Humanitarian Crisis? No, Gazans Are Bored!
Jonathan Tobin - 07.14.2010 - 11:03 AM
Contentions
Left-wing propagandists have spent the last several years successfully painting a picture of Gaza as a place where children starve and where all are in need. In reply, Israel and her defenders have attempted to point out that such tales are pure myth and that, in fact, there is no shortage of food or medicine in Gaza despite the limited blockade that has been imposed on the region since Hamas seized power there in a bloody coup. But there’s no need to listen to the Israelis on that point. As the New York Times makes clear in a 2,500-word dispatch published today about life in Gaza, the residents of the strip have no reticence about refuting the lies about a humanitarian crisis:
There are plenty of things to buy in Gaza; goods are brought over the border or smuggled through the tunnels with Egypt. That is not the problem. In fact, talk about food and people here get angry because it implies that their struggle is over subsistence rather than quality of life. The issue is not hunger. It is idleness, uncertainty and despair.
The picture painted in this story of life in Gaza is not pretty. But it makes it clear that what is really bothering Gazans is how boring life in Hamasistan can be. The Gazans chose to be ruled by an Islamist terrorist group dedicated to perpetuating the war against Israel and to the idea that Israel can someday be destroyed. But they think it is unfair to pay any price for the state of belligerency that exists with Israel — even if their basic needs are guaranteed by both the international community and the country they wish to destroy.
To their credit, authors Michael Slackman and Ethan Bronner make clear that the Palestinians’ biggest problem is the civil war being waged between the Hamas and Fatah organizations, as the latter’s decision to shut off electricity to Gaza to get even with Hamas illustrates.
As far as Israel, Palestinians are a bit confused. They desire its destruction, but at the same time, they think it is unfair that they should not be allowed to work there or that trade between Israel and Gaza should be halted because of the terrorist campaigns waged against the Jewish state by the groups Palestinians support. They want war and vote for Hamas but think it is unjust that they have lost income because of Israel’s measures of self-defense that were created because of Hamas terrorism. This confusion is well illustrated in the quote from Abdel Qader Ismail, 24, a former employee of the military intelligence service who now produces anti-Israel plays:
Our play does not mean we hate Israel. We believe in Israel’s right to exist, but not on the land of Palestine. In France or in Russia, but not in Palestine. This is our home.
It never seems to occur to Ismail that Israelis have no wish to live in France or Russia but instead want their own homeland, which they have demonstrated time and again that they are willing to share with the Palestinians if only they will finally accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in part of that small country.
The tales in this report of Gaza’s abused wives and hopeless idle men are sad. But the answer to their isolation is an end to their war against Israel. If Palestinians would reject Hamas and an ethos of war to the death against Israel and accept a two-state solution with a Jewish state, Gaza’s isolation would end, and the Palestinian people could then concentrate their energies on development rather than on war. Until the Palestinians’ sense of identity is bound up with something more than merely rejection of Israel, the pathetic life they lead in Gaza will continue. And though they — and their foreign supporters — may prefer to rant about Israel, the truth is, the blame for their unenviable fate is largely their own.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Maybe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdtveJVV3p4
Maybe
When Arlene Smith sings Maybe,
I move with the opera of her young voice,
and go back,
so far back,
to such young days,
to the first cut of longing
and the first glimpse of mystery.
How she starts:
her plea piercing silence,
distilling all to a single question,
a lover’s question
become a mystery.
A lover’s question,
a young girl’s reaching
out to her God.
Feel the depth of her young yearning,
she so wants her quest’s consummation,
like a devotee to her Christ,
who so wants salvation
in the arms of her savior.
Maybe it’s in his kiss,
in his caress,
in his loving of her,
the unfulfillment of her longing
a covenant broken.
And she takes me back,
so far back,
to such young days,
when green longing was a longing outward,
longing for a movement to me,
for a completeness
beyond what I could know,
longing finding an image of itself,
in a lover’s question,
in Arlene Smith’s Maybe.
Maybe
When Arlene Smith sings Maybe,
I move with the opera of her young voice,
and go back,
so far back,
to such young days,
to the first cut of longing
and the first glimpse of mystery.
How she starts:
her plea piercing silence,
distilling all to a single question,
a lover’s question
become a mystery.
A lover’s question,
a young girl’s reaching
out to her God.
Feel the depth of her young yearning,
she so wants her quest’s consummation,
like a devotee to her Christ,
who so wants salvation
in the arms of her savior.
Maybe it’s in his kiss,
in his caress,
in his loving of her,
the unfulfillment of her longing
a covenant broken.
And she takes me back,
so far back,
to such young days,
when green longing was a longing outward,
longing for a movement to me,
for a completeness
beyond what I could know,
longing finding an image of itself,
in a lover’s question,
in Arlene Smith’s Maybe.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Sarah Palin: Any Kind of Genius? Yes, One Kind of One
Media Maven
The strategic genius of Sarah Palin.
Michelle Cottle July 13, 2010 | 12:00 am
Like most great women of mystery, Sarah Palin is at once everywhere and nowhere. On any given evening, you might see the former Alaska governor-turned-conservative-icon on Fox News, chatting up like-minded travelers about the political buzz du jour.
Her byline pops up now and again in the opinion pages (supporting McCain, bashing enviros). She periodically hits the campaign trail with favored candidates. She is a prolific and passionate tweeter. Her Facebook page overflows with thoughts on global events both past (DDay, Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate speech) and present (Israel, border security, the need to drill, baby, drill); news of upcoming appearances (a rally at the Lincoln Memorial with Glenn Beck, a possible U.K. jaunt to meet Margaret Thatcher); the latest media atrocities committed against her; and her rolling endorsements of “commonsense conservative” candidates who tickle her fancy. And, any day now, filming is scheduled to start on the docu-travelogue series in which Palin will “bring the wonder and majesty of Alaska” to TLC viewers.
In the midst of this aggressive visibility, however, Palin keeps a tight grip on her time in the public eye. She rarely sits down with non-conservative interviewers and eschews mix-’em-up formats pitting her viewpoint against that of a more liberal counterpart. More fascinating, she is cautious about her interaction with fellow Republicans. Some of her Facebook endorsements this election cycle have come with telephone outreach to the chosen candidate or, for the fortunate few, even joint appearances. Others come suddenly, with no direct communication at all. More than one campaign learned of Palin’s endorsement only when some staffer or supporter stumbled across it online. There is, for instance, an entertaining video clip of Iowa gubernatorial hopeful Terry Branstad being handed news of his anointment during a June 3 campaign event. Blindsided, Branstad chuckles awkwardly and announces, with evident amazement, “I never expected this! Sarah Palin just endorsed us on Facebook.” (It’s hard to tell from audience members’ explosive laughter whether they are more delighted or appalled for Branstad, a moderate Republican whose endorsement by Palin drew howls of protest from her conservative followers.)
