Blog


About


Books

 Latest Post: Flash!

Agnostic
A Spirited Manifesto
Available April 4, 2016

   Who is the AT?   Books by LH
  • Agnostic

  • The First Muslim

  • After The Prophet

  • Jezebel

  • Mary

  • More from LH

     

American Influence?

Posted October 26th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

rohdeThe road to hell may be paved with good intentions, as the saying goes, but there’s a lot of understandable suspicion out there about exactly how good American intentions even are when it comes to the Middle East.  That’s the theme of David Rohde’s book ‘Beyond War:  Reimagining American Influence in the Middle East.’

The first step I’d suggest:  do some major reimagining of images, and forget Orientalist stereotypes like the camel-rider on  the cover.  The second step:  question the whole concept of influence.

The Catholic weekly America asked me to review the book, and here’s what I wrote:

When the Egyptian military seized power in June, American pundits instantly rushed to preach about democracy.  This took some hubris considering that two recent American elections – 2000 and 2004 – are still considered by many to be of questionable legality, and that redistricting is rapidly ensuring the minority status of Democratic strongholds throughout the south.

Is the US even in a position to preach democracy?  Especially since as with national elections, so too with foreign policy:  democracy is subject to money, and how it’s spent.

This is the hard-headed reality behind two-time Pulitzer prize-winner and former Taliban captive David Rohde’s new book, which focuses on how the US government spends money abroad, specifically in the Middle East.  It’s an argument for small-scale economic rather than large-scale military aid, and as such is immensely welcome in principle. The question is how to do it in practice.

As Rohde writes, “Washington’s archaic foreign policy apparatus” and its weakened civilian agencies mean that “in the decades since the end of the Cold War, the ability of the White House, State Department, and Congress to devise and carry out sophisticated political and development efforts overseas has withered.”

Whether Rohde is aware of it or not, the problem might be encapsulated in the subtitle of his own book, which assumes not only the existence of American influence, but also its necessity. Many of his sources are well-informed and palpably frustrated employees of the Agency for International Development (USAID) who are basically in conflict with both the State Department and Congress.  Yet the stated goals of USAID are clear:  they include providing “economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the US.” [my italics].

For all the talk about the need for humanitarian aid and intervention (most recently in Syria), the reality is purely political.  What’s presented as humanitarian aid is always a matter of foreign policy.  And American foreign policy is still intensely focused on George W. Bush’s GWOT – the “global war on terror.”

The principle is that US aid should act as a stabilizing force against militant Islamic extremism.  But the very idea of the US as a stabilizing force has been thoroughly undermined by the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even the best-considered foreign aid has now been rendered suspect in many parts of the Middle East, especially when there’s “a widespread perception of the American government as a finely tuned, nefarious machine, not an unwieldy cacophony of viewpoints,” and when authoritarian control fosters an intense rumor mill, with conspiracy theories rampant (most recently, for instance, Malala Yousufzai as a CIA plant, or American-backed ‘Zionists’ as the instigators of the new regime in Egypt).  In Egypt in particular, Rohde notes, “Washington faces an extraordinary public-policy conundrum.  Decades of support for Mubarak will not be forgotten overnight.”

Rohde details the conundrum in a series of country-by-country chapters, some intensively well-reported (particularly on civilian contractors’ takeover of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and on the use of drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan), while others (on Turkey, Libya, and Tunisia) seem more perfunctory by comparison.  But in the light of the June military coup, the chapter on American dollars-for-peace financing and the Egyptian army’s vast business empire is particularly fascinating and uncomfortably prescient.

Oddly, though, there is no chapter on Israel, the largest recipient of American aid.  This seems to me tantamount to ignoring the elephant in the room, since the intense investment in an Israel that seems willing only to prolong and intensify the conflict with Palestine undermines US efforts elsewhere in the region.  In fact you could make a pretty strong argument that American support of Israel, driven by domestic electoral politics, runs directly counter to its own foreign policy interests.  Inevitably, the US is perceived elsewhere in the Middle East as at least tolerating if not encouraging Israel’s land grab in the Palestinian territories;  if its funds do not literally finance the expansionist project, they certainly free up funds that do.

Even assuming the best American intentions, then, they’re all too often interpreted as the worst.  But what exactly are those best intentions?

At root, this book is, or could have been, about America’s perception of itself.  Are we the world’s greatest do-gooders, distributing our largesse (and our arms) where most urgently needed?  Or are we acting to secure a blinkered and out-dated conception of our own interests?

Either way, as Rohde wrote in a New York Times op-ed back in May, “We should stop thinking we can transform societies overnight…  Nations must transform themselves.  We should scale back our ambitions and concentrate on long-term economics.”  His economic recommendations are accordingly small-scale (sometimes to the level of pathos, as in his enthusiasm for an Egyptian version of ‘The Apprentice’).  Yet his emphasis on entrepreneurship may actually undercut his argument that trying to force Western models on other countries will backfire.  And this is the argument that matters.

Like Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya, says Rohde, American officials need to listen rather than try to muscle their way in, whether economically or militarily.  A little respect, that is.   Preach less, listen more.  That may not be much of a “reimagining,” but it’s the really important message of this book.

