Imams (religious leaders in Islam) have condemned all of the same stuff that we condemn here in the west, but there's no "pope" in Islam that can hand down a definitive decree that all Muslims will accept, so Muslim extremists use the handful of rulings from the minority of Imams who declare that these actions are permissable. There is a fight right now in the Muslim community between the extremists and the moderates, and even though there are a lot more moderates right now, the extremists are getting all of the press because their position is so much more sensational.

But back to tolerance, it has served us well in America. We have a largely content Arab and Muslim American population here in the US. I contend that it's because they've been treated well. If you're going to oppress a class of people and not tolerate their religion, you have to get pretty medieval on their collective asses in order to prevent them from kirking out and retaliating. History has shown us numerous examples of that. In the current political climate, cracking down hard just gives sympathy to the underclass, giving them a greater ability to leverage international political support (a la the IRA, the PLO, and a few other acronyms). Simply wiping out the underclass is considered such an unpleasant thing that they've invented a new word for it--Genocide. What's left? If we want to keep "them" from rioting every time a percieved injustice gets out of hand, we have to make sure that they are treated with courtesy and humanity as long as they continue to abide by the laws and mores of their host country. We need to make it feasable for people to keep their identity, but integrate into a larger cutural melieu. When you ban slavery and genocide, that's really all that's left.

The Case for WMD

William Rivers Pitt just published an article on Truthout titled Yes, They Lied. It's a critique of the argument made by the right that Bush was justified in invading Iraq because even Clinton thought the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction.

Find a defender of the White House on your television these days, and you are likely to hear them blame Bill Clinton for Iraq. Yes, you read that right. The talking point du jour lately has focused on comments made by Clinton from the mid-to-late 1990s to the effect that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat. The pretzel logic here, of course, is straightforward: this Democratic president thought the stuff was there, and that justifies the claims made by the Bush crew over the last few years about Iraqi weapons.

Let's take a deeper look at the facts. Right off the bat, it is safe to say that Clinton and his crew had every reason to believe Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction during the 1990s. For one thing, they knew this because the previous two administrations - Reagan and Bush - actively assisted the Hussein regime in the development of these programs. In other words, we had the receipts.

He then goes on to evaluate not the VERITY of these claims, but the APPLICABILITY of them:

"After 1998," Ritter reports in a book I wrote in 2002 titled War on Iraq, "Iraq had been fundamentally disarmed. What this means is that 90%-95% of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability, including all of their factories used to produce chemical, biological, nuclear long-range ballistic missiles, the associated equipment of these factories, and the vast majority of the product produced by these factories, had been verifiably eliminated."

But the stockpiles that Saddam had? The stuff we were afraid of to which we "had the receipts"?

"Now, there are those who say that the Iraqis could have hid some of this from us," continued Ritter. "The problem with that scenario is that whatever they diverted would have had to have been produced in the Muthanna State establishment, which means that once we blew up the Muthanna State establishment, they no longer had the ability to produce new agent, and in five years science takes over. Sarin and tabun will degrade and become useless sludge. It's no longer a viable chemical agent that the world needs to be concerned about."

"So," concluded Ritter, "all this talk about Iraq having chemical weapons - most of it is based upon speculation that Iraq could have hid some of this from UN weapons inspectors. That speculation is no longer valid, not in terms of the Iraqi ability to hide this stuff from inspectors - although I believe we did such a good job of inspecting Iraq that if they had tried to hide it, we would have found it. But let's just say that they did try to hide it, and we never found it. So what? It's gone today, so let's throw out that hypothetical. It's not even worth the time to talk about it anymore."

And who is this "Ritter" guy that Pitt quotes? Only the UNSCOM chief weapons inspector in charge of sniffing out Iraq's WMD. But what would he know?

Please, read it. If you're on the right or the left, or somewhere in the middle, read it. Even if you don't agree with it, read it. The arguments are made there, divorced from the rhetoric of politics, and it's based on logical reason that flows from evidence rather than ad hominem attacks.

We need to elevate the dialogue and make claims based on evidence rather than emotions. We need to start investigating the current political climate rationally rather than ideologically, or ideologues will continue to be able to play us off of one another and destroy our ability to have a rational argument.

