egyptian railways

realism, god, and the state

2009-09-12T18:56:00.001-07:00

Hello all. I'm back in the swing of things with some International Relations theory readings for my International Security class. This is a good thing, since I've no IR background at all. While us international law/cooperation-loving types tend to veer away from too much capital-r Realism, you can't help but include a good dose of it in your outlook. And tonight I've discovered this stunning passage from Morganthau which I must, must share with you:

"Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted-and few have been able to resist the temptation for long-to clothe their own particular aspirations and actions in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also.

The lighthearted equation between a particular nationalism and the counsels of Providence is morally indefensible, for it is that very sin of pride against which the Greek tragedians and the Biblical prophets have warned rulers and ruled. That equation is also politically pernicious, for it is liable to engender the distortion in judgment which, in the blindness of crusading frenzy, destroys nations and civilizations-in the name of moral principle, ideal, or God himself."

-from Hans J. Morganthau's Six Principles of Political Realism

recent R2P debates at the UN

2009-07-31T15:56:00.000-07:00

So it turns out, according to this copy of The Economist, that UN General Assembly president Miguel d'Escoto IS NOT A FAN of R2P and is TOTALLY using this July's General Assembly meetings to bring the doctrine to debate, much to Ban Ki-Moon's chagrin.

It is a General Assembly showdown, my friends!

UN leaders agreed, kind of, upon the "responsibility to protect"- or R2P- doctrine in 2005, which says that states have the responsibility to protect their citizens against war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, and that if they don't, other states have the right to intervene. In the aftermath of genocides and crimes against humanity like the Rwandan genocide, the doctrine sounds prudent, humane, and arriving none too soon. In the aftermath of wars like the present one in Iraq, sometimes justified by the Bush administration as a war to protect the citizens of Iraq from a cruel dictator, R2P sounds dangerous, an excuse for large powers to intervene in the affairs and sovereignty of smaller states for their own self-interest.

Ban Ki-Moon thinks it's humane. D'Escoto, along with a lot of not-quite-so-powerful states, is skeptical.

A few thoughts:

1. I still don't understand how R2P fits into international law. Is it just a more specific way to enforce international humanitarian law and the genocide convention? Does it cover human rights law as well?

2. The article notes that R2P is "carefully crafted" to respect the UN Charter and therefore the Security Council, enshrining the current power structure of which smaller states are justly skeptical. Have I mentioned that I'm a big fan of Security Council reform? Down with the P5 and their lousy veto!

3. The article mentioned that Russia used R2P to justify its incursion into Georgia last August. While Russia was not the aggressor, it certainly acted aggressively and escalated a conflict that increased regional tensions and caused death and suffering in Georgia, even as it attempted to protect the people of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Recently reminded, thanks to reading a friend's thesis, of the often Orwellian logic (WAR is PEACE) behind warfare, I respect D'Escoto and see that his skepticism must be justified.

But oh well. Giving up on justice is giving up on life, so try we must.

the price of an American life

2009-06-29T15:04:00.001-07:00

Of the many, many figures and statements I could quote from Samantha Power's stunning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, I give you this anecdote, from her chapter on the Rwandan genocide. It's for all those of you wondering how, exactly, the worth of an American life stacks up against the lives of Others.

Ready?

"On July 29 President Clinton ordered 200 U.S. troops to occupy the Kigali airport so that relief could be flown directly into Rwanda. Ahead of their arrival, [Major General Romeo] Dallaire, [commander of UN peacekeeping forces in Rwanda,] says he got a phone call. A U.S. officer was wondering precisely how many Rwandans had died. Dallaire was puzzled and asked why he wanted to know. 'We are doing our calculations back here,' the U.S. officer said, 'and one American casualty is worth about 85,000 Rwandan dead.'" (pg 381)

dreaming with Ali Abunimah

2009-06-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

Ali Abunimah, Palestinian-American, activist and founder of The Electronic Intifada, lays out his vision for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his 2006 book One Country. The conflict feels more like a stalemate than ever, a two-state solution the only one most people consider publicly. Most Israelis, many Palestinians, and many activists in disparate camps, bristle at the notion of a one-state solution. So even talking about this right now seems a little crazy.

But One Country is one of the most hopeful things I’ve heard about Israel-Palestine. Abunimah asserts that the issues any peace process must resolve- West Bank settlements, refugees, Arab citizens of Israel, Jerusalem- cannot be truly reconciled with the creation of two states. He then suggests that Israel proper, Gaza, the West Bank, and all of Jerusalem, be turned into one multi-ethnic, democratic, pluralistic state, with protections in place to ensure that the majority group cannot enforce discrimination against the minority.

It sounds idealistic, but Abunimah’s model, unlike most suggested for Israel-Palestine, is rooted in history. South Africa also created a multi-ethnic, multi-party democracy with protections for minorities, ending the injustice of apartheid and a conflict that seemed, as it does in Israel, intractable. “If peace could happen in South Africa,” Desmond Tutu says, “peace could happen anywhere.”

Abunimah does not touch on regional politics in his book. But I suggest that a one-state solution could significantly diffuse the larger regional conflict, too, for three reasons that come to mind.

1. The market for supporting Palestinian militias will dry up. Assuming that, given the choice between real democracy and fighting, most people will in fact choose real democracy, groups like Hamas will either be marginalized or drop their military efforts to become political parties. (Skeptical? Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. The PLO in the 90’s. Etc.) Then, Syria, Iran, or whoever happens to be arming them will have no means- and perhaps no cause- to arm Palestinians; there will be no “proxy wars” fought in Gaza.