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: Middle East, US politics | Tagged: Tags: 'America' magazine, 'Beyond War', Afghanistan, David Rohde, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, USAID | 2 Comments
  1. fatmakalkan says:
    October 26, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    I agree with you Lesley. In reality after Eygptian over throw of Moursi next one was Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. Turkey has much older democracy than Israel in Middle East but it is not in the interest of west to have strong Turkey with strong leader. West wants Soudi type regimes that will obey. Gezi park demonstrations at Istanbul in reality was an unsuccessful cue attempt of west. Thanks God it was unsuccessful. It would destabilize Turkey politically and economically and make Turkey again slave of west. Why West and Israil gov. Wants to get rid of Erdogan? Is he radical Islamist? No. Is he planing to bring sharia law back to Turkey ? No. If Turkey was a Christian state they would allow it to became another France or Germany but it is Muslim state very mellow understanding of Islam no treat to anybody but still even that much of Islam is not OK. There fore Turkey must remain as a third world country for western Judeo- Christian politicians.

  2. Jerry M says:
    October 28, 2013 at 10:57 am

    I can understand why the author left Israel out. I may not like our policy in Israel but it is a very different problem than what is happening in the Muslim world. In the case of the Obama administration, I don’t think they have a clue as to what they want to accomplish. Their lack of real preparation has led to them to keeping the mistakes of the Bush administration in effect long after they have left town. For example the spying on Germany has been going on for 10 years.

    Obama is a good administrator when he has a clear goal, but without ideas and without good advisors he is only a little better than an amateur.

Guilt By Drone

Posted May 16th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

drones1Unless you have the misfortune to live under their flight paths, it’s easy to push drones to the back of your mind.  That’s what’s so perfect from a US military point of view:  remote-control warfare, with the emphasis on ‘remote.’  See no evil, know no evil. What does an operator sitting in a bunker in Nevada know of what’s happening on the ground in Pakistan?

What do you?

Drone3While you might have registered the fact that US drone use in Pakistan quintupled in the Obama years from the Bush years, you’ve probably avoided dwelling on it.  You almost certainly haven’t thought through the personal and political havoc these drones are wreaking.  And you probably don’t want to even consider reading Living Under Drones, a 165-page report by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Center at Stanford and the Global Justice Clinic at NYU (that mouthful of authorship is off-putting enough).

Enter Mohsin Hamid, the Pakistani writer whose deliciously wicked novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist touched the raw edge of western anxiety, and whose newly published satire How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia is a well-deserved best-seller.  Hamid has the novelist’s ability to bring you inside experience that otherwise remains… remote.  So it was a savvy move when the New York Review of Books asked him to review the Stanford/NYU report, even if they then published his piece under the almost perversely understated headline ‘Why Drones Don’t Help.’  If you don’t read the report itself (there’s a summary here, and the full report is downloadable), at least read Hamid’s review of it.

Here’s an excerpt:

If there is any misconception that the drone strikes are primarily counter-terrorist in nature, aimed at key leaders of international terror networks, this can be dispensed with [….]  The elimination of ‘high-value’ targets — al-Qaeda or ‘militant’ leaders — has been exceedingly rare:  fewer than 50 people, or about 2% of all drone deaths.  Rather, ‘low-level insurgents’ have been the main targets [….]

In the media, the term ‘militant’ is often used in describing drone casualties.  The report makes clear that this blurs together two legally very different groups of people.  A ‘militant’ who is a member of the Taliban, planning to attack US troops, is not the same as a ‘militant’ who normally herds livestock, carries a rifle, and today is sitting with other members of his clan to discuss a threat top his isolated village from a neighboring clan.

Furthermore, according to the report, the ‘current administration’s apparent definition’ holds that any male of military age who is killed in an area where militants are thought to operate (and where, therefore, drones operate) will be counted as a militant if killed.

In other words, if you’re killed by a drone, the Obama administration says that this makes you by definition a militant.  Your death in a drone strike is all the proof that’s needed of your guilt, and thus of the right to have killed you.

Neither Orwell nor Kafka could have dreamed up better.

Hamid continues:

This has allowed administration officials to make wildly unrealistic claims, disputed by even the most conservative analysts of drone casualties, that civilian deaths are ‘extremely rare’ or have been in ‘single digits’ since President Obama took office.

If you disregard this novel definition and then try to ascertain what category of person was actually killed, you will arrive instead at an estimate that some 411 to 884 civilians have died in US drone strikes in Pakistan, including 168 to 197 children.

This includes so-called ‘signature strikes’ which attack unknown people for gathering in groups or otherwise “behaving like militants” as well as people trying to bring aid to injured victims of strikes.

Hamid goes on to look closer at the harrowing experience of those affected, and at the widespread Pakistani revulsion at the use of drones.  And with the US now intensifying its drone campaign elsewhere, as in Yemen, he cogently makes the case that their use only weakens already weak governments and thus severely undermines America’s own foreign-policy interests.

In other words, this isn’t counter-terrorist; it’s counter-effective.  What’s touted as “clean” technology (for the man in the bunker) is in fact as dirty as ever.  And the depressing conclusion is that the Obama administration is as stuck as its predecessor in the self-defeating meme of a military “war on terrorism.”