Asdiqa

I've had a few people ask me what "asdiqafibaltimore" and "sadiq" mean, so to all of you out there who don't speak Arabic, here are the definitions:

asdiqa--friends
fi--in
sadiq--friend

So "asdiqafibaltimore" would mean "friends in Baltimore", and my handle, "sadiq", would be "friend" or "a friend".

Now you won't think it's a code word for terrorists. :)

Burn bebe Burn

One of my favorite Daily Show headlines in the recent past was for their coverage of the riots in France, and one of my favorite blog entries was from Mia.

If you’ve been following the news you know that there is some serious drama going on in the ‘burbs of France. Paris' suburbs have been burning for 10 days now.
The children of immigrants have snapped under decades of oppression and have basically gone ballistic. The revolts in the high-rise immigrant ghettos ringing the French capital have touched off rioting in the cities of Dijon, Marseilles and Rouen. So far, police have been ineffective in stopping the rioting and it is spreading across France and now has spread into Paris…

Heh... as far as MY liberal ass is concerned, I'd LOVE to say it's all Bush's fault. But here, I have to dissent. Old Europe has a long history of entrenched racism and structural inequality, in a way that the US has only been able to match in our White/Black relationship. (well, now the Mexicans may have cornered the market on the position once "enjoyed" by black Americans....)

American Muslims and Americans of Arab descent have integrated pretty well into the American middle class, even if they haven't enjoyed the priveleges of rulership here. As a group, they have largely been able to come to America, make good lives for themselves, raise their children well, and be treated with the "respect" that comes from our hyper-p.c. culture. Not so in Europe. There, they are still treated very powerfully as second class citizens. Muslim women in France (if memory serves me correctly) were recently prohibited from wearing head scarves in drivers license photos, even if they did not cover the face. The French Arabs have long lived in their own ghettos, comparable in the US only to our inner city black communities. It's a pain in the tush for them to try to integrate, as ethnically Norman French people tend to revere their own brand of French culture to the exclusion of those of their Arab immigrants. Hell, the conflict in Algeria has been based on the old colonial power structure.

Don't get me wrong. In a lot of ways I like the French. They tend to be much more fair in a lot of respects than us Americans. They are more interested in crafting fair laws and abiding by them, and I can't IMAGINE a French president "shooting from the hip" and invading another country in the manner that "Dubya" invaded Iraq. However, when it comes to cultural superiority, they take the cake. They're about as self-important in terms of valuing French culture above all others as they are in evaluating wine and cheese. (sorry--i couldn't help myself from a bit of a snide comment)

I think it's just going to get worse. Hopefully, it will be the catalyst for reform. I hope that in a generation or so, European people of Arab descent will feel comfortable being European AND honoring their ethnic traditions while feeling like they have an equal economic opportunity. I also hope that Americans of Arab descent will be in the same situation. But in America, the massive paranoia about Arabs didn't start until 9-11. Before then, they were just like any other immigrant, and their kids, who don't speak with an accent, were treated like any other kid in most communities. (except in the south. us southerners are more racist across the board.) We don't have 30 years of entrenched anti-Arab racism in America. It's not because we aren't racist; it's because we have such a short attention span.

We're watching the "Rodney King" riots of Europe right now, and it ain't a pretty sight.

A response to Mia

I started to respond to Mia's comment on the thread below, but it got so long I figured I'd post it as a separate post.

War does change people, because it demands that the people who fight in them suspend their humanity in order to serve a purpose higher than themselves. I believe that the sacrafice of soldiers, the willingness to take on the responsibility of killing and dying in order to serve their country, is the greatest service and highest sacrafice that anyone can make, but I think it's often done in the wrong way. I think that there should be two different types of soldiers--career people and four year types. The four year types should be responsible for police actions, reconstruction, battlefield operations, etc. They should work completely independently from the career people.