2. Tensions surrounding Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will ease as they are allowed to return to Israel-Palestine peacefully. Historically, Palestinian militias have formed and fought from neighboring states. Palestinians in Lebanon have not been integrated into Lebanese society; a failing of Lebanon, no doubt, but their conflicts with the Lebanese and with the Israelis will end if they’re offered full citizenship and a chance to return.

3. A multi-ethnic state will diffuse anti-Semitism regionally, undermining the potential for ethnicity or religion to play a role in conflicts. Many chaff at the idea of diluting Israel’s Jewish character. And understandably so. But one can argue- as one Jewish, anti-occupation, anti-Zionist activist I know does at his family gatherings- that Jews are actually much safer if they live in peaceful, pluralistic societies than they are in a defensive, militaristic enclave. In a multi-ethnic Israel-Palestine, one could not conflate the state’s actions with the actions of Judaism or “the Jews.” And Israelis, seen as Others in the Arab Middle East, will be far less demonized if they partner with Palestinians to form a working state. What cause will Arab nations, those who’ve claimed to support the Palestinians for the past 60 years partly out of a sense of pan-Arabism, have to consider an Israel-Palestine an enemy state?

suspect iranian elections

2009-06-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

The BBC quotes Ahmedinejad as blaming the current tensions in Iran on Western propaganda.

Is most of his rhetoric just a way to keep himself in power? There must be some recipe for leaders: create an Other, rally everyone together against the Other, claim yourself a victim of the Other, decry the injustices of the Other, and accuse everyone who questions you of somehow colluding with the Other. Distract everyone from your real aim: amassing and maintaining your own power.

extremists are the new terrorists

2009-06-08T14:44:00.001-07:00

Guess what word President Obama did not use, not even once, during his hour-long speech to "the Muslim world" in Cairo last week.

Terrorism.

Did you notice? I didn't realize the absence- which should have seemed so conspicuous- until the day after I heard the speech. Sure, he talked about the extremists who commit violence against civilians, "exploiting tensions" in Muslim countries and harming more Muslims than non-Muslims. He talked about how America needs to remain secure against the violence of the extremists, and how it benefits the Muslim world to marginalize them. But he never referred to any acts of "terrorism," and he never labeled these "extremists" terrorists.

What gives? We all knew what he was talking about so maybe it's just a simple exchange of signifiers. But the choice must have been intentional, and I wonder if his language shows a shift in thinking about "terrorism," a word we all understand but find difficult, in the end, to define.

Augustine on sovereignty

2009-05-28T15:49:00.001-07:00

Maybe we don't all like St. Augustine so much. Still, check this out (ripped from Ryan Spencer Reed's website):

“In the absence of justice – what is sovereignty but organized robbery."

Clowns Without Borders: Sudan

2009-05-23T03:58:00.000-07:00

During my time in Egypt, the girls home received two very special American guests: Gwen and Elisa, young Philadelphian clowns. The clowns had simple costumes and props, and they waltzed into our house with energy, joy, and creativity, performing a routine that had us all giggling and smiling, one the girls haven't forgotten, and one that convinced me of the importance of play and creation in the lives of all children (even very poor children- especially very poor children).

Since then, the clowns have returned to Egypt and performed in Cairo at orphanages, schools for kids with disabilities, and Sudanese refugee schools. This summer, they've taken their act to Nairobi, Kenya and Juba, South Sudan, visiting schools, hospitals, IDP camps, and a prison.

Don't be fooled by the red noses or the youthful enthusiasm- their clowning is a powerful and subversive shot at hope and even peace-making. I encourage you to read Elisa's May 21 blog entry about clowning at a prison for youth in Juba.

defining Hamas

2009-05-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

I just read a news article that used the clause "the Islamists pledged to the destruction of Israel" to identify Hamas, the way one might use the phrases "former Republican Vice-President" and "popular British singer and infamous wildchild" preceding the names of Dick Cheney and Amy Winehouse, respectively.

That's how we know Cheney and Winehouse, and that's how we know Hamas. But Hamas could just as well be "the Palestinian political party once supported by the U.S. and Israel." Hamas could be "the winners of a 2006 democratic Palestinian election."

So which is it? How about all of the above?

I feel like I've been harping on the categorization of Hamas for forever. But I don't see any solution in the narrow- and inaccurate- definition of Hamas as a terrorist organization. This is a dilemma for newswriters- how to sum up a complex conflict- and for Israel, too.

I don't think that you have any chance of making peace with someone you have labeled your enemy. You must be able to imagine them a viable partner. And that's not idealism- that's history. That's how it happened in Northern Ireland, and if peace ever comes to Israel-Palestine, it has to come by accepting the possibility of partnership.

an imaginary Arab League scenario

2009-04-24T04:52:00.000-07:00

So, despite the Arab League’s thumbing its nose at the ICC’s recent indictment of Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir, don’t you think they’d take international criminal justice a little more seriously if, indeed, UN investigations into recent “possible” Israeli war crimes in Gaza yielded positive results and the ICC decided to prosecute Israeli officials?

I imagine that most Arab states are siding with al-Bashir on this one because of some combination of the following:
1. Fear that respecting the indictment would open their own regimes to prosecution.
2. Protection of whatever economic interest and political capital siding with Sudan affords them.
3. A general pro-Arab sentiment that is one part desire to stay on good terms with neighbors and one part ethnocentrism/racism.
4. Long-standing resentment towards Western imperialism.

However, they’re generally fierce critics of Israel and I can only imagine that they’d support any international condemnation of the recent atrocities in Gaza. So, if, in our imaginary scenario, the ICC indicted Israeli officials, would the Arab League support the court, in direct contradiction to its response to the al-Bashir indictment? Or would they remain silent for fear of legitimizing the court and its prior- and future- decisions?