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: technology, US politics, war | Tagged: Tags: Bush, drone warfare, fatalities, Living Under Drones, Mohsin Hamid, NYU, Obama, Pakistan, Stanford, Yemen | 3 Comments
  1. Guy de la Rupelle says:
    May 16, 2013 at 4:34 pm

    Interesting but not hugely surprising given the US government’s methods of counting “enemy kills”. The line in the 7th paragraph (“In other words, if you’re killed by a drone, the Obama administration says that this makes you by definition a militant.”) is very much similar in nature to the line of thinking of those same people at the top of the governmental pyramid in the late 1960s in Vietnam, whereby if you were running and wearing black clothing and therefore killed by helicopter gunships and/or ground troops, you were most likely VC or a communist sympathizer.
    I’m at the moment reading an excellent book called “Kill anything that moves” (by Nick Turse) about what what took place during the Vietnam war by US forces. The difference I suppose that today this “mistakes” claiming the lives of innocent civilians are done from the comfort of a Herman Miller armchair somewhere on a DOD base in the US instead of a helicopter as close quarters, and that makes it more justifiable and cleaner. The problem, similar to that of Vietnam, is that local customs – gatherings of bearded men in salvar kameez, lamb-skin vests, turbans or pakool hats – makes them in the “eyes” of a drone, militants. Often, however, these are just social gatherings or weddings (some weddings have been fired on with women and children as casualties by drone attacks). And in November 2011 a drone attack mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani military near the Afghan border resulting in serious diplomatic outrage from the Pakistani government. Not a good way to make friends and keep allies…

  2. tamam Kahn says:
    May 16, 2013 at 4:49 pm

    This is heartbreaking. That photo of the child should be sent far and wide. Hello. Wake up!

  3. Meezan says:
    May 17, 2013 at 12:39 am

    Another huge draw back of the drones is they promote even more hate. Before the drone strikes in Pakistan, there were no Pakistani Taliban and no suicide bombings targeting Pakistani civilians and establishment. Drone strikes created hate for Pakistan among the tribal people who saw Pakistan as an equal party in this mass murder and out of revenge they joined the taliban terrorists that previously were foreign to them.

The Real Muslim Rage

Posted September 23rd, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Oh what a bandwagon that noxious little anti-Islamic video has set in motion.  There seems to be no end of people eager to hop on it for personal and political gain, no matter how many lives it costs.

There’s Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, reeling from backlash against his support of Bashar al-Assad’s ongoing massacre of Syrian civilians.  What a perfect opportunity to deflect criticism by calling for more and larger protests — not against the Syrian regime, but against America, in the name of “defending the Prophet.” Except that’s not what he’s doing. To cite the headline of Nick Kristof’s NYT column today, he’s exploiting the Prophet.

There’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali, she of the soft voice and the compelling back story, who just can’t stop talking about what she calls “the Muslim mentality.” (Pop quiz:  if someone who generalizes about a stereotyped “Jewish mentality” is an anti-Semite, what’s someone who generalizes about a stereotyped “Muslim mentality”?  Click here if you don’t know.)  Hirsi Ali told her story yet again in Newsweek‘s “Muslim Rage” issue (to which the best answer was the often hilarious #MuslimRage meme on Twitter).  Strange to think that the rapidly failing Newsweek was once a reputable publication.

There’s the sophomoric French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, whose idea of cutting-edge humor is cartoons of politicians with their pants down around the ankles.  This week they ran similar cartoons of Muhammad in order to inject some life into their plumetting circulation by creating controversy.  Oh, and as a beacon of free speech, of course.

There’s Pakistan’s Minister of Railways — the man responsible for the system’s chronic debt, constant strikes, and devastating crashes. What better way to distract people from his total failure than to make himself out to be a “defender of Islam” by offering a $100,000 bounty for the life of the director of that inane video?  There’s nothing quite like incitement to murder to cover up your own corruption.

There’s more — there’s always more of such people, including of course the miserable little bigots who made the video in the first place —  but that’ll do for now. Because none of this reflects the real Muslim rage:  the palpable outrage not only at the killing of Ambassador Stevens, but also at the blatant attempt of Islamic extremists (and their Islamophobic counterparts) to hijack Islam.

Listen, for instance, to Egyptian activist Mahmoud Salem, aka Sandmonkey, who was one of the voices of 2011’s “Arab spring” in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.  Violent protests over the video are “more damaging to Islam’s reputation than a thousand so-called ‘Islam-attacking’ films,” he writes, and calls on Egyptians to condemn Islamic fundamentalists as “a bunch of shrill, patriarchal, misogynistic, violent extremists who are using Islam as a cover” for political ambition.

Twitter is spilling over with similar protests and disgust from Muslims all over the world at the way the “defenders of Islam” are destroying it from within.  And this disgust was acted on in Benghazi on Friday when 50,000 Libyans marched to demand the disarming of the extremist militias suspected of attacking the US consular buildings, then stormed the headquarters of two of the biggest militias and forced them out of town.  Two other Islamist militias instantly disbanded.  Yes, if you unite, you can face down the thugs, even well-armed ones.  This, of course, is not something you’ll see on the cover of Newsweek.

As Libyans, Egyptians, Tunisians, Yemenis, and with especial pain, Syrians know, the “Arab spring” is not a matter of a single season.  The moniker itself is a product of Western media shorthand, of the desire to label a “story” and assign it a neat, self-contained timeline.  But this was no mere story for the people living it.  It was and still is the beginning of a long process.  But one that once begun, cannot be undone.