For Republican pols actively angling for Palin’s magic touch, simply attracting the attention of Palinland can prove challenging. There have been smirking media accounts of various Republican primary combatants scrambling for a Palin endorsement or appearance. Before he became infamous for serially exaggerating his résumé Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk suffered the indignity of having his make-her-love-me-please memo to Palin pal Fred Malek leaked to the media. Among Republican strategists, there has arisen grumbling about the difficulties in connecting with her people. “Nobody even knows how to get ahold of her. No one knows who to call,” says one. Some campaigns grew so desperate, they took to e-mailing Palin’s Facebook page. (Meanwhile, even among those considered close to Palin, there is some confusion as to who, besides Sarah and Todd, are in-the-know, central players in Palinland.) Grumps the strategist, “The entire Palin organization seems to be the woman, a massive Facebook page, and a ton of TV cameras.”
It’s an unconventional media strategy, to be sure, and not without its drawbacks— namely, bitter party operatives. (“This means that you can’t plan anything!” says the strategist.) Yet it’s hard to deny that Palin’s p.r. approach has not only succeeded but succeeded brilliantly. How? The most obvious element at work here is that Palin operates not as a politician but as a celebrity. “Most politicians can’t get on the cover of People,” sighs another GOP campaign veteran. “She’s on the cover almost every week.” The rules are different for celebrities: Palin’s megawattage enables her to command attention for every word and gesture, even as she largely stiff-arms The New York Times and “Meet the Press.” Similarly, candidates desperate for her endorsement are unlikely to (publicly) whine about whatever attention she dribbles their way, no matter how arbitrary or last-minute.
Of course, unlike other categories of the rich and famous, political celebs (especially populist firebrands) cannot risk being seen as remote or out of touch. But here’s where Palin’s embrace of new media saves the day. Her perky, quirky tweets and chatty Facebook items make her fans feel as though they have a direct line to her—despite the oft-voiced assumption that Palin (like so many pols) does not write most (if any) of her own Facebook posts. Such is the beauty of social networking: It allows a public figure to avoid direct interaction with the public while promoting the illusion of personal connection and involvement.
This model makes perfect sense for Palin if she plans to continue as a media personality. It’s unlikely she’d change her m.o., however, even if she decided to run for office again one day. It suits her core strengths—passion, pithiness, and a mind-boggling magnetism—and, let’s face it, it’s so much easier than the conventional model. Already, even as Palin eagerly collects scalps in the midterm races (a key step toward running for future office), she is skipping much of the messier, schmoozier work of building relationships with other campaigns (traditionally also a key step), opting instead to bless many from the safe, antiseptic distance of Facebook.
Palin would not be the first celebrity candidate to attempt an above-the-fray strategy. In the hunt for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, ex-senator and erstwhile actor Fred Thompson briefly entertained dreams of running a different kind of campaign, in which his fame and willingness to rely on the Web would spare him from trudging through all those snow banks in Iowa and New Hampshire. A key part of his plan was to speak directly to voters via blog posts and other new-media tools, rather than letting himself be filtered by all the usual gatekeepers. But Thompson, while plenty well-known and delightfully avuncular, lacked the fire in the belly to make it more than a couple of feet off the starting block.
Palin, by contrast, appears to still harbor plenty of ambition, or at least scores to settle. She also enjoys a media landscape far more “democratized” than what Thompson faced just a few years ago—who knows what Team Fred could have done with the Twitter mania that’s swept politics recently?—not to mention a star quality many Hollywood A-listers would kill for. With her new-media savvy and old-fashioned charisma, Palin has managed to merge Norma Desmond (“Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup”) with Greta Garbo (“I want to be alone”) to become one of the most irresistible spectacles on the public stage. Any political strategist who orchestrated such brilliant success via such unconventional means would instantly be dubbed the p.r. genius of our time. But, as far as we know, there is no crack communications team charting Palin’s course. At some point, even Palin haters may have to face the possibility that the p.r. genius is Sarah herself.
Me:
Palin is, Cottle has convinced me, an insubstantial media genius.
And she cannot simply be assimilated to celebrities, to whom she can be likened though, who garner tremendous attention while running on the emptiness of themselves. There is, certainly, more than that to her.
In the beginning, I defended Palin as someone with sufficient smarts to one day be a formidable political presence, even if one with whom I disagreed. That defence took it as an article of faith that the substance would fall into place for her, would be acquired by her, by whatever study or osmosis worked.
But then on seeing more and more of her--even at friendly settings, say the various Foxholes--her inarticulate banality, her unanalytic, know nothing, stream of consciousness warbling of talking points eroded any assumption of latent political competence I had held out for her.
Cottle's spritely little essay implicitly, as I read it, grants Palin’s lack of substance but makes the case for the public relations "there there", in her. So, unlike a few, of the overall few, on this thread, I think it's a mistake to ignore her or disdain and write off her importance. What I think needs to be done is to understand her importance for what it is--the relative triumph of, and danger of, hustling jive, even brilliant jive as judged by certain criteria--after all it's arguable she fought Biden to a draw in their debate—over depth and thoughtfulness.
It's not known whether she intends to run in 2012—I'd guess that Palin is just as much in the dark about that as the rest of us. As long as she remains out of the political running she'll stay for a while what she is--a rather spectacularly successful media phenomenon. But should she run, then the real issue, at least as I see it, will emerge: whether her forms of self presentation, the embodiment of brilliant public relations, special effects, so to speak, masking insubstantiality, ultimately can win over substance.
flynner:
I wouldn't make much of a draw in the vice-presidential debate. American TV political debates are like soccer, the most likely outcome is a nil-nil draw. If they were allowed to use their hands and throw the ball down-field (i.e. address each other directly), she would have been toast. Could you imagine how much fun it would have been for Team Obama to write the questions Palin had to answer? "Governor Palin, name the three branches of government."
I wouldn't make much of a draw in the vice-presidential debate. American TV political debates are like soccer, the most likely outcome is a nil-nil draw. If they were allowed to use their hands and throw the ball down-field (i.e. address each other directly), she would have been toast. Could you imagine how much fun it would have been for Team Obama to write the questions Palin had to answer? "Governor Palin, name the three branches of government."
tgatz85:
There is no strategic genius here. Palin is average in just about every way but her looks and her ideology. The magic of average is that people at or below your level can sympathize with you especially when they think they are doing it against a common enemy. Palin isn't a strategical genius, she just got lucky and has been running herself ragged to identify herself with the Tea Party, which will never make any real gains anyway. Even in the most extreme case (extreme to the point of being laughable) of Sarah being elected president with Tea Party support, we might as well pack up and leave right? In short, if Sarah Palin's "Genius" gets her anywhere beyond celebrity fad of the moment it'
There is no strategic genius here. Palin is average in just about every way but her looks and her ideology. The magic of average is that people at or below your level can sympathize with you especially when they think they are doing it against a common enemy. Palin isn't a strategical genius, she just got lucky and has been running herself ragged to identify herself with the Tea Party, which will never make any real gains anyway. Even in the most extreme case (extreme to the point of being laughable) of Sarah being elected president with Tea Party support, we might as well pack up and leave right? In short, if Sarah Palin's "Genius" gets her anywhere beyond celebrity fad of the moment it'll be a miracle so democrats might as well worry about the things that matter, and leave the GOP, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sarah Palin to self destruct under the ridiculousness of their unsupported claims.
The strategic genius of Sarah Palin.