This train of thought kinda makes me realize why, if the ICC is concerned with its own power and legitimacy, an Israeli indictment would be a strategic win for international criminal justice, so to speak. It might mean both that the interests of the U.S. did not dominate the court's actions, and that Arab and certain other non-Western states would support the court, too, despite their current skepticism about its "colonial" nature (a critique I'm not sure what to make of yet.)

Monsanto & Neo-Imperialism (in which I repeatedly use italics to indicate moral outrage)

2009-03-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

and the mighty multinationals
have monopolized the oxygen
so it's as easy as breathing
for us all to participate

yes they're buying and selling
off shares of air
and you know it's all around you
but it's hard to point and say "there"

-Ani DiFranco

Sometimes, though, you get a very clear picture of where and what it is, and it is breathtaking to see the engines of the powers-that-be-- particularly when their machinations combine multiple forms of injustice that you didn't even know could be connected. At least, that's how I felt reading this 2005 article about Order 81.

The eighty-first of Paul Bremer's 100 Orders for Iraq- implemented unilaterally following the 2003 invasion, before a new or even interim government could be formed, and without the democratic consent of the Iraqi people- prohibits farmers from re-using seeds of certain plant varieties. Instead, they must respect the "patents" that multinational seed corporations hold for crops by buying the seeds directly from them, or pay heavy fines to the companies.

Order 81- an act of the United States occupying force in Iraq- could drastically alter ten thousand years of farming in Iraq. The country's diverse seed bank supply was destroyed as a result of the fighting. The rule regulating seed use was written not by the Iraqi government, but by the multinational seed corporation Monsanto.

A 2007 Alternet article takes a slightly different interpretation of the law, but predicts extremely dire consequences of Order 81. Unfortunately, author Nancy Scola's warning comes from a very real example: the thousands and thousands of Indian farmers who have committed suicide following crop failures brought on partly by their dependence upon seeds owned by corporations.

I'm not sure how to articulate how fundamentally wrong and disturbing I find this. That a person's ability to grow her own food with the natural resources available to her should be regulated by governments in such a way as to make it illegal for her to plant a seed from a crop she has grown before surely violates something sacred. Amartya Sen writes that no modern democracy has experienced famine. Good governance will prohibit famine even in instances of crop failure, and governments held to some kind of accountability will find it within their own interests to keep their people from starving. The indirect starvation caused by seed patents should force us- once again- to acknowledge the fundamentally undemocratic nature of global capitalism as it stands today.

Mendelssohn & the Nazis

2009-02-15T15:34:00.000-08:00

In my morning egg-and-NPR routine a few weeks ago, I heard the story of Felix Mendelssohn, the German Romantic composer maligned in his lifetime and in the century following his death in 1847. Richard Wagner condemned the composer in a famous 1850 essay because Mendelssohn was a Jew, and drew on long-standing anti-semitic stereotypes to denigrate his rival artist. Anti-semitism threatened to marginalize and destroy the composer for the next hundred years; Nazi leadership banned performance and publication of his works. But members of the underground resistance smuggled Mendelsohn's compositions out of the country, and they survived the Nazi threat.

The image of men and women tucking papers into suitcases on trains from Berlin to Krakow, perhaps risking their lives for music, haunts me. The NPR reporter expressed our collective gratitude for these subversive, life-affirming rescues in the face of genocidal fascism.

But would I choose to rescue art in a situation of conflict? Our attempts at peace and ending suffering focus on the bare bones- food, water, hospitals, ending the shooting, trying to get a viable government in place- and we're not so good at that stuff yet. At least theoretically, we triage the lives, the programs, the pieces of governance that we think are most essential. We place human lives (at least in bulk) above all else, so the idea of saving music can sound idealistic, or even cruel, if energy expended on it could be placed in hospitals or aid delivery.

So if I was in Nazi Germany, I might not think about saving the scores of Felix Mendelsohn. Then again, those who did were probably not graduate students, trying to compose a theoretical peace, or UN workers, outsiders formulating strategies for effective aid. They were probably people who felt powerless to stop the war or the Holocaust, but who had possession of art that mattered to them, and a plan for preserving it. It was the resistance within their reach.

And there is paradox in ignoring art while placing human life at a premium. Art- by which I mean both that celebrated in famous museums and the songs and paintings of children- in a general sense makes our lives rich, and in specific cases represents cultures, traditions, and ethnicities endangered by war. Given that the Nazi attempt to control art in Germany was so systematic and ideological, should preserving culture and the arts also rank high in our peace-making endeavors?

Felix Mendelssohn commands more respect than ever before. But the project to fully uncover his works did not begin until 1996, a full 50 years after the fall of Nazism.

the theology of collateral damage

2009-02-08T16:15:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to start blogging more, now that certain classmates (who will soon be spread through the corners of the earth!) have picked it up, too. I've also been inspired by the fledgling presidency of Barack Obama, hopeful that I'll have a bit of a voice in the administration that's closing Guantanamo, appointing special peace envoys to the Middle East and Afghanistan, planning direct diplomatic talks with Iran, and that made the promise not to "sacrifice our ideals for our security." I feel like I've started down the long path towards international law junkie-dom, a habit that I hope will fare better under Obama than Bush. And I'd really like to write up some questions and key points from the Darfur conference that I went to at Yale on Friday.

But, while I really intended this blog to be mostly political, faith and theology have been on my mind a lot lately. So here you have it- a blog entry about war and theology.