All over the Middle East, real voices are making themselves heard, unmediated by government control whether in the name of “security” or of an extremist travesty of Islam.

And this is surely the real manifestation of that much abused principle:  freedom of expression.

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: fundamentalism, Islam, Middle East, sanity | Tagged: Tags: anti-Islam video, Arab spring, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Benghazi, Charlie Hebdo, Egypt, Hassan Nasrallah, Libya, militias, Newsweek, outrage, Pakistan, Sandmonkey, Syria, Tunisia | 14 Comments
  1. anon says:
    September 23, 2012 at 6:39 pm

    when CNN uses Ambassador Stevens diary—“free-speech” goes out the window. Anything embarrassing to the U.S. government or military and there is no free-speech—-anything insulting to Muslims—and “free-speech” suddenly becomes important to Americans!!!!

    By the way—Muslim-minority countries are also allowing protests in their countries—seems “anti-americanism” isn’t confined to Muslim-Majority countries alone……

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 23, 2012 at 6:53 pm

      Stealing and using anyone’s private diary sounds Murdoch-sleazy to me. Can’t see that it has anything to do with free speech. And as for “allowing” protests, doesn’t that word “allowing” tell you something?

      • anon says:
        September 29, 2012 at 2:13 am

        “sound Murdoch-sleazy to me”—that is exactly my point—Americans may “claim” free-speech”—but it DOES have boundaries—some things are just not acceptable—because they are “sleezy” or unpatriotic, or….etc……There were U.S. muslim students who were arrested because they protested a speech by Israeli ambassador, there was a Judge who banned hateful protests at funerals of American soldiers……

        people in different parts of the world have sensibilities that may be different from an American criteria—for example, in some countries in Asia—speech defaming the monarchy is against the law…..We have to be able to respect each others differences……….Non-Americans need to understand that America has its own criteria—and Americans need to understand that non-Americans also have their own criteria…..

        “Allowing protests”—yes, for much of the rest of the world “freedoms” are still very much a “work-in-progress”—even in the democracies of Asia.

        (by the way—I do agree that moderate/mainstream muslims MUST counter the narrow, extremist ideology that encourages violence)

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          September 29, 2012 at 10:44 am

          You get the difference, though, between what’s acceptable and what’s legal in the US. Expressions of antisemitism and racism are legal, but no longer acceptable in the mainstream. I’m convinced that this will happen too with Islamophobia — i.e. it will be marginalized. The hard thing is that it takes time, and as you say, understanding that we all need to speak out against extremist ideologies and hatred on all sides. Freedom of expression is a terrifically tough concept to get one’s mind around — I still have great difficulty with it, and sometimes find myself raging against the American Civil Liberties Union. But I send my check to the ACLU nonetheless, because next time round, it could be me whose freedom of expression is being threatened.

  2. naveed says:
    September 23, 2012 at 8:23 pm

    You have correctly pointed out people who have cashed in on ‘muslim rage’ but these are not the real reasons for the rage. From one who is enraged: May I give the real reason for my rage? The American support to its stooges in Muslim countries, the mechanisms of regime change in Muslim countries and the American occupation of Muslim countries are the reasons for ‘Muslim Rage’

  3. Emad Yawer says:
    September 25, 2012 at 11:48 pm

    If the US and Europe so keen on free speech, whay I can not USE the Swastica, WHY I can not critisize ANY jew, jewish thing or deny the Holocost took place, WHY there is so many restrictions on what they call “HATE” , but it is all different against Islam?????????

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 27, 2012 at 10:28 am

      I don’t know where you live, but the fact is that in most of the world, you can. And in many parts of the Middle East, antisemitic cartoons, images etc are common in school textbooks and newspapers. As I’ve written here before, antisemitism and Islamophobia are mirror images — actually, twinned images — which makes it all the more miserably absurd when there are Muslims who are antisemitic, and Jews who are Islamophobic.

  4. Sohail Kizilbash says:
    September 26, 2012 at 4:52 pm

    Look Guys, lets us not be naive and banal. USA is THE superpower and she has to do a lot of things to maintain that status. If you don’t like it, you can lump it. Having said that, I don’t know of any other country where people are more free and freedom comes at a price. I totally agree with a Muslim who appeared on the TV a few day ago who said that the best country to practice Islam, is the USA.

    • Naveed says:
      September 30, 2012 at 10:51 am

      You are right USA is THE superpower. Dont forget that not too long ago Britain and then USSR were superpowers. Dont lose sight of the fact that in less than five years China will be a Superpower. Scientific and technological development can neither be halted nor contained sooner or later small countries and even stateless groups will accquire yet to be invented weapons of mass destruction. The survival of mankind depends on realizing that there can be no prosperity without peace and there can be no peace without justice.

      • Sohail Kizilbash says:
        September 30, 2012 at 2:48 pm

        Absolutely no argument there, Naveed. The seeds of destruction are embedded in the fabric of an empire. All empires, until now, have degenerated into dictatorships, arrogance, conceit, intolerance, superiority complex and gone into a comfort zone, bringing about their demise. Hopefully this will not happen to the USA as it adapts to changing times. See the change from a slave owning society, to a country where a half black is President. Now people proudly declare that they have native blood. One has to live in the USA and read history to see the change. The self critical nature of the Americans is one of their biggest strength.That is just my humble opinion.