Any time you move into an area with potential hostile forces mixed with the people you are tasked with protecting, you're setting yourself up for a Mei Lai situation. This kind of shit wouldn't happen in America. National Guardsmen wouldn't shoot American protesters in the street because they identify too strongly with them. It's too difficult to disassociate. But the Vietnamese? The Iraqis? The Koreans? When we're culturally so different, many of the barriers that usually inhibit that kind of behavior break down psychologically. It's easier, psychologically, for Americans to disassociate themselves from the atrocities of war when they are in conflict with a people so different than themselves.

When people are asked to disassociate so that they can kill, and they are simultaneously being told that these same people are the ones they are protecting because of their basic humanity, they schism. It's fucked up. These guys are being asked to make the sacrafice of their humanity and their lives in order to protect a people and a culture that is alien to them, and they are simultaneously asked to kill the insurgents and the terrorists. The only problem is that they can't tell the difference, and they only have a fraction of a second to react. Under that kind of pressure, there are certainly going to be mistakes, but most National Guardsmen are not given the kind of psychological training to cope with the psychological consequences of their actions. The result? As a nation, we're going to be paying more for the psychological care of the veterans of this war than for any conflict in our history, other than perhaps the Vietnam conflict. And, if it goes on too much longer, I suspect that it will far outstrip the scope and scale of the Vietnam vets.

And that's my fucked up thought for the day.

Censorship in Egypt

As the entire blogger community of Egypt knows, Abdul Kareem Nabeel Soliman, a very vocal Egyptian blogger, was arrested on the 26th of October. He was arrested because his position and opinions on the Mubarrek administration and Islam are very, shall we say, "controvertial". Gr33nData and Egyptian Sand Monkey have a couple of interesting posts and threads regarding this issue, and you can find out a lot more on the subject by checking out their posts. I wanted to paraphrase my posts on their blog, because I think the conversation about Egyptian censorship is relevant to the current situation here in the US.

Regarding the arrest of Soliman, which is being touted as due to religious reasons, I think the issue is more political than religious. I think that the Egyptian government feels threatened by the new media of the internet, and it's struggling to keep up with the change in the way people are communicating around the world.

I'm all for the freedom of speech, but it's not a universal freedom. Here in America it's protected by the first amendment; no first amendment, no free speech. I don't know Egyptian law, but I'd love a lesson in civil rights in Egyptian society. Egypt has long enjoyed a state monopoly on the media and has been able to promote the dominant social paradigm through its media avenues. Radio, television, and (to a lesser extent) printed media are one way avenues for information dissemination, rather than two way conduits for social conversation. The internet in general, and blogs in particular, are a new social forum that fulfills the function of a sook, or marketplace, but one that is not just local. Think of this; twenty years ago, the Egyptian government controlled radio and television transmissions, as well as much of the print media. If you wanted to discuss the problems of society and try brainstorm on how to address them, you had to go to the sook and find other people sympathetic to your cause. And how many people at your sook fit that description? Now, you have MUCH greater access to that kind of community, and it transcends borders. In a lot of ways that's good, and in a lot of ways that's bad. Governments are threatened by that, and the forum allows for the minority to have a much greater voice. Using Islam as an excuse to censor non-party ideas gives the government a moral justification for heavy handed techniques in controlling the social dialogue.

But referring to counter-institutional speech, it can be dangerous. Especially to the entrenched institution. Us Americans have done things to censor free speech in the past, and we're likely to continue to do it in the future. It's much easier to censor speech in a totalitarian state than in a democracy, and heavy handed tactics are much more accepted in many places. Here, instead of "disappearing people" (as my daughter is fond of saying) we like to use more subtle tactics, like smear campaigns and information overload. The top-down dissemination of information in traditional media made it very expensive and difficult to get ideas out to an audience. With the Net, however, any dummy with a computer and a phone line can reach an audience of potentially hundreds of millions. Old institutions in America are being shaken up by this new structure as honest-to-god journalists are being replaced by pundits and the public is still trying to cope with the paradigm shift. And we're a country that elevates free speech to a God-given right! I can't imagine how much tension is being placed on regimes who are less open than ours, now having to deal with this new "threat" to their institutional power.