Michelle Cottle July 13, 2010 | 12:00 am
Like most great women of mystery, Sarah Palin is at once everywhere and nowhere. On any given evening, you might see the former Alaska governor-turned-conservative-icon on Fox News, chatting up like-minded travelers about the political buzz du jour.
Her byline pops up now and again in the opinion pages (supporting McCain, bashing enviros). She periodically hits the campaign trail with favored candidates. She is a prolific and passionate tweeter. Her Facebook page overflows with thoughts on global events both past (DDay, Reagan’s Brandenburg Gate speech) and present (Israel, border security, the need to drill, baby, drill); news of upcoming appearances (a rally at the Lincoln Memorial with Glenn Beck, a possible U.K. jaunt to meet Margaret Thatcher); the latest media atrocities committed against her; and her rolling endorsements of “commonsense conservative” candidates who tickle her fancy. And, any day now, filming is scheduled to start on the docu-travelogue series in which Palin will “bring the wonder and majesty of Alaska” to TLC viewers.
In the midst of this aggressive visibility, however, Palin keeps a tight grip on her time in the public eye. She rarely sits down with non-conservative interviewers and eschews mix-’em-up formats pitting her viewpoint against that of a more liberal counterpart. More fascinating, she is cautious about her interaction with fellow Republicans. Some of her Facebook endorsements this election cycle have come with telephone outreach to the chosen candidate or, for the fortunate few, even joint appearances. Others come suddenly, with no direct communication at all. More than one campaign learned of Palin’s endorsement only when some staffer or supporter stumbled across it online. There is, for instance, an entertaining video clip of Iowa gubernatorial hopeful Terry Branstad being handed news of his anointment during a June 3 campaign event. Blindsided, Branstad chuckles awkwardly and announces, with evident amazement, “I never expected this! Sarah Palin just endorsed us on Facebook.” (It’s hard to tell from audience members’ explosive laughter whether they are more delighted or appalled for Branstad, a moderate Republican whose endorsement by Palin drew howls of protest from her conservative followers.)
For Republican pols actively angling for Palin’s magic touch, simply attracting the attention of Palinland can prove challenging. There have been smirking media accounts of various Republican primary combatants scrambling for a Palin endorsement or appearance. Before he became infamous for serially exaggerating his résumé Illinois Senate candidate Mark Kirk suffered the indignity of having his make-her-love-me-please memo to Palin pal Fred Malek leaked to the media. Among Republican strategists, there has arisen grumbling about the difficulties in connecting with her people. “Nobody even knows how to get ahold of her. No one knows who to call,” says one. Some campaigns grew so desperate, they took to e-mailing Palin’s Facebook page. (Meanwhile, even among those considered close to Palin, there is some confusion as to who, besides Sarah and Todd, are in-the-know, central players in Palinland.) Grumps the strategist, “The entire Palin organization seems to be the woman, a massive Facebook page, and a ton of TV cameras.”
It’s an unconventional media strategy, to be sure, and not without its drawbacks— namely, bitter party operatives. (“This means that you can’t plan anything!” says the strategist.) Yet it’s hard to deny that Palin’s p.r. approach has not only succeeded but succeeded brilliantly. How? The most obvious element at work here is that Palin operates not as a politician but as a celebrity. “Most politicians can’t get on the cover of People,” sighs another GOP campaign veteran. “She’s on the cover almost every week.” The rules are different for celebrities: Palin’s megawattage enables her to command attention for every word and gesture, even as she largely stiff-arms The New York Times and “Meet the Press.” Similarly, candidates desperate for her endorsement are unlikely to (publicly) whine about whatever attention she dribbles their way, no matter how arbitrary or last-minute.
Of course, unlike other categories of the rich and famous, political celebs (especially populist firebrands) cannot risk being seen as remote or out of touch. But here’s where Palin’s embrace of new media saves the day. Her perky, quirky tweets and chatty Facebook items make her fans feel as though they have a direct line to her—despite the oft-voiced assumption that Palin (like so many pols) does not write most (if any) of her own Facebook posts. Such is the beauty of social networking: It allows a public figure to avoid direct interaction with the public while promoting the illusion of personal connection and involvement.
This model makes perfect sense for Palin if she plans to continue as a media personality. It’s unlikely she’d change her m.o., however, even if she decided to run for office again one day. It suits her core strengths—passion, pithiness, and a mind-boggling magnetism—and, let’s face it, it’s so much easier than the conventional model. Already, even as Palin eagerly collects scalps in the midterm races (a key step toward running for future office), she is skipping much of the messier, schmoozier work of building relationships with other campaigns (traditionally also a key step), opting instead to bless many from the safe, antiseptic distance of Facebook.
Palin would not be the first celebrity candidate to attempt an above-the-fray strategy. In the hunt for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, ex-senator and erstwhile actor Fred Thompson briefly entertained dreams of running a different kind of campaign, in which his fame and willingness to rely on the Web would spare him from trudging through all those snow banks in Iowa and New Hampshire. A key part of his plan was to speak directly to voters via blog posts and other new-media tools, rather than letting himself be filtered by all the usual gatekeepers. But Thompson, while plenty well-known and delightfully avuncular, lacked the fire in the belly to make it more than a couple of feet off the starting block.
Palin, by contrast, appears to still harbor plenty of ambition, or at least scores to settle. She also enjoys a media landscape far more “democratized” than what Thompson faced just a few years ago—who knows what Team Fred could have done with the Twitter mania that’s swept politics recently?—not to mention a star quality many Hollywood A-listers would kill for. With her new-media savvy and old-fashioned charisma, Palin has managed to merge Norma Desmond (“Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my closeup”) with Greta Garbo (“I want to be alone”) to become one of the most irresistible spectacles on the public stage. Any political strategist who orchestrated such brilliant success via such unconventional means would instantly be dubbed the p.r. genius of our time. But, as far as we know, there is no crack communications team charting Palin’s course. At some point, even Palin haters may have to face the possibility that the p.r. genius is Sarah herself.
Me:
Palin is, Cottle has convinced me, an insubstantial media genius.
And she cannot simply be assimilated to celebrities, to whom she can be likened though, who garner tremendous attention while running on the emptiness of themselves. There is, certainly, more than that to her.
In the beginning, I defended Palin as someone with sufficient smarts to one day be a formidable political presence, even if one with whom I disagreed. That defence took it as an article of faith that the substance would fall into place for her, would be acquired by her, by whatever study or osmosis worked.
But then on seeing more and more of her--even at friendly settings, say the various Foxholes--her inarticulate banality, her unanalytic, know nothing, stream of consciousness warbling of talking points eroded any assumption of latent political competence I had held out for her.
Cottle's spritely little essay implicitly, as I read it, grants Palin’s lack of substance but makes the case for the public relations "there there", in her. So, unlike a few, of the overall few, on this thread, I think it's a mistake to ignore her or disdain and write off her importance. What I think needs to be done is to understand her importance for what it is--the relative triumph of, and danger of, hustling jive, even brilliant jive as judged by certain criteria--after all it's arguable she fought Biden to a draw in their debate—over depth and thoughtfulness.