        • naveed says:
          October 1, 2012 at 4:35 am

          Very well written Sohail. I had the privilege of living and working in USA as an alien resident for several years. I whole heartedly agree that America is a great country; the vast majority of Americans are forthright, honest and fair-minded people. We in the third world owe America and Europe a huge debt of gratitude for the benefits of science and technology. Unfortunately Americans are themselves the victims of a foreign policy influenced by lobbies whose allegiance lies outside its shores. For the sake of people of America and the people of the world. For the sake of peace on earth, we can only hope and pray that the future leaders of America will be great people like Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin, people who would base their decisions on principles of right and wrong rather than on opinion polls, oil money and directives of foreign lobbies. Kissinger said “ Real politick not a moralistic approach to foreign policy would best serve American interests” ( perhaps he really meant Israeli interests ) Americans are being led by neo-cons and evangelists who base their foreign policy on biblical prophesies.

          • Sohail Kizilbash says:
            October 1, 2012 at 7:36 am

            Alas. Sometimes the tail wags the dog.

  5. Sohail Kizilbash says:
    September 26, 2012 at 4:54 pm

    By the way Lesley, if you are on the FB you might enjoy the comments on my recent posts on this issue.

  6. irfan says:
    October 1, 2012 at 7:33 pm

    .hope the peaceful message will get more support

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/opinion/edit-page/Blasphemy-in-Islam-The-Quran-does-not-prescribe-punishment-for-abusing-the-Prophet/articleshow/16631496.cms

Can We Please Go Home Now?

Posted May 2nd, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

No exultation.  No victorious “mission accomplished.”  No jingoistic “Rah rah, USA USA.”   What a relief that Barack Hussein Obama is the president of the United States.

While students cheered wildly in front of the White House as though their team had just won a major football game, Obama’s announcement last night was characteristically calm and realistic:

Bin Laden’s death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that Al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must –- and we will — remain vigilant at home and abroad.

Obama is clearly aware that the killing of Bin Laden is more a symbolic victory than anything.  “Emblematic” is the word being used.  Al Qaeda is a loose alliance, with no reliance on a single leader.   But the fact that this happened on Obama’s watch and on his orders is a huge shot in the arm for the voices of calm and reason in the United States.  And a brilliantly timed one.  Bin Laden’s death may finally give Obama the respect and authority he merits in Congress, especially since it has to be clear as of last night that he is all but assured of a second presidential term.

We need it.  The US is still reeling from the racist absurdities of the “birther” luantics (how many hours until they start demanding Bin Laden’s “long-form death certificate”?).  It’s still in deep recession.  It’s still enmeshed in Iraq, newly mired in Libya, and floundering in Afghanistan. And, as Steve Coll makes clear on The New Yorker blog, bamboozled in Pakistan, where Bin Laden was hiding out just a thousand feet from a major Pakistani military base, “effectively housed under Pakistani state control.”

So I know this is naive.  I know it’s not going to happen soon.  But really, all I can think right now is this:

Mr President, can we please get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya?

Can we please go home now?

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: Middle East, US politics | Tagged: Tags: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Iraq, Libya, Obama, Pakistan | 4 Comments
  1. AJ says:
    May 3, 2011 at 10:12 am

    Lez
    We hardly know
    This war on terror is principled or cost effective.
    One thing we know
    Al-Qaida is not into making the weapons and have no control over Arm Trafficking.
    These terrorists are getting enough resources to execute where they are allowed to execute i.e.Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.
    Although to them biggest culprit is Israel but thats where they are not allowed to execute.
    Amazingly soft targets like Dubai and Saudia and other Gulf puppets are nowhere in the list.
    Thought provoking question is when terrorists have no access to Banking system and money smuggling is also curtailed, how they get the finances and who chose their targets.
    My take is trillion dollars war was not needed in the first place…just cut their roots and access to arms and that was enough at mush less cost.
    Hopefully I am not in violation of allowed quota of words.

  2. Lesley Hazleton says:
    May 3, 2011 at 10:53 am

    So far as I know, two major financing sources are 1. opium, and 2. Saudi (partly in protection money?)

    • Shishir says:
      May 3, 2011 at 2:57 pm

      That may not be true. It is known that OBL lived and
      worked in Iran for some time, it’d be wrong to rule out money from Iran. In fact given the whole “nation of islam” thingy I’d be surprised if money wasn’t coming in from almost all Islamic states. The money that was being pumped in Pakistan and Afghanistan, some part of it either in form of technology transfer to Al-Queda or weapons or straight forward money, would also be contributing.

  3. AJ says:
    May 3, 2011 at 11:34 am

    Unfortunately both routs with our permission

Soul Brothers: The Crackpot Pastor and the Taliban

Posted April 4th, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

I’ve been asked what I’d do about the crackpot pastor Terry Jones, the Quran-burning Florida redneck who keeps a poster of Mel Gibson’s ‘Braveheart’ in his office for “spiritual sustenance.” It would be wonderful to just laugh, but last week Jones’ idiocy set off the reciprocal idiocy of riots in Afghanistan that have so far resulted in at least 24 deaths (in addition to the 5 he caused last September when he first threatened to burn the Quran).  It’s a horrendous example of how prejudice feeds prejudice and ignorance feeds ignorance — with the food being other people’s blood.