In my personal faith journey- I come from the Christian tradition- I have often asked if the picture my religion paints of the world bears resemblance to what I see around me. Much is unknowable, of course, which I suppose is why I still have faith, but I have discarded and questioned many elements of the Christianity of my culture in my own thinking.

The prosperity gospel, for instance. The idea that God will bless us if we love God, that things work out ok, here on earth, for God's children who are faithful.

I come from an environment that is politically stable and economically prosperous enough that one might honestly consider these notions tenable. From this position of privilege, however, I've chosen (out of guilt and moral duty? out of a sense of adventure? out of the sense of purpose derived from struggle?) to engage in the questions of war. Though safe and sound myself, I see that slaughter, rape, indifference, selfishness, and the thirst for power are not the exceptions in human history but the rule. When considering human experience, genocide does not stand darkly in the periphery of the world, but squarely in the center. The difficulties of refugees are not tragic because they are so rare; they are tragic- in part- because they are so common.

So I'm only interested in theology that can withstand the scrutiny of a child soldier. I'm only interested in theology that still seems relevant at the end of a gun. I'm only interested in a theology that wrestles with the question of evil not just intellectually but existentially, and on a daily basis. My theology, if it is sound, will not prop up ethnic and religious divisions and violence, or justify imperialism. It will not be placated by empty rhetoric, it will not enslave, and it will not be dismissive of collateral damage.

If God is really a God of love, in other words, God sits right down in the middle of that collateral damage, with all the people wounded by war, and cries and suffers with them, and cries for justice with them.

And it turns out that I've found this God in Christianity. Sure, it can be hard to see that God amidst the triumphalism, the self-satisfaction, the rules and regulations, the ethnocentrism, the bureaucracy, and the assurances about God's plans that we Christians often place at the center of our religion. But our scriptures show a God who suffered, and who grieves, and who constantly hands down orders about orphans and widows and poor people and beating swords into plowshares. And who tells Jews and Gentiles to get along.

This doesn't answer the question of evil in light of God's supposed almightiness, of course. Nothing probably ever will. But it is one reason I'm still a Christian, and why faith remains so interwoven in my personal thoughts and motivations about justice and peace. Questions of war- which are still, really, optional for me, but mandatory for millions- are there at the crux of my faith tradition.

choose your own adventure:

2008-12-06T08:45:00.001-08:00

You have been given the opportunity to broker a peace agreement! Your work will impact a region of the world for decades, perhaps centuries to come! You get to decide what framework will shape the agreement. Will you choose a dare-we-say racist framework, in which you assume that people from similar ethnic groups will get along with each other no matter what and that people from different ethnic groups will always fight each other, or will you choose the framework of international law, which bears a striking resemblance to some of our own dearly beloved values and laws here in the U.S.A.?

Ready? Go!

Path 1: RACISM
Path 2: INTERNATIONAL LAW

The sad thing is, I wasn't even thinking about Iraq when I started writing this. Anyway, here's my favorite part of my paper on Lebanon's 1990 Ta'if Accord, the text of which made me absolutely furious. This paragraph is actually going to be a footnote since it doesn't really fit in with our analytical framework for the paper, but it HAS to be said:

I am highly critical of Ta’if’s differing treatment of the Syrian and Israeli occupations, which I believe reflect deep problems in regional politics. The accord treats Israel as an occupier to which Lebanon may respond with force, but advocates for an incremental withdrawal of Syrian troops predicated on a peaceful relationship, extolling Lebanon and Syria’s ancient “brotherhood” and Arab commonality. This is nonsensical, as their “brotherhood” had clearly not kept them from conflict in the past (nor had it kept Lebanese militias from fighting one another) and insulting, as it implies that the borders of Arab states are porous and that people who share an ethnic or cultural background with their occupiers do not deserve self-determination. Furthermore, the devastating insinuation is that Lebanon and Syria cannot expect to find such commonality or make peace with Israel, a state of mostly Jews of European descent. I was, perhaps naively, shocked to discover that this racism influenced Ta’if’s provisions as strongly as did international law, but not surprised to learn that the U.S. has had a hand, once again, in institutionalizing ethnic division and conflict, despite its protests that it cannot understand the “ancient hatreds” of the divided nations in the Middle East.

rocks & hard places

2008-10-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure which is worse: that the Obama campaign, judging by Biden's comments during the VP debate, claims that Senator Obama did not support the 2006 Palestinian elections because he knew Hamas would be elected, or because Biden actually lied to say so.

(Note: I am really fond of talking about those elections both because it's kind of the starting point for my paying attention to what was happening in Palestine, and because I was in Jerusalem when they happened. I really like talking about that.)

Obama has had to work hard to convince people that he supports Israel; you can see that at work in this interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. The questions, of course, are always about a secure Israel and denouncing terrorism and having a zero-tolerance attitude towards anti-Semitism. They're not so much about human rights and self-determination for the Palestinians, which of course is the other half of "the peace process," and of course it's the half the U.S. has mostly ignored. And Obama ignores it when he talks about Hamas supposedly supporting him, though he does offer Goldberg a bit of a solid explanation.