It's not known whether she intends to run in 2012—I'd guess that Palin is just as much in the dark about that as the rest of us. As long as she remains out of the political running she'll stay for a while what she is--a rather spectacularly successful media phenomenon. But should she run, then the real issue, at least as I see it, will emerge: whether her forms of self presentation, the embodiment of brilliant public relations, special effects, so to speak, masking insubstantiality, ultimately can win over substance.
flynner:
I wouldn't make much of a draw in the vice-presidential debate. American TV political debates are like soccer, the most likely outcome is a nil-nil draw. If they were allowed to use their hands and throw the ball down-field (i.e. address each other directly), she would have been toast. Could you imagine how much fun it would have been for Team Obama to write the questions Palin had to answer? "Governor Palin, name the three branches of government."
I wouldn't make much of a draw in the vice-presidential debate. American TV political debates are like soccer, the most likely outcome is a nil-nil draw. If they were allowed to use their hands and throw the ball down-field (i.e. address each other directly), she would have been toast. Could you imagine how much fun it would have been for Team Obama to write the questions Palin had to answer? "Governor Palin, name the three branches of government."
tgatz85:
There is no strategic genius here. Palin is average in just about every way but her looks and her ideology. The magic of average is that people at or below your level can sympathize with you especially when they think they are doing it against a common enemy. Palin isn't a strategical genius, she just got lucky and has been running herself ragged to identify herself with the Tea Party, which will never make any real gains anyway. Even in the most extreme case (extreme to the point of being laughable) of Sarah being elected president with Tea Party support, we might as well pack up and leave right? In short, if Sarah Palin's "Genius" gets her anywhere beyond celebrity fad of the moment it'
There is no strategic genius here. Palin is average in just about every way but her looks and her ideology. The magic of average is that people at or below your level can sympathize with you especially when they think they are doing it against a common enemy. Palin isn't a strategical genius, she just got lucky and has been running herself ragged to identify herself with the Tea Party, which will never make any real gains anyway. Even in the most extreme case (extreme to the point of being laughable) of Sarah being elected president with Tea Party support, we might as well pack up and leave right? In short, if Sarah Palin's "Genius" gets her anywhere beyond celebrity fad of the moment it'll be a miracle so democrats might as well worry about the things that matter, and leave the GOP, the Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and Sarah Palin to self destruct under the ridiculousness of their unsupported claims.
Monday, July 12, 2010
A Moral Riddle: Obama v. Bush
Non-Believer
Andrew Bacevich
July 7, 2010 | 1:52 pm//TNR
As a candidate for president, George W. Bush famously promised to pursue a “humble” foreign policy. The events of 9/11—for Bush akin to a conversion experience—swept humility by the board. The 43rd president found his true calling: Providence was summoning him to purge the world of evil.
When it came to fulfilling this mission, Bush’s subsequent efforts yielded precious little. Recklessness compounded by profound incompetence became the hallmark of his administration. Yet of this there can be no doubt: Until the day he left office, Bush himself remained certain that his intentions were pure and the nation’s cause righteous. In particular, he believed, and believed deeply, in the Iraq war.
Bush’s Freedom Agenda ended in abject failure—no liberalizing tide has swept the Islamic world. The promised Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda never materialized. Implementing the heinous Bush Doctrine of preventive war in Iraq yielded an insurgency that sent millions fleeing to squalid refugee camps. As a direct result, thousands of American soldiers were killed and many thousands more maimed or otherwise deeply scarred.
Despite all of this and more, George W. Bush never wavered. He remained resolute, his conscience clear. He knew he was doing God’s work. He was—and no doubt remains today—a true believer. The 43d president was a well-intentioned fool, who inflicted grievous harm on his country. Yet when Bush stands before his Maker (or the bar of History), he will say without fear of contradiction: “I did what I thought was right.”
Barack Obama is anything but a fool. Yet when called upon to account for his presidency, honesty will prevent him from making a comparable claim. “The problems I inherited were difficult ones,” he will say. “None of the choices were good ones. Things were complicated.”
The Afghanistan war forms part of that complicated inheritance where good choices are hard to come by. Much as Iraq was Bush’s war, Afghanistan has become Obama’s war. Yet the president clearly wants nothing more than to rid himself of his war. Obama has prolonged and escalated a conflict in which he himself manifestly does not believe. When after months of deliberation (or delay) he unveiled his Afghan “surge” in December 2009, the presidential trumpet blew charge and recall simultaneously. Even as Obama ordered more troops into combat, he announced their planned withdrawal “because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own.”
The Americans who elected Obama president share that view. Yet the expectations of change that vaulted him to the presidency went well beyond the issue of priorities. Obama’s supporters were counting on him to bring to the White House an enlightened moral sensibility: He would govern differently not only because he was smarter than his predecessor but because he responded to a different—and truer—inner compass.
Events have demolished such expectations. Today, when they look at Washington, Americans see a cool, dispassionate, calculating president whose administration lacks a moral core. For prosecution exhibit number one, we need look no further than the meandering course of Obama’s war, its casualties and costs mounting without discernible purpose.
Obama doesn’t want to be in Afghanistan any more than Benjamin Netanyahu wants to be in the West Bank. Yet like the Israeli prime minister, the president lacks the guts to get out. It’s all so complicated. There are risks involved. Things might go wrong. There’s an election to think about.
So the war continues. Sustaining some artfully updated version of the status quo becomes the easier (or more expedient) course. Thus does a would-be messiah promising salvation and renewal succumb to the imperatives of “politics”—with young soldiers and their families left to bear the consequences.
The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?
Me:
I'd come at Bacevich's post a different way. I suggest, even if just a thought experiment, granting him his premises, which are at least arguable, and then grant him his question:
...The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?...
Granting him his premises and his question, I'd let my answer be guided by my understanding of the facts of both wars.
On that basis, I know who I think would be more deserving of my contempt: Obama, by a country mile.
Andrew Bacevich
July 7, 2010 | 1:52 pm//TNR
As a candidate for president, George W. Bush famously promised to pursue a “humble” foreign policy. The events of 9/11—for Bush akin to a conversion experience—swept humility by the board. The 43rd president found his true calling: Providence was summoning him to purge the world of evil.
When it came to fulfilling this mission, Bush’s subsequent efforts yielded precious little. Recklessness compounded by profound incompetence became the hallmark of his administration. Yet of this there can be no doubt: Until the day he left office, Bush himself remained certain that his intentions were pure and the nation’s cause righteous. In particular, he believed, and believed deeply, in the Iraq war.
Bush’s Freedom Agenda ended in abject failure—no liberalizing tide has swept the Islamic world. The promised Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda never materialized. Implementing the heinous Bush Doctrine of preventive war in Iraq yielded an insurgency that sent millions fleeing to squalid refugee camps. As a direct result, thousands of American soldiers were killed and many thousands more maimed or otherwise deeply scarred.
Despite all of this and more, George W. Bush never wavered. He remained resolute, his conscience clear. He knew he was doing God’s work. He was—and no doubt remains today—a true believer. The 43d president was a well-intentioned fool, who inflicted grievous harm on his country. Yet when Bush stands before his Maker (or the bar of History), he will say without fear of contradiction: “I did what I thought was right.”