If ever you wanted proof that extremists of all faiths are the real co-religionists, this was it.   Terry Jones meet your soul brothers:  the Taliban.

What actually happened?  The publicity-hungry Jones, whose entire church consists of some twenty family members, was encouraged to hold a mock trial of the Quran by Ahmed Abaza, a former Muslim who runs a deliriously amateurish satellite channel called TheTruthTV — that tell-tale capitalized Truth yet again.   (Abaza’s testimony to his conversion to “the light of Christ,” apparently intended as heart-rending, is here, if you can stand it).  Abaza obligingly live-streamed the trial proceedings,  and then (the verdict being a foregone conclusion) Jones carried out his heart’s desire, got out a can of firelighter fluid, and burned a copy.

The American media acted with uncharacteristic wisdom and ignored the event.  All might yet have been calm if word of the burning had not reached Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardawi and Afghanistan president Hamid Kharzai, who then tried to outdo each other in condemning it — an excellent way to distract attention from the real problems in their respective countries, especially at a time when both are highly aware that the call for regime change throughout the Middle East might spread to threaten their hold on power too.  Three fire-and-brimstone mullahs took up the call the next day at Friday prayer, inciting an anti-American mob out for blood, and UN workers paid the price.

So what would I do?   Well, as you can imagine, my fantasies at first tended to my own version of violent retribution, but then my better side took over.  So here’s my proposal, courtesy of existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, whose play Huis Clos (No Exit) is starkly simple in conception:  three people locked together in a bare room, slowly realizing that where they are is hell.  As they tear each other apart with words, they conclude, in the play’s most famous line, that “hell is other people.”

Jones, Karzai, and Zardawi locked together for eternity, condemned to listen to each other’s vanity and bombast?  That might not be the perfect punishment, but it’s a damned good one.

—————

[The only question:  should Jones be allowed to take his ‘Braveheart’ poster into the room with him?  For the sake of ensuring Karzai and Zardawi’s ongoing torment, I’d have to vote yes.]

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam | Tagged: Tags: Afghanistan, Ahmed Abaza, Asif Ali Zardawi, Hamid Kharzai, Huis Clos, Jean-Paul Sartre, Koran burning, Mel Gibson, No Exit, Pakistan, Quran, Terry Jones | 16 Comments
  1. Lynn Rosen says:
    April 4, 2011 at 11:26 pm

    Damned damned good sentence, I’ll say.

  2. Derakht says:
    April 5, 2011 at 9:38 am

    Be an extremists in any religions is bad, in fact extremists it mean no mind! it means only emotion.
    unfortunately some groups call them self Muslim there are very more extremists than other religions, Taliban or Qaeda they Wahhabism. for example driving for woman in Saudi Arabia is forbidden, but is not in Islam, I don’t know how human can be stupid!
    like in Bahrain they killing people just because of religion!!

  3. Philip says:
    April 5, 2011 at 10:13 am

    It is time American’s question their defense of absolute “free speech”. Most democratic countries have laws against “hate speech”. Such laws in the US might lower the heat of the pronoucements of irresponsible people.

  4. AJ says:
    April 5, 2011 at 10:22 am

    I disagree a bit.
    Taliban are extremist but this Terry Jones is not.
    He is a crook and he is into money and fame.
    He should be charged on 5 counts of man slaughter.
    Burning of Quran is also violation of 1st ammendment.
    He is free to express his views, burning Quran is like choking views he disagree with.
    And last but not least, this for sure is crime of violence.
    But unfortunately US Justice system is not as fair as we think.

  5. Adila says:
    April 5, 2011 at 12:28 pm

    This is completely unrelated to our post, but I wanted to say, I’m reading your book on the Shia and Sunni divide. It’s an emotive read, and very well done. I hope the second half is as good as the first.

  6. Ada says:
    April 5, 2011 at 1:18 pm

    My favorite line in the text was “..extremists of all faiths are the real co-religionists..” and I had to laugh at “Terry Jones meet your soul brothers: the Taliban.” I fully agree.

  7. Ali says:
    April 6, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    American people in general and American Muslims in particular must condemn and expose the crackpot pastor Terry Jones in media & also prosecute him by American law [….]
    as easy as that .. no madness ,no yelling , no screaming, no violence , just by law … you can do it Dr. Lesley .. or at least can help ..

    My regards
    Ali

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      April 6, 2011 at 2:09 pm

      Ali — the principle of free speech is paramount under US law. This includes speech we detest as well as speech we approve of, and the reason why it does so is basic to real democracy: if speech we find hateful is banned, the next time round, it might be our speech that someone else finds hateful.
      Much as I detest Jones and would love to see him behind bars — much as the vast majority of Americans detest him and would love to see him behind bars — his right to free expression is protected. The same would apply if he had burned a Bible.

      He has, however, been thoroughly exposed and condemned. And it would be good to see Karzai, Zardawi, and the three mullahs who directly incited those Afghanis to violence equally exposed and condemned in their own society.