But if he weren't running to be elected the president of the United States, and his words didn't have political consequences, he could have given a response like this:

"Hamas? Yeah, of course those guys prefer me to McCain. I've told you about my deep ties to the Jewish community in Chicago, but what I haven't mentioned is that Chicago also has a huge Palestinian population and a very active Palestinian activist community. So I got to know them and the injustices faced by their people in the occupied territories. So I recognize that we need to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip so that we can give the Palestinians a better shot at self-determination and human rights, which is really the key to ending the violence in Israel. Here's the thing about Hamas: of course I denounce their terrorist tactics, and of course I applaud that they now officially recognize Israel, though most U.S. press and politicians ignore this fact. And yeah, I think their fighting with Fatah and claiming power in Gaza is not ultimately in the interests of the people they were elected to represent. But despite their deep flaws, Hamas, like every Palestinian, has a vested interest in seeing the Palestinian people free, and stable, and peaceful. And they recognize that I'm more likely to work towards that than John McCain is. And I think most Palestinians do, but most Palestinians don't have a voice in mainstream U.S. media. So their voices can only be heard, distorted, though what their most famous leaders and groups have to say."

In my dreams, anyway. I want Obama to win this election, and I mostly really liked Joe Biden during the debate. But I'm afraid the Palestinians are going to be stuck where they usually are. And that's a tragedy for them, which should lead a few of us to raise our voices anyway, because it matters, innately, and the Palestinians are going to continue to be this rallying point for people in power in the Arab world- and in Iran- to use to point at the injustices of the U.S. and Israel. And their grievance will be legitimate, whether or not their policies are.

In the meantime, a really beautiful bit of nonviolent resistance: FREE GAZA.

but will the IRAQIS win anything in november?

2008-09-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

"Real change in Iraq would mean that Obama realized that for five years straight the United States has promoted and consolidated an artificial sectarian system in the country, and that disengagement from Iraq should also aim at reversing this trend."

Bingo.

starting a lil' conflict

2008-09-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm about to have a little clash of civilizations RIGHT HERE with the editors of my Intro course textbook/anthology, Leashing the Dogs of War. Soon into the intro I developed a suspicion that Eds. Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall were neo-con imperialists, nothing too apocalyptic mind you, just your average American university faculty think-tank types operating with certain assumptions about the legitimacy of global U.S. intervention, but I was floored- FLOORED- when I got to this staggering paragraph:

Since the collapse of European empires, the assumption has been that new states emerging in their wake would have whatever time it took to develop effective and legitimate institutions of governance...Regional actors in formerly dependent areas have gradually taken control of their own destiny while intesifying linkages to the major world power centers of Europe, Asia, and North America.

"No way!" I was thinking. "Formerly dependent areas? DEPENDENT? Like, you mean Africa and Latin America and the Middle East and the other areas that were colonized against their will by European countries?" It continues...

Since September 11, 2001, however, new understandings have challenged this assumption. It is no longer accepted that chaotic, ill-governed regions and zones of failed modernization should be allowed to flounder towards an uncertain future...

Uh, yeah, that's exactly what they meant. I'm reminded of my Oxford prof who famously in MY memory once reminisced about the British Empire by exclaiming, "Ghandi! Wasn't HE a pain in the neck!"

Could this be any more patronizing- or less democratic? Couldn't we at least give a little shout out to the people of those nations who deserve self-determination? The vision here is one of post-colonial states freed to make a name for themselves and royally screwing up; the insinuation is that things were orderly before the independence movements of the 20th century and that if the states are failing, it's their fault alone, and that we've got the right to intervene, like parents taking back the car keys. Or, perhaps, like slave-owners catching runaways because we know what's best for them. (Yeah, I'm gonna risk the harshness of that metaphor.)

I think this is the core conflict between the tasks of "promoting democracy" and "policing the world." This little introduction, and most American foreign policy, places security above democracy (or, if you will, freedom.). And as long as you put your idea of what a secure, ordered world looks like above your commitment to honoring human dignity and the right of peoples to self-determination- well, we got beef.

That's not to say that a Robert Mugabe or even a Hosni Mubarak doesn't merit some kind of international, sanctioning (not necessarily economic) response. (In Mugabe's case, global outcry is appropriate.) They are certainly not interested in creating democratic states, either. But the U.S. approaches these situations not as a servant of people who should live democratically or even as a partner in creating democracy but as a SWAT team. And remember, what's happening in Afghanistan and Iraq are the results of the U.S. "no longer accepting" that other states take care of themselves.

best heading ever

2008-08-28T12:31:00.000-07:00

As obscure and neglected as this spot is, I'm still incredibly proud of the quote beneath the title.

In other news, what peace agreement should I choose to analyze for my Intro to Peace and Conflict Resolution class? I'm thinking something to do with Lebanon, something that will force me to untangle more of its crazy history and politics.

I've also found myself increasingly interested in refugees. Conflict uproots and changes their entire lives, they are incredibly diverse, and, as Palestine has taught me, they are one of the most difficult "questions" of war. As history disappears or is rewritten and as politicians argue over solutions or as violence itself ceases, refugees remain. Dealing with refugees humanely and justly requires, I believe, a certain extension of oneself, one's country and resources, that lie beyond what can be considered cost-effective or strategically advantageous.* That's not to say that I think of refugees as overgrown infants, lousy with needs, but that those who have been uprooted deserve homes. And people, nations, don't really like making space for new people to have homes. So it's a big issue, and one that requires attention both here and abroad, one that's really at the heart of Christian spirituality.**

*Unless, in terms of strategy, you believe that hurt and neglected people will lash out violently later on and eventually drain economies and fail to integrate into new societies, etc etc... but that's another story I guess...

**WOAH bet you weren't expecting that! Just seeing if you're paying attention.

"my commitment to justice/ my eyes"

2008-08-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

The Trial of Salim Hamdan

2008-07-22T11:54:00.000-07:00

So here we have a guy who was (unquestionably) Osama bin Laden's driver and who may have been (questionably) actually a member of or at least very much aiding Al-Qaeda or who may have been (questionably) actually just a driver, a personal employee, guiltless in bin Laden and Al-Qaeda's crimes. Now he's getting a trial in Guantanamo. Boy do I have questions about this.