Barack Obama is anything but a fool. Yet when called upon to account for his presidency, honesty will prevent him from making a comparable claim. “The problems I inherited were difficult ones,” he will say. “None of the choices were good ones. Things were complicated.”
The Afghanistan war forms part of that complicated inheritance where good choices are hard to come by. Much as Iraq was Bush’s war, Afghanistan has become Obama’s war. Yet the president clearly wants nothing more than to rid himself of his war. Obama has prolonged and escalated a conflict in which he himself manifestly does not believe. When after months of deliberation (or delay) he unveiled his Afghan “surge” in December 2009, the presidential trumpet blew charge and recall simultaneously. Even as Obama ordered more troops into combat, he announced their planned withdrawal “because the nation that I'm most interested in building is our own.”
The Americans who elected Obama president share that view. Yet the expectations of change that vaulted him to the presidency went well beyond the issue of priorities. Obama’s supporters were counting on him to bring to the White House an enlightened moral sensibility: He would govern differently not only because he was smarter than his predecessor but because he responded to a different—and truer—inner compass.
Events have demolished such expectations. Today, when they look at Washington, Americans see a cool, dispassionate, calculating president whose administration lacks a moral core. For prosecution exhibit number one, we need look no further than the meandering course of Obama’s war, its casualties and costs mounting without discernible purpose.
Obama doesn’t want to be in Afghanistan any more than Benjamin Netanyahu wants to be in the West Bank. Yet like the Israeli prime minister, the president lacks the guts to get out. It’s all so complicated. There are risks involved. Things might go wrong. There’s an election to think about.
So the war continues. Sustaining some artfully updated version of the status quo becomes the easier (or more expedient) course. Thus does a would-be messiah promising salvation and renewal succumb to the imperatives of “politics”—with young soldiers and their families left to bear the consequences.
The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?
Me:
I'd come at Bacevich's post a different way. I suggest, even if just a thought experiment, granting him his premises, which are at least arguable, and then grant him his question:
...The question demands to be asked: Who is more deserving of contempt? The commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause, however misguided, in which he sincerely believes? Or the commander-in-chief who sends young Americans to die for a cause in which he manifestly does not believe and yet refuses to forsake?...
Granting him his premises and his question, I'd let my answer be guided by my understanding of the facts of both wars.
On that basis, I know who I think would be more deserving of my contempt: Obama, by a country mile.
The Mystery of Anti Semitism Revealed: Not and I Should Live So Long
A Hatred That Resists Exorcism
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: July 5, 2010
Is there anything left to be said about anti-Semitism? By now surely the outline is clear: how hatred of Jews grew out of early Christianity’s attempts to supplant Judaism; how the demonization of Jews in the Middle Ages turned violent; how the hatred was given its name by a 19th-century German journalist; and how it reached cataclysmic fulfillment in the Holocaust.
There are other landmarks: the expulsion of the Jews from England, Spain and Portugal; intermittent massacres in Muslim lands; the construction of European ghettos; the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe; the Dreyfus Affair; the Nazification of Europe; Stalin’s purges and show trials.
And then, of course, there are the triumphs that act as a kind of remonstrance: the Enlightenment success of Jews in secular European societies, the myriad opportunities in the United States, thebirth of modern Hebrew and, after a half-century of settlement, land purchases and institution building, the creation of Israel, whose founding principles incorporated both democratic and Judaic ideals.
Why then during the last six months have new tomes been published devoted to the hatred of Jews? “A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad” (Random House) weighs in at about 1,200 pages, a compendium of a career’s research by Robert S. Wistrich, professor of modern Jewish history at Hebrew University in Israel. And more than 800 pages are devoted just to British anti-Semitic history in “Trials of the Diaspora” (Oxford) by Anthony Julius, a learned British lawyer whose clients included Diana, Princess of Wales, and whose book on T.S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism was widely praised for its supple understanding.
Surely this attention is a bit overwrought? Aren’t we in an age that must be “post” all such sentiments — postmodern, post-Auschwitz and post-anti-Semitic? Haven’t many anti-Semitic doctrines (or their consequences) been largely overturned? How many people today would advocate ghettos or extermination? Who still believes that Jews bake Christian children’s blood into matzo? Many countries have forbidden hate speech; hasn’t that enforced a decorous social tact? And while it is difficult to ignore the vulgar hatreds expressed by Muslim protestors or in the newspapers of the Arab world or even among Westerners, aren’t those just frustrated expressions of justifiable political grievances?
Besides, anti-Semitism, we now understand, is a form of racism. Like all forms of group hatred, it is subject to reform and to the modern cure of sensitivity training. We learn about such hatreds in order to exorcise them. It seems every museum exhibition, textbook and children’s story about racism provides a similar moral prescription: tolerance.
So isn’t there something a little tasteless about bringing up anti-Semitism all the time, let alone drumming its theme page after page? Sure, racism may still flourish, but given the modern success of Jews, hasn’t this particular form of it become an anomaly? Or worse, hasn’t the term become a manipulative attempt to deflect judgment? As is often pointed out, criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic any more than criticism of any particular Jew is.
But spend some time submerged in these books — by no means a pleasant or an easy task — and these notions recede into irrelevance. Mr. Wistrich’s volume presents itself as an encyclopedic history, and is so full of details and citations, it overwhelms. We hear from a 17th-century Viennese preacher (“After Satan Christians have no greater enemies than the Jews”), Karl Marx (“What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money”) and the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah (“If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew”).
Mr. Wistrich offers less a history, though, than a contemporary indictment with historical background. This makes his book difficult to read. Its approach is one of cumulative examples culminating in jihadists and their apologists. Its rosterlike style can become tedious but the examples are powerfully dispiriting.
“Trials of the Diaspora” has a similar effect, though Mr. Julius is more focused and analytical, dissecting types of enmity, the nature of anti-Semitic myth and its influence on the greatest examples of English literature. From his analysis, we begin to see too just how different anti-Semitism is from other forms of racism.
Racism attaches negative attributes onto people bearing a particular biological heritage. Such characteristics are passed on; they are inherited. The hatred is focused; the perceived threat can be excised. In a way, racism is a materialist or physical passion: the problem and the solution are concrete.
While anti-Semitism has tapped into racial hatreds in modern times, Mr. Julius and Mr. Wistrich highlight its traditional reliance on conspiracy: the hidden plot. Anti-Semitism isn’t just a matter of asserting unpleasant or reprehensible attributes. It sees the Jew as an antinomian threat, overturning all ethical laws. The Jew works in secret, creating invisible alliances, pulling elaborate strings, undermining society’s foundations. This is why theProtocols of the Elders of Zion has found such a fertile international ground. That 19th-century document purports to be the secret minutes of such a plotting ensemble of Jews. It is the counterfeit confirmation of a long-held belief.
Anti-Semitism is a metaphysical passion, not a materialist one. It doesn’t even require aJewish presence.