      • Ali says:
        April 6, 2011 at 4:54 pm

        First ,I would like to thank you for your reply & for your amazing speech about Quran while ago, I still amazed about it . I’ve seen it so many times with Arabic subtitle & without. & I think only somebody with very good skills in pure Arabic language can say those observations , it was so beautiful & I wish if people in the west & in the whole world even in the Islamic world can see that beauty & mercy in Quran and don’t condemn it because of some ignorants or extremists behaviors .

        Second , as you know prosecuting somebody doesn’t mean necessarily puting him in jail “seeing him behind bars as you said ” , however with all paramount of free speech & democracy I still believe there are some fines or penalties for anybody who insults people publicly or urging some people for some severe acts against other people . there is a motive behind any crime & urging is the main motive for hate crimes .. & the motivator should be punished logically, exactly like those Mullahs you’ve mentioned before..

        Third , wish you all the success in your next book

  8. AJ says:
    April 6, 2011 at 9:25 pm

    Irony is what Lez says is true.
    You can burn anything in your possesion
    including cigarettes
    and its not inciting violence

    • Ali says:
      April 7, 2011 at 3:47 pm

      Burning a cigarette or any other private thing is not the same like burning a book or symbol ..burning a book or symbol publicly means a demonstration against a nation & gives signs for some people to take some acts against that nation which believes in that book or symbol .. now what do think will happen for somebody who would burn the American Constitution publicly in front of the white house , or somebody who would burn the Bible publicly in the center of Vatican , or an American Islamic Clerk or an Islamic Scholar who would burn the Bible publicly in America … I think it would be a hard test for our believes in ” Freedom of Speech” ..

      • Lesley Hazleton says:
        April 7, 2011 at 5:19 pm

        Ali, you now understand the principle of freedom of expression in the USA: it’s hard, but it’s vital for a free society. It is always being tested by people who want to ban some part of it — right-wingers wanted to ban burning the American flag, for instance, while liberals wanted to ban the right of Nazis to march — but it applies to all.

        Plus you should know that my stance on Jones is not at all unusual. He has zero support here in the US — nada, nil — and is widely regarded as a crackpot nuisance. Please do not feed his absurd grandiosity and thirst for publicity by making him out to be more than he is.

  9. hossam says:
    April 7, 2011 at 1:49 am

    yep, hate speech is protected by the first amendment. Unless it directly incites violence, like telling people to go around and kill other people, which Terry didn’t do, so his rights are protected. What is unfortunate though is that his actions are likely to produce more intolerance and hate in someone else, who may in turn resort to violence against a muslim.

  10. Persnickety says:
    April 11, 2011 at 9:10 am

    It is very strange to me how religion, more specifically faith which primarily is a personal belief, gets exploited for personal promotion and used as a tool to condemn others. The arrogance at play here with extremists (of any religion) reaches profoundly immoral levels. The colossal ego needed to convince oneself that he/she is knows ‘the truth’, while others are misled. Unfortunately, I see a growing trend amongst rabid athiests who mirror the same arrogance.

    It takes a lifetime (and more) to fully grasp and understand your own faith to address your need for personal growth and spiritual intellect… so how come some jump the gun…and assume they know it all?

  11. Anand Rishi says:
    April 14, 2011 at 4:01 am

    I agree with Lesley that such acts of attention mongering are best dealt with by not giving it. Barring a few knee jerk reactions, it has failed to elicit desired response and publicity. Let us rejoice that, by and large, sanity prevailed.

  12. AJ says:
    April 15, 2011 at 4:35 am

    Billion sentiments are played with to get a chance to rejoice.
    Sanity prevailing….those who used to go 9 to 5, still going.

The Burqa Strikes Again

Posted December 25th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

A stand-up comedian’s take on the Roy Orbison oldie ‘Pretty Woman’ is the latest salvo in the burqa wars.  The video of Saad Haroon performing ‘Burqa Woman’ seems to have gotten a lot of Pakistanis all riled up, both for and against, with everyone reading into it whatever they already believe.

You’d think that with issues like nuclear weapons, the Taliban, and government corruption, Pakistan might have a few other things to worry about right now.  But the burqa is always a reliable way to distract attention and make everyone feel righteous.

The comments on YouTube are way over the top.  That’s nothing new, of course, but it’s disturbing to scroll through and see the preponderance of deep pious offense on the one side (one commenter even calls for Haroon to be stoned to death, for Christ’s sake), and a kind of schoolyard ‘yah-boo-take-that-you-Muslims’ Islamophobia on the other.

In fact if ‘Burqa Woman’ is satire, it seems to me a pretty mild form.  Cheeky would be a better word for it —  the kind of fond teasing a younger brother might deploy against an older sister.  True, if you want to get analytical about it, phrases like “sexy ninja” and “mystery prize” reflect a kind of contemporary Orientalism — the erotics of the mysterious hidden East.  And lines like “show me your left nostril” or “flirting with my living-room curtain” are kind of tasteless (though the veil did begin as a curtain hung in order to give Muhammad’s wives some degree of privacy).  But nobody seems to be getting analytical about this.   All we have so far is a slew of kneejerk responses.