So this has been an opportunity for me to learn about our attorney general Michael Mukasey. He's the guy asking for legislation keeping detainees from entering the U.S. based on the "extraordinary risk" they pose. Yet another CRAZY MOVE from the Bush administration. I have a hard time believing that they actually think they can't muster up the security to move detainees to the U.S. safely. Do the detainees on Guantanamo have explosives up their sleeves? So I wonder what the real motive is. To try to keep barriers in place to keep the trial, and the detainees, out of U.S. jurisdiction, so the U.S. military, which is running the court and supplying the jury, stays in charge? A symbolic gesture of disagreement with the Supreme Court's ruling that the detainees can contest their detentions in federal court? Will this make Bush/the party/McCain continue to look tough on terror, helping the American people feel safe? Or maybe they really are paranoid.

My first question about the trial, though, was: what does a jury of Mr. Hamdan's peers look like? Seems like a really just jury would be a global jury. Americans, both civilian and military, Afghanis, Yemenis, another Guantanamo detainee perhaps. Maybe a Saudi or two. Muslims, Christians, Jews, agnostics, Buddhists. Maybe some parents who'd lost sons or daughters here and abroad.

You'd have to have a lot of translators. And I guess one result of the Supreme Court's ruling is that the trials are American-run, so they don't require an international body. But if those folks came to a real consensus, seems likely it would be fair. I fell in love with To Kill a Mockingbird when I read it in eighth grade, so I pretty quickly thought about America's history of prejudiced juries.

I hope the six military personnel they have on the jury chose their careers because they have a strong sense of justice and will do their best to objectively hand Hamdan the sentence he deserves. But, uh, it's also possible that they're pretty biased. The New York Times:

Another [jury member], an Army pilot, said he had been later deployed to Iraq and had been attacked by ground fire there. When Mr. Hamdan’s military lawyer, Lt. Cmdr. Brian L. Mizer, asked what the impact might be on the pilot’s ability to judge the case fairly, the pilot answered, “I’m not sure of the answer to that, sir.”

I commend his honesty and humility, but wonder why they picked him.

BUT what's crazy to me is that this jury of six senior military officials can convict with 2/3 support. I don't know the legal precedent, domestic or international, but it strikes me that in a situation where A) there's a good chance the jury is biased and B) a guilty verdict could lead to a life sentence you might want to come to a solid consensus.

those roots

2008-07-17T13:57:00.001-07:00

You know how I was saying that Arabic is magical and interesting, etc.? Here's an example of how it's lovely when you start making connections: I realized, today during my lunch break, trying to meet the meager summertime study goals I've set for myself, that the verb "to read" is related to the word "Q'uran." The same root letters- I think the Q, the R, the A. How had I never noticed it before?

It's lovely to me, anyway.

grammar chart kills puppy

2008-06-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

I often wonder about my interest- can I say it's a passion?- in learning Arabic. It's not something I fully understand. I sometimes think people take to other cultures, languages, and countries because they find something kindred in them. (Or because they spend a semester in Africa after 20 or so years lived in the suburbs and are struggling to figure out how to assimilate their abroad experience into their American life and cognitive dissonance makes them a bit black and white, rejecting the strip mall and longing for the village.) I don't think that's true for me and Arabic, or Egypt. If anything, it's the foreignness that draws me- learning something so different from what I know and learning to take part in it.

Then there's desire. I have a real desire- and desire is such an interesting, mysterious force- to learn and speak this language. I don't mean desire in the way that we can casually want something, such as wanting the bus to come on time. I mean desire as in appetite, as in craving, as in getting close to something and wanting to get closer.

And you thought French and Italian were romance languages. Anyway, it's a mysterious feeling but today, after reading an Amazon review of an Arabic-English dictionary, (hello, internet-inspired expansion of "the canon" and that which is deemed quotable!), I think maybe studying this language appeals to both my need for structure and logic and my need for relationship and mystery and art.

Because language is all of those things. This Amazon review spends a bunch of paragraphs describing how the set-up of the dictionary mirrors Arabic grammar. Which must be tremendously boring, almost unreadable to anyone but the few of us wired to find something to desire in learning Arabic grammar, and which I'm refraining from describing. And then the author busts out this:

"This dictionary strips the patterns of the Arab language bare. This incredible semantic superstructure is one even many native speaking Arabs are mostly unaware of. Still, sometimes - okay, maybe often - this dictionary (like scientific things can so often do) kills the puppy, dissects it, and gives you a chart. But the essence of that puppy isn't in the chart. It's a more metaphysical reality. A living, breathing, wriggling thing, one that requires much more intuition than logic to understand.. The Arab language is just such a reality. Another semantic universe, truly exotic to an English speaking mind, a vivid poetic wonder.

You know, studying Arabic is a real pleasure. It's truly sublime."

Grammar? Amazon reader reviews? It's true- mystery and desire live even there.

riverbend, where are you?

2008-06-04T13:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, seriously, I'm starting to miss Riverbend.

And I haven't even been reading her for that long.

She's the Iraqi who started blogging when the war started in 2003. Her entries have been published in two volumes, in multiple languages. She's won journalism awards. She's humanized the war for many Americans. She's one of the reasons to have a tiny bit of hope about the internet and journalism. She left Iraq last year and her blog Baghdad Burning hasn't been updated since last October, when she wrote about living in Syria.