One reason anti-Semites have been so obsessed with the issue of finance in the modern world is that money is the circulatory system of capitalist society. It is mysterious, manipulable: the Jew’s perfect instrument. The Jew, first seen as a theological spoiler, becomes a metaphysical and monetary spoiler. The medieval image of the Jew was related to the vampire, Mr. Julius shows; the modern anti-Semitic vision sees the Jew as a guzzler of a society’s lifeblood.
This amplifies virulence as well: the Jew, for the anti-Semite, is not just a danger, but the greatest danger exerting the greatest powers. In current paradoxical parlance, the Jew is, in essence, a Nazi. The Jew does not just devour a Christian child’s blood, but the blood of all innocent children, and more completely, the blood of all innocents.
Is any evidence needed? Appearances are irrelevant; argument is illusion. What use is visible fact when the power of the Jew is in the web woven below the surface? Jewish autonomy is itself evidence of Jewish threat. Moreover, confrontation requires courage. Anti-Semitism never sees itself as a hatred; it views itself as a revelation. An attack on the Jew is never offensive; it is always defensive. This is precisely how the Nazis portrayed it. It is precisely how Islamist ideology does as well, evident, for example, in the principles and founding documents of Hamas and Hezbollah.
In a recent book, “Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World” (Yale), the historian Jeffrey Herf shows how Nazi propagandists literally taught Arab audiences the language of anti-Semitism through popular radio programs in Arabic. Nazi ideology bears many resemblances to that of contemporary Islamic extremism, some the consequence of careful teaching. That teaching is still present in the Arab world, amplified by political leaders and imams, often annexed to denigrations of Jews taken from Islamic sources
The result, Mr. Julius and Mr. Wistrich recognize, has been one of the most historically noxious forms of anti-Semitic mythology, which has also fed into political debates in the West and cannot be overlooked or easily dismissed. It is easy enough to discern when responsible criticisms of Israel veer into something reprehensible: the structure of anti-Semitic belief is not subtle. There is a wildly exaggerated scale of condemnation, in which extremes of contempt confront a country caricatured as the world’s worst enemy of peace; such attacks (and the use of Nazi analogies) are beyond evidence and beyond pragmatic political debate or protest. Israel’s autonomy — it’s very presence — is the problem. Mr. Julius writes, “Israel is the only state in the world whose legitimacy is widely denied and whose destruction is publicly advocated and threatened; Israelis are the only citizens of a state whose indiscriminate murder is widely considered justifiable.”
But even if we leave aside such manifestations, it is clear enough that anti-Semitism requires much deeper understanding than it usually gets. Last week, for example, Hannah Rosenthal, the United States’ special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, spoke in Kazakhstan, asserting the similarity of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
This is not an uncommon assertion (and cases of unwarranted discrimination are always similar) but Islamophobia is a concept developed within the last two decades by those who wish to elevate Islam’s reputation in the West; anti-Semitism was a concept eagerly embraced and expanded by haters of Jews. One was constructed by a group’s supporters, the other by a group’s enemies.
Moreover, much of what is characterized as Islamophobia today arises out of taking seriously the impassioned claims of doctrinal allegiance made by Islamic terrorist groups and their supporters. Anti-Semitism, though, has nothing to do with any claims at all.
Phil:
...Rothstein is suggestive, but ultimately provides no explanations...
Me:
Phil...Fwiiw, to be a hedgehog about it, I've always thought that what distiinguishes anti Semitism from all the other antis in its virulence, persistence, depth and ubiquity, is the charge of deicide. (Plus to commit deicide, the son of God killers needed something of the almost supernaturally powerful about themselves.)Then, to be a fox about it, I'd look to all the accretions over history to that charge, from all varieties of circumstances--including literary myth making, as Anthonly Julius centrally argues--with the latest being, of course, the establishment of Israel.
That's as synoptic as I can get.
Phil:
I like the pun on synoptic, but I'm less than sure deicide is the answer, rather than an incident, although I think it likely plays a significant role. But it invites the question, why not the Romans. And it's pecularly Christian and doresn't explain Islamic ( or other?) anti-semitism. I suspect part of the Christian antagonism may have come from the fact that Christianity's major religious progenitor and early competitor was Judaism. I wonder, for example, who the early Christians primarily looked to as converts. In short, I think , without having done any real research or analysis, that there's a deeper, more complex series of possible explanations that would have to factor in historical and commercial developments that fe(e)d the conspiracy and other theories that have become a part of historical and modern anti-semitism. One of the reasons I thought the column I sent provocative is that it hints at a number of these.
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: July 5, 2010
Is there anything left to be said about anti-Semitism? By now surely the outline is clear: how hatred of Jews grew out of early Christianity’s attempts to supplant Judaism; how the demonization of Jews in the Middle Ages turned violent; how the hatred was given its name by a 19th-century German journalist; and how it reached cataclysmic fulfillment in the Holocaust.
There are other landmarks: the expulsion of the Jews from England, Spain and Portugal; intermittent massacres in Muslim lands; the construction of European ghettos; the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe; the Dreyfus Affair; the Nazification of Europe; Stalin’s purges and show trials.
And then, of course, there are the triumphs that act as a kind of remonstrance: the Enlightenment success of Jews in secular European societies, the myriad opportunities in the United States, thebirth of modern Hebrew and, after a half-century of settlement, land purchases and institution building, the creation of Israel, whose founding principles incorporated both democratic and Judaic ideals.
Why then during the last six months have new tomes been published devoted to the hatred of Jews? “A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad” (Random House) weighs in at about 1,200 pages, a compendium of a career’s research by Robert S. Wistrich, professor of modern Jewish history at Hebrew University in Israel. And more than 800 pages are devoted just to British anti-Semitic history in “Trials of the Diaspora” (Oxford) by Anthony Julius, a learned British lawyer whose clients included Diana, Princess of Wales, and whose book on T.S. Eliot’s anti-Semitism was widely praised for its supple understanding.
Surely this attention is a bit overwrought? Aren’t we in an age that must be “post” all such sentiments — postmodern, post-Auschwitz and post-anti-Semitic? Haven’t many anti-Semitic doctrines (or their consequences) been largely overturned? How many people today would advocate ghettos or extermination? Who still believes that Jews bake Christian children’s blood into matzo? Many countries have forbidden hate speech; hasn’t that enforced a decorous social tact? And while it is difficult to ignore the vulgar hatreds expressed by Muslim protestors or in the newspapers of the Arab world or even among Westerners, aren’t those just frustrated expressions of justifiable political grievances?
Besides, anti-Semitism, we now understand, is a form of racism. Like all forms of group hatred, it is subject to reform and to the modern cure of sensitivity training. We learn about such hatreds in order to exorcise them. It seems every museum exhibition, textbook and children’s story about racism provides a similar moral prescription: tolerance.
So isn’t there something a little tasteless about bringing up anti-Semitism all the time, let alone drumming its theme page after page? Sure, racism may still flourish, but given the modern success of Jews, hasn’t this particular form of it become an anomaly? Or worse, hasn’t the term become a manipulative attempt to deflect judgment? As is often pointed out, criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic any more than criticism of any particular Jew is.