I just want to say that I am not "coming down on" either Egypt or Mubarrak's government. As an American, with our tradition of free press, I witness DAILY the attempts of many politically motivated special interest groups (not to mention the two dominant parties) to control the media. Here they don't censor as much as they make ad-hominem attacks in order to discredit, but censorship still goes on. We live in interesting times. I personally suspect that we're witnessing an inexorable shift in paradigms from heavy handed censorship to subtle political manipulations. But as long as there are people in power, they will have a vested interest in promoting their vision of reality in which they get to stay in power.

Before the internet, the Muslim Brotherhood managed to organize a plot to assassinate Anwar Sadat. Ayman Al-Zawahiri was in their organization. And they did it without the internet, cell phones, or satillite uplinks. Now, he's the number 2 guy in Al-Qaeda (or the number 1 guy, depending on who you ask) and they're recruiting on the Net.I personally think they're fighting a losing battle, both Mubarrek and Al-Zawahiri. They're trying to contain the decentralization of power, and I think that it's a wave they're going to have to ride or they'll be buried under it. The Net will change the world as surely as the Gutenburg press did, and people in power will find new ways to adapt to the paradigm and reconsolidate that power. If they hold on to their old techniques of control, however, they'll find the ground has slipped from under them.

Of course, that applies to America as well.

Donkey vs. Elephant

In mortal conflict between a Donkey and an Elephant, the Elephant would have the definite advantage. Think about it: Elephants have the weight advantage, weighing up to around 15,000 pounds; their tusks, formidable weapons, can weigh up to 100 pounds each; they can be 13 feet tall at the shoulder and 25 feet long front to back; their skin is the thickest skin of all land mammals (aside from maybe the rhino), one of the most effective suits of natural armor in the animal kingdom; they can charge something that pisses them off, accellerating their bulk to 25 mph; they have the grace to move silently through the forest without making their presence known to much smaller creatures, navigating subtly and almost invisibly through the most complex and dense environments; and they are so powerful that they have been known to crush an adult man TO DEATH with just the weight of their HEADS! But they can't jump, which Donkeys can do, which is about the only thing a Donkey can do that an Elephant can't.

The biggest advantage that the Elephant has over the Donkey, however, is organization. Elephants stay organized as a central group, and they doggedly work as a block to stay within the boundaries of the family unit. There is, of course, the rare Bull Elephant that goes off on its own and strays from the rest of the party, but without the physical and social protection of working within the boundaries of the family it often finds itself shot to death when it runs into trouble in the real world where the family can't come to its defense. Donkeys are ornary, contentious, obstinate, stubborn, and unwilling to go along with their fellows when they get in their mind to stay still or go off in another direction. The most famous Democrat of all time, Will Rogers, once stated "I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat." Truer words were never spoken, and they could have just as easily have been said about Donkeys.

But Elephants are endangered, and Donkeys are not. Why is that so? Despite all of the advantages that the Elephant has over the Donkey, the position of the Elephant is not economically feasable. An Elephant needs to drink between thirty and fifty gallons of water a day, in addition to eating 200 pounds of food to sustain their enormous bulk. (I know this for a fact. I looked it up on the internet, so it has to be true.) They constantly come into conflict with ordinary human beings, competing with their interests in order to fill their insatiable apetites. They have, in fact, been known to destroy the very crops that the common man needs to survive in an effort to pad their already overly volumenous hides, and when they can't support a diet that supports a bulk 100 times that of the average man they can go insane with rage and greed. They require thousands of acres of land on which to support their lush lifestyle, while your average human being can live in a one bedroom flat in Queens (in a building with 800 other one bedroom flats). Donkeys can live in an 8 by 10 pen eating nothing but old shirts and leftovers.

For all of their advantages, Elephants are a dying breed. Unless Elephants learn to live in harmony rather than in conflict with human beings, their demise is inevitable, and all we will end up having left are Donkeys. When we lose the strength, the power, the majesty, the subtlety, and the wisdom of the Elephants, our world will just be left with the ornery, contentious, obnoxious, stubborn, short sighted Donkeys.

But at least the Donkeys will be working with, and for, the people.

Censorship in America?