Anyway, Riverbend, I check your blog at least once a week, and I'm wondering where you are, and I want you to let us know. It's funny, this dependence we develop on certain voices. At least me, I'm drawn to those people who say things that are true and sharp. I count on them.

the seduction of stereotypes

2008-05-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent an hour or two staring at the car wreck of the New York Times' article "Young Saudis, Vexed and Entranced by Love's Rules," and the online comments it inspired. The article follows two young Saudi men for a couple days, quizzing them on how courtship, marriage, and love function in Saudi society. The reader comments started to fall into some themes.

Readers expressed outrage at Saudi society and the men's behavior, often coupled with notes about how, as a nation, it's a shame that we're so economically connected to such a repressive society. Some had criticism of the article for its inaccuracies, often from those who were personally familiar with Saudi Arabia, often expressing anger at the Times' propagation of stereotypes. There were some who promoted a kind of cultural relativism, suggesting it's not our job to judge, including (and this is my personal favorite) some single New Yorkers lamenting that their dating scene doesn't really offer much in the way of romance, either.

Comments of the outraged and bewildered variety were often frighteningly racist and intolerant, making incredibly sweeping statements about Arabs and Islam. Of course, such ignorance and hatred is often construed as an act of righteous feminist rage. My favorite, for its imagery, from a woman who describes herself as "shaking with fury" at the men's treatment of one woman they see in a restaurant:

"Would that the internal combustion engine had never been invented, would that not a drop of oil rested under that god forsaken desert, then these swine would be on the backs of camels in the Sahara, where they belong."

The scary part is that this kind of comment frequently goes uncontested- maybe even a majority of commenters on the article would AGREE, at least in some way, with this commenter. She deplores that we have to interact with Saudi society but recognizes it as an economic necessity, displays an almost comical lack of geographical understanding (the Sahara is in North Africa, not the peninsula where Saudi lies), and says that the men in the story are less than human.

I'm starting to think that a sense of entitlement- to oil, of course- coupled with deep racism and distrust towards Arabs and Muslims has a much stronger hold on the general American psyche than I ever imagined.

And, personally, while I'm somehow fascinated and compelled to interact with this dialogue, I find that it wears on my psyche, too. I'm so busy trying to make sense of it all- how can I respond to such comments? Is there REALLY something "ingrained" in Islam that subjugates women? How can I ask people to have a more nuanced view of Arab cultures while not falling into a cultural relativism that flies in the face of my commitment to justice and human rights? How can I decry the subjugation of women wherever it exists while still maintaining that the lives of many Arab women are rich and complex? How can I strongly agree with those who note repression in Saudi Arabia when to side with them seems to mean siding with imperialist projects and Islamophobia?

I want so badly to find a comprehensive, honest, intellectual response that I sometimes forget to allow the lived experiences of others speak for themselves, to rest for a moment in the knowledge that the truth of real faces, real personalities, and real relationships exists despite news reports and analyses.

Not surprisingly (my incarnational religious tradition shows) my liberation lies in taking the hands of others. It was like waking up from a bad dream in the days following my reading of that article, to spend time with Arab friends, and to enjoy their company and their stories. Faced with that reality, faced with forging friendships and communication, all the inaccuracy and violence of those news reports lost some of its grip on me.

"U.S. confirms Somali missile strike"

2008-05-01T14:00:00.001-07:00

But I can't say that it makes me feel any safer.

Bassam Haddad on Lebanon

2008-05-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a lecture in a small room in the basement of one of UPenn's ivory-tower-looking buildings. The audience was small and I recognized most of the people in the room from similar events. Nonetheless, Bassam Haddad, Director of George Mason's Middle East Studies program and member of the editorial board of a publication I adore, the Middle East Report, presented an interesting and well-versed talk titled "Lebanon and Syria in the Context of the Bush Administration's 'New Middle East.'"

The thing is that learning about Lebanese politics gets me all excited. I'm not really sure why, because they're very complicated so I could really only confidently tell you approximately three things about them. Perhaps it's a romantic attachment to a country I know is small, beautiful, and struggling. Perhaps it's the complication itself, so little understood or acknowledged here; maybe reaching for understanding of Arab societies is like my white-girl post-orientalist treasure hunt. Whatever forces tug at me so viscerally- the same ones I sometimes feel studying Arabic- let's, in their honor and for their purification, record a few notes on Lebanon from Haddad's talk. (And, admittedly, this is going to focus on Hezbollah, not really doing justice to Lebanese politics.)

1. One of the three things I CAN tell you about Lebanese politics is that they use a confessional system. Government positions are split up according to religious and political sects, so that power is shared among groups. Haddad emphasized that while this system was created in deference to existing groups in Lebanese society, it actually produces sects. The continued strength and even splintering of sects within Lebanon is not due to a "Lebanese mentality" or a general Middle Eastern/Arab allergy to democracy and pluralism, but to the necessity of creating new groups in order to influence policy.

2. This is the setting where Hezbollah exists, of course. Haddad was clear in stating that Hezbollah is primarily a social movement. Even if Hezbollah's military branch disbanded, its social programs and institutions would continue. The weakness of Lebanon's central government and the strength of groups, including Hezbollah, who run social services are proven by the continuity of life in Lebanon despite the current lack of a president and the continued postponement of elections.