But spend some time submerged in these books — by no means a pleasant or an easy task — and these notions recede into irrelevance. Mr. Wistrich’s volume presents itself as an encyclopedic history, and is so full of details and citations, it overwhelms. We hear from a 17th-century Viennese preacher (“After Satan Christians have no greater enemies than the Jews”), Karl Marx (“What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money”) and the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah (“If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew”).
Mr. Wistrich offers less a history, though, than a contemporary indictment with historical background. This makes his book difficult to read. Its approach is one of cumulative examples culminating in jihadists and their apologists. Its rosterlike style can become tedious but the examples are powerfully dispiriting.
“Trials of the Diaspora” has a similar effect, though Mr. Julius is more focused and analytical, dissecting types of enmity, the nature of anti-Semitic myth and its influence on the greatest examples of English literature. From his analysis, we begin to see too just how different anti-Semitism is from other forms of racism.
Racism attaches negative attributes onto people bearing a particular biological heritage. Such characteristics are passed on; they are inherited. The hatred is focused; the perceived threat can be excised. In a way, racism is a materialist or physical passion: the problem and the solution are concrete.
While anti-Semitism has tapped into racial hatreds in modern times, Mr. Julius and Mr. Wistrich highlight its traditional reliance on conspiracy: the hidden plot. Anti-Semitism isn’t just a matter of asserting unpleasant or reprehensible attributes. It sees the Jew as an antinomian threat, overturning all ethical laws. The Jew works in secret, creating invisible alliances, pulling elaborate strings, undermining society’s foundations. This is why theProtocols of the Elders of Zion has found such a fertile international ground. That 19th-century document purports to be the secret minutes of such a plotting ensemble of Jews. It is the counterfeit confirmation of a long-held belief.
Anti-Semitism is a metaphysical passion, not a materialist one. It doesn’t even require aJewish presence.
One reason anti-Semites have been so obsessed with the issue of finance in the modern world is that money is the circulatory system of capitalist society. It is mysterious, manipulable: the Jew’s perfect instrument. The Jew, first seen as a theological spoiler, becomes a metaphysical and monetary spoiler. The medieval image of the Jew was related to the vampire, Mr. Julius shows; the modern anti-Semitic vision sees the Jew as a guzzler of a society’s lifeblood.
This amplifies virulence as well: the Jew, for the anti-Semite, is not just a danger, but the greatest danger exerting the greatest powers. In current paradoxical parlance, the Jew is, in essence, a Nazi. The Jew does not just devour a Christian child’s blood, but the blood of all innocent children, and more completely, the blood of all innocents.
Is any evidence needed? Appearances are irrelevant; argument is illusion. What use is visible fact when the power of the Jew is in the web woven below the surface? Jewish autonomy is itself evidence of Jewish threat. Moreover, confrontation requires courage. Anti-Semitism never sees itself as a hatred; it views itself as a revelation. An attack on the Jew is never offensive; it is always defensive. This is precisely how the Nazis portrayed it. It is precisely how Islamist ideology does as well, evident, for example, in the principles and founding documents of Hamas and Hezbollah.
In a recent book, “Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World” (Yale), the historian Jeffrey Herf shows how Nazi propagandists literally taught Arab audiences the language of anti-Semitism through popular radio programs in Arabic. Nazi ideology bears many resemblances to that of contemporary Islamic extremism, some the consequence of careful teaching. That teaching is still present in the Arab world, amplified by political leaders and imams, often annexed to denigrations of Jews taken from Islamic sources
The result, Mr. Julius and Mr. Wistrich recognize, has been one of the most historically noxious forms of anti-Semitic mythology, which has also fed into political debates in the West and cannot be overlooked or easily dismissed. It is easy enough to discern when responsible criticisms of Israel veer into something reprehensible: the structure of anti-Semitic belief is not subtle. There is a wildly exaggerated scale of condemnation, in which extremes of contempt confront a country caricatured as the world’s worst enemy of peace; such attacks (and the use of Nazi analogies) are beyond evidence and beyond pragmatic political debate or protest. Israel’s autonomy — it’s very presence — is the problem. Mr. Julius writes, “Israel is the only state in the world whose legitimacy is widely denied and whose destruction is publicly advocated and threatened; Israelis are the only citizens of a state whose indiscriminate murder is widely considered justifiable.”
But even if we leave aside such manifestations, it is clear enough that anti-Semitism requires much deeper understanding than it usually gets. Last week, for example, Hannah Rosenthal, the United States’ special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, spoke in Kazakhstan, asserting the similarity of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
This is not an uncommon assertion (and cases of unwarranted discrimination are always similar) but Islamophobia is a concept developed within the last two decades by those who wish to elevate Islam’s reputation in the West; anti-Semitism was a concept eagerly embraced and expanded by haters of Jews. One was constructed by a group’s supporters, the other by a group’s enemies.
Moreover, much of what is characterized as Islamophobia today arises out of taking seriously the impassioned claims of doctrinal allegiance made by Islamic terrorist groups and their supporters. Anti-Semitism, though, has nothing to do with any claims at all.
Phil:
...Rothstein is suggestive, but ultimately provides no explanations...
Me:
Phil...Fwiiw, to be a hedgehog about it, I've always thought that what distiinguishes anti Semitism from all the other antis in its virulence, persistence, depth and ubiquity, is the charge of deicide. (Plus to commit deicide, the son of God killers needed something of the almost supernaturally powerful about themselves.)Then, to be a fox about it, I'd look to all the accretions over history to that charge, from all varieties of circumstances--including literary myth making, as Anthonly Julius centrally argues--with the latest being, of course, the establishment of Israel.
That's as synoptic as I can get.
Phil:
I like the pun on synoptic, but I'm less than sure deicide is the answer, rather than an incident, although I think it likely plays a significant role. But it invites the question, why not the Romans. And it's pecularly Christian and doresn't explain Islamic ( or other?) anti-semitism. I suspect part of the Christian antagonism may have come from the fact that Christianity's major religious progenitor and early competitor was Judaism. I wonder, for example, who the early Christians primarily looked to as converts. In short, I think , without having done any real research or analysis, that there's a deeper, more complex series of possible explanations that would have to factor in historical and commercial developments that fe(e)d the conspiracy and other theories that have become a part of historical and modern anti-semitism. One of the reasons I thought the column I sent provocative is that it hints at a number of these.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Berman's Concise Reprise
By PAUL BERMAN
W.S.J.
July 10, 2010
In our present Age of the Zipped Lip, you are supposed to avoid making any of the following inconvenient observations about the history and doctrines of the Islamist movement:
You are not supposed to observe that Islamism is a modern, instead of an ancient, political tendency, which arose in a spirit of fraternal harmony with the fascists of Europe in the 1930s and '40s.
You are not supposed to point out that Nazi inspirations have visibly taken root among present-day Islamists, notably in regard to the demonic nature of Jewish conspiracies and the virtues of genocide.
And you are not supposed to mention that, by inducing a variety of journalists and intellectuals to maintain a discreet and respectful silence on these awkward matters, the Islamist preachers and ideologues have succeeded in imposing on the rest of us their own categories of analysis.
Or so I have argued in my recent book, "The Flight of the Intellectuals." But am I right? I glance with pleasure at some harsh reviews, convinced that here, in the worst of them, is my best confirmation.