Kill! Kill! Kill!, a book by Jimmy Massey, is the account of a former Marine who just finished serving in Iraq, "Telling the life of a Marine of today, revealing 'how he talks, how he thinks, how he fucks, and how he kills.'" I found a review on Truthout. I haven't read it yet, but I would like to. I think accounts of combat are fascinating, because they usually come down on one of two sides of the fence: either accounts of valor or accounts of criminality. This one's disturbing.

Let me say that I have a great deal of respect for those who serve in the armed services, and as someone who has never served in that capacity, I'm not the right one to cast dispersions on anyone who is put under that kind of stress. However, I do believe that anyone who carries a rifle in my name and the name of the People of the United States of America is accountable for the things that he or she does while wearing that uniform, and when someone acts in a manner most horrifying, I want to understand why. The reason why we call these actions "war crimes" is because they are criminal, clearly spelled out as such in the Uniformed Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. In all of the cases that I've seen (purely anectdotal) in which soldiers commit war crimes, it was because the soldiers suffered from a lack of clear and powerful leadership OR because they had clear and powerful leadership that was criminal in its intent (the latter is BY FAR the minority).

That having been said, here's an excerpt:

We had reached the military site Al-Rashid on an overcast, dark and sinister day. [...] When we stopped, I saw ten Iraqis, about 150 yards away. They were under forty years old, clean and dressed in the traditional white garment. They stayed on the side of the road waving signs and screaming anti-American slogans. [...] That's when I heard a shot pass just over our heads, from right to left. I ran into the middle of the street to see what was happening. I had barely rejoined Schutz when my guys unloaded their weapons on the demonstrators. It only took me three seconds to take aim. I aimed my sights on the center of a demonstrator's body. I breathed in deeply and, as I exhaled, I gently opened my right eye and fired. I watched the bullets hit the demonstrator right in the middle of his chest. My Marines barked: "Come on, little girls! You wanna fight?"

That's pretty horrifying.

William Rivers Pitt, You're my Hero!

William Rivers Pitt has an interesting article in Truthout, titled "Nothing Shakin' on Shakedown Street?" all about the Libby indictment. What's most interesting is that he quotes Harry Reid in testimony before the Senate, in which the Minority Leader seems to have found his voice:

"This past weekend, we witnessed the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff and a senior Advisor to President Bush," said Reid. "Libby is the first sitting White House staffer to be indicted in 135 years. This indictment raises very serious charges. It asserts this Administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security and are morally repugnant. The decision to place U.S. soldiers in harm's way is the most significant responsibility the Constitution invests in the Congress. The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really about: how the Administration manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions."

"When General Shinseki indicated several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq," continued Reid, "his military career came to an end. When then OMB Director Larry Lindsay suggested the cost of this war would approach $200 billion, his career in the Administration came to an end. When U.N. Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix challenged conclusions about Saddam's WMD capabilities, the Administration pulled out his inspectors. When Nobel Prize winner and IAEA head Mohammed el-Baradei raised questions about the Administration's claims of Saddam's nuclear capabilities, the Administration attempted to remove him from his post. When Joe Wilson stated that there was no attempt by Saddam to acquire uranium from Niger, the Administration launched a vicious and coordinated campaign to demean and discredit him, going so far as to expose the fact that his wife worked as a CIA agent. This behavior is unacceptable."

Senate Democrats followed this up with a meaty threat: they will shut down the Senate every day until these issues are addressed fully and completely.

The Republicans are not the only ones to have this kind of shit come down on them. Johnson was a Democrat, and he's the mastermind behind our engagement in the Vietnam War; Nixon, a Republican, was responsible for getting us out. It's not about what party you belong to, or even the nature of your agenda. In America it is imperative for people to have a productive dialogue, focused on the details and the logical arguements, and whenever that dialogue breaks down into rhetoric, whenever journalism breaks down into punditry, whenever we stop demanding answers to our questions and allow people to answer only the questions that serve their purposes, we lose our democracy, our ability to have a government of the people.

Power corrupts, and in an adversarial system it is NECESSARY for the minority party to have a coherent voice. It's high time THIS minority has found theirs.