3. I asked Haddad, who had mentioned Hamas as well, to clarify if he would also define Hamas as primarily a social movement. He said that yes, ultimately he would, but that Hezbollah was much better organized and clear in their mission. He also differentiated between the groups- which I think are described quite similarly in American media- by reminding us that Hezbollah was a grassroots Lebanese movement supported by Iran, while Hamas was a Palestinian group encouraged and propped up by Israel in order to take power away from Arafat and the PLO. In this, he said, Hamas better parallels the Muslim Brotherhood. Both are Islamic groups sometimes operating in the government, sometimes outside of it, who have had various levels of popular support and who have used violence. (Though violence is not their raison d'etre, as the U.S. government classification "terrorist" presumes.) In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, when it was smaller, was supported by then-president Anwar Sadat to take power away from- hmm, I think it was the socialists who were threatening his liberal economic policies. At any rate, both of these groups were supported by governments who didn't really want them to get real power, and are today two of the biggest political forces in their respective locales.

4. On the U.S. foreign policy front, Haddad insisted that the problem with U.S. policy in Iraq and the Middle East is not in method or strategy but in substance. The Iraq failure, he said, is not that the U.S. has poor tactics, but that the U.S. displayed an incredible arrogance in invading in the first place. For this reason, he said, American liberals and moderates scare him more than neo-cons. They use less aggressive language and may create more nuanced policy, but their substance still consists of the assumption that the U.S. has some right to interfere in the Middle East, and they will continue to act not in favor of "democracy" generally, but according to U.S. strategic interests, and will support whichever regimes happen to support those interests at the moment.

I wonder what Haddad thinks about the potential of McCain, Clinton, or Obama leading U.S. Mid-East policy.

bread alone

2008-04-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

The other day at our kitchen table a friend said that rice prices are rising- rice, the staple of so many, including those of us who are not so poor but have taken refuge in our ability to eat rice and beans. There are riots, he said, and Wal-Mart is now limiting how many bags of rice a customer can buy.

My eyebrows raised. Wal-Mart? I sang "the times, they are a-changing." I wondered how soon, and how hard, the price of rice and wheat would impact me.

For the time being, the reality of food prices is made most accessible to me as I consider what brothers and sisters in Egypt are facing, as I can picture their meals and their neighborhoods and their bakeries. The venerable Egyptian English-version weekly Al Ahram considers how the government should respond to the crisis.

As what seems like it should be certain becomes more unsteady, I consider the words of my favorite nun: "The poor may know that God loves them. But how can the very poor know this, if they do not even have enough to live?"

"youth for Obama"

2008-04-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

A bit of the 2008 presidential race to remember. Stephen Colbert on Larry King, 4/14/08.

KING:  Give me your assessment of Barack
Obama,where he's come from, what he's
done, what he's accomplished.  He's a
political phenomenon.

COLBERT:  Yes, absolutely.  He's an
inspiring candidate. And he's got the
young people out there just eating out
of the palm of his hand.  He's passing
his hope bong around the drum circle of
young America.

KING:  His what?

COLBERT:  His hope bong, Larry.
He's inviting people to take deep
tokes off of his bong packed with hope.

rejected by the Times

2008-03-31T13:46:00.000-07:00

Cleaning out old emails is like paging through a ramshackle diary; the old notes I'm reading summon the mood and events of certain months in my life. Here's a good one from August of 2006, when I was coming home from Egypt, living at my parents' house, and glued to news of the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon. It's a letter the New York Times did not see fit to print. I'm a little surprised at the ending; I'm not sure if my obvious insinuation that Friedman is committing racism against Arabs gets to the heart of the matter or is an inflammatory distraction in a plea for nuance.

To the Editor:

Re: "Buffett and Hezbollah," Thomas L. Friedman, Op-Ed, Aug. 9:

I struggle to find, in this article, factual evidence to support Friedman's claim that "Hezbollah youth dream of being martyrs," any description of who these youth are, or how Friedman obtained this insight into their desires. Do "Hezbollah youth" include all youth who benefit from Hezbollah's social services, any young person who voted for a Hezbollah candidate, or just the young members of Hezbollah's armed wings?

Mr. Friedman, you write that you look into the faces of Israeli soldiers. Do not the Lebanese, even the "Hezbollah youth," deserve the same examination, simply by virtue of being human? Or do Arabs not merit factual reporting?

(And here's the original editorial, though I'm refraining from reading it- no need to rehash that now...)

to kick things off: an international poll

2008-03-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

Last week at work during one of my daily BBC perusals, I stumbled upon one of those polls that seem both obvious and important- like "exercise promotes heart health" or "people don't like having their homes bombed," this headline is common-sense but should be heeded: Most muslims "desire democracy."

What I found interesting was not so much the information in the headline but this bit:

"Muslims want self-determination, but not an American-imposed and defined democracy. They don't want secularism or theocracy," said the professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

"What the majority wants is democracy with religious values."

When I read this, I felt like doing a little Lloyd Dobbler-like bowing in the middle of the street, if only to myself. It encapsulates what I suspected in Cairo- that most Egyptians want both democratic representation in a just government, and to publicly celebrate their religions (which, to me, felt like part of the very air).

From what I could tell, Egyptians want a say in their government, are unhappy with human rights abuses and a poor economy and government corruption, but also resent American military action, do not want an Americanized culture (I also suspect that an importation of American individualism would overwhelm and depress many of them), and do not want their very public, open, religion to become more private or less all-encompassing. I think what I saw and what that finding points at is a kind of "third way" not really present in the way Americans tend to talk about "democracy." There's little acknowledgment that it might be possible for people to desire both democratic, humane government, and committed, communal, public religious lives and institutions. (At least, if that religion is Islam.) But I think such an acknowledgment is vitally important- I will be keeping my ears to the ground to understand both how religious cultures are different from mine, and how the governments in those cultures might embody many of those good old "American" values- human rights, equality, democracy- without requiring increased cultural secularization.