But then what else could there be when the burqa has been so highly politicized?  With new burqa bans in Europe and elsewhere, the burqa has served as a convenient whipping boy (or should that be whipping girl?),  with right-wing politicians manipulating left-wing feminists into joining hands in righteous indignation.

I’ve been a feminist for four decades now, and I know when my feminism is being manipulated.  I’ve no desire to ‘defend the burqa.’  I find it as objectionable as any other form of religious ‘hiding’ of women like Orthodox Jewish women’s wigs or Catholic nuns’ coifs — any religious rule that focuses on women’s sexuality under the guise of ‘protecting them’ from the stereotypically ravenous male eye.  Such rules honor neither women nor men — nor religion itself.

But why single out the burqa?  Why not criticize the Catholic or fundamentalist Christian attitude toward women with the same passion as directed against the Wahhabi or fundamentalist Islamic one?  And why use the burqa issue at all when the vast majority of Muslim women would never dream of putting one on?

I’m looking forward to seeing what the dynamite writers over at altmuslimah have to say about this musical storm in a teacup.  Meanwhile:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkVl_7N-m3I]

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: feminism, fundamentalism, Islam | Tagged: Tags: burqa, Islamophobia, Pakistan, Saad Haroon, YouTube | 1 Comment
  1. Sunny says:
    February 6, 2011 at 8:47 pm

    “But why single out the burqa?”

    The Burqa is singled out bcause this is the only garment worn in the name of religion that covers the face and impedes a normal human-to-human interaction, say for instance, in an University class room environment.

Bravo, WikiLeaks

Posted July 26th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

Give a thousand Pulitzers to WikiLeaks — one for every American death so far in Afghanistan.   Their securing and release of  92,000 reports from inside the US military, spanning six years, is the largest ever of secret documents from an ongoing war.  And it’s a devastating confirmation of everything we already knew was wrong with this war.

I realize this is counter-intuitive for online readers, but it’s worth getting a hard copy of today’s New York Times (or The Guardian, or Der Spiegel, the three publications that co-released the secret cache together with WikiLeaks ) just to start to make sense of these tens of thousands of messages, many of them sent in the field and under fire, minute by minute, by US military in Afghanistan.   The NYT spends half the front page and five full inside pages quoting and analyzing them, in acknowledgment of their scope and potential effect on the course of the war.

Here’s Julian Assange, founder of London-based WikiLeaks, in an interview with Der Spiegel:

These files are the most comprehensive description of a war to be published during the course of a war — in other words, at a time when they still have a chance of doing some good. They cover more than 90,000 different incidents, together with precise geographical locations. They cover the small and the large. A single body of information, they eclipse all that has been previously said about Afghanistan. They will change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars. […]

This material shines light on the everyday brutality and squalor of war. The archive will change public opinion and it will change the opinion of people in positions of political and diplomatic influence.

Self-promotion?  Sure.  But also correct.  Like many other pundits, Andrew Sullivan gripes over on The Daily Dish that the secret reports give us little information we didn’t have before, but he underestimates the vivid power of the horse’s mouth.   There is information and then there is real knowledge.  Read the desperate messages sent under fire, the laconic accounts of civilians killed by mistake. the reports of Pakistani intelligence leaders working with the Taliban, and you’ll see for yourself why the White House, so bafflingly committed to this absurd war, is in red-hot fury.

Above all, enormous credit to whoever gave this enormous cache of documentation to WikiLeaks.   This is clearly someone inside the US military, and there’s doubtless a major witch-hunt on now for him or her — to the same old tune of “blame the messenger.”   If whoever it is needs shelter, my home is open.

Share this post:  Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
File under: Middle East, war | Tagged: Tags: Afghanistan, Julian Assange, Obama, Pakistan, Taliban, WikiLeaks | 1 Comment
  1. Lavrans says:
    July 27, 2010 at 10:26 pm

    Amen 😉

    I really like J. Assange’s work.

Order the Book

Available online from:
  • Amazon.com
  • Barnes & Noble
  • IndieBound
  • Powell's
Or from your favorite bookseller.

Tag Cloud

absurd agnosticism art atheism Buddhism Christianity ecology existence feminism fundamentalism Islam Judaism light Middle East sanity technology ugliness US politics war women

Recent Posts

  • Flash! September 1, 2019
  • “What’s Wrong With Dying?” February 9, 2017
  • The Poem That Stopped Me Crying December 30, 2016
  • Talking About Soul at TED December 5, 2016
  • ‘Healing’? No Way. November 10, 2016
  • Psychopath, Defined August 2, 2016
  • Lovely NYT Review of ‘Agnostic’! July 14, 2016
  • Playing With Stillness June 22, 2016
  • Inside Palestine June 20, 2016
  • Virtual Unreality June 6, 2016
  • The Free-Speech Challenge May 23, 2016
  • Category-Free April 20, 2016
  • Staring At The Void April 13, 2016
  • Sherlock And Me April 3, 2016
  • Hard-Wired? Really? March 22, 2016
  • A Quantum Novel March 9, 2016
  • This Pre-Order Thing March 4, 2016
  • The Agnostic Celebration February 29, 2016
  • The First Two Pages February 23, 2016
  • Two Thumbs-Up For “Agnostic” February 10, 2016
Skip to toolbar
  • About WordPress
    • WordPress.org
    • Documentation
    • Support Forums
    • Feedback