No one disputes that the Nazis collaborated with several Islamist leaders. Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, orated over Radio Berlin to the Middle East. The mufti's strongest supporter in the region was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna, too, spoke well of Hitler. But there is no consensus on how to interpret those old alliances and their legacy today.
Tariq Ramadan, the Islamic philosopher at Oxford, is Banna's grandson, and he argues that his grandfather was an upstanding democrat. In Mr. Ramadan's interpretation, everything the Islamists did in the past ought to be viewed sympathetically in, as Mr. Ramadan says, "context"—as logical expressions of anticolonial geopolitics, and nothing more. Reviews in Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker—the principal critics of my book—have just now spun variations on Mr. Ramadan's interpretation.
The piece in Foreign Affairs insists that, to the mufti of Jerusalem, Hitler was merely a "convenient ally," and it is "ludicrous" to imagine a deeper sort of alliance. Those in the National Interest and the New Yorker add that, in the New Yorker's phrase, "unlikely alliances" with Nazis were common among anticolonialists.
The articles point to some of Gandhi's comrades, and to a faction of the Irish Republican Army, and even to a lone dimwitted Zionist militant back in 1940, who believed for a moment that Hitler could be an ally against the British. But these various efforts to minimize the significance of the Nazi-Islamist alliance ignore a mountain of documentary evidence, some of it discovered last year in the State Department archives by historian Jeffrey Herf, revealing links that are genuinely profound.
"Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion," said the mufti of Jerusalem on Radio Berlin in 1944. And the mufti's rhetoric goes on echoing today in major Islamist manifestos such as the Hamas charter and in the popular television oratory of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a revered scholar in the eyes of Tariq Ramadan: "Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one." Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker have expended nearly 12,000 words in criticizing "Flight of the Intellectuals." And yet, though the book hinges on a series of such genocidal quotations, not one of those journals has found sufficient space to reproduce even a single phrase.
Why not? It is because a few Hitlerian quotations from Islamist leaders would make everything else in those magazine essays look ridiculous—the argument in the Foreign Affairs review, for instance, that Qaradawi ought to be viewed as a crowd-pleasing champion of "centrism," and Hamas merits praise as a "moderate" movement and a "firewall against radicalization."
The New Yorker is the only one of these magazines to reflect even briefly on anti-Semitism. But it does so by glancing away from my own book and, instead, chastising Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch champion of liberal values. In the New Yorker's estimation, Hirsi Ali's admiration of the philosopher Voltaire displays an ignorant failure on her part to recognize that, hundreds of years ago, even the greatest of liberals thought poorly of the Jews. And Ms. Hirsi Ali's denunciations of women's oppression in the Muslim immigrant districts of present-day London displays a failure to recognize that, long ago, immigrant Jews suffered oppression in those same districts.
But this reeks of bad faith. Ms. Hirsi Ali is one of the world's most eloquent enemies of the Islamist movement. She makes a point of singling out Islamist anti-Semitism. And the anti-Semites have singled her out in return.
Six years ago, an Islamist fanatic murdered Ms. Hirsi Ali's filmmaking colleague, Theo van Gogh, and left behind a death threat, pinned with a dagger to the dead man's torso, denouncing Ms. Hirsi Ali as an agent of Jewish conspirators. And yet, the New Yorker, in the course of an essay presenting various excuses for the Islamist-Nazi alliance of yesteryear, has the gall to explain that, if anyone needs a lecture on the history of anti-Semitism, it's Ms. Hirsi Ali!
Such is the temper of our moment. Some of the intellectuals are indisputably in flight—eager to sneer at outspoken liberals from Muslim backgrounds, and reluctant to speak the truth about the Islamist reality
W.S.J.
July 10, 2010
In our present Age of the Zipped Lip, you are supposed to avoid making any of the following inconvenient observations about the history and doctrines of the Islamist movement:
You are not supposed to observe that Islamism is a modern, instead of an ancient, political tendency, which arose in a spirit of fraternal harmony with the fascists of Europe in the 1930s and '40s.
You are not supposed to point out that Nazi inspirations have visibly taken root among present-day Islamists, notably in regard to the demonic nature of Jewish conspiracies and the virtues of genocide.
And you are not supposed to mention that, by inducing a variety of journalists and intellectuals to maintain a discreet and respectful silence on these awkward matters, the Islamist preachers and ideologues have succeeded in imposing on the rest of us their own categories of analysis.
Or so I have argued in my recent book, "The Flight of the Intellectuals." But am I right? I glance with pleasure at some harsh reviews, convinced that here, in the worst of them, is my best confirmation.
No one disputes that the Nazis collaborated with several Islamist leaders. Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, orated over Radio Berlin to the Middle East. The mufti's strongest supporter in the region was Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Banna, too, spoke well of Hitler. But there is no consensus on how to interpret those old alliances and their legacy today.
Tariq Ramadan, the Islamic philosopher at Oxford, is Banna's grandson, and he argues that his grandfather was an upstanding democrat. In Mr. Ramadan's interpretation, everything the Islamists did in the past ought to be viewed sympathetically in, as Mr. Ramadan says, "context"—as logical expressions of anticolonial geopolitics, and nothing more. Reviews in Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker—the principal critics of my book—have just now spun variations on Mr. Ramadan's interpretation.
The piece in Foreign Affairs insists that, to the mufti of Jerusalem, Hitler was merely a "convenient ally," and it is "ludicrous" to imagine a deeper sort of alliance. Those in the National Interest and the New Yorker add that, in the New Yorker's phrase, "unlikely alliances" with Nazis were common among anticolonialists.
The articles point to some of Gandhi's comrades, and to a faction of the Irish Republican Army, and even to a lone dimwitted Zionist militant back in 1940, who believed for a moment that Hitler could be an ally against the British. But these various efforts to minimize the significance of the Nazi-Islamist alliance ignore a mountain of documentary evidence, some of it discovered last year in the State Department archives by historian Jeffrey Herf, revealing links that are genuinely profound.
"Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion," said the mufti of Jerusalem on Radio Berlin in 1944. And the mufti's rhetoric goes on echoing today in major Islamist manifestos such as the Hamas charter and in the popular television oratory of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a revered scholar in the eyes of Tariq Ramadan: "Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them, down to the very last one." Foreign Affairs, the National Interest and the New Yorker have expended nearly 12,000 words in criticizing "Flight of the Intellectuals." And yet, though the book hinges on a series of such genocidal quotations, not one of those journals has found sufficient space to reproduce even a single phrase.
Why not? It is because a few Hitlerian quotations from Islamist leaders would make everything else in those magazine essays look ridiculous—the argument in the Foreign Affairs review, for instance, that Qaradawi ought to be viewed as a crowd-pleasing champion of "centrism," and Hamas merits praise as a "moderate" movement and a "firewall against radicalization."
The New Yorker is the only one of these magazines to reflect even briefly on anti-Semitism. But it does so by glancing away from my own book and, instead, chastising Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch champion of liberal values. In the New Yorker's estimation, Hirsi Ali's admiration of the philosopher Voltaire displays an ignorant failure on her part to recognize that, hundreds of years ago, even the greatest of liberals thought poorly of the Jews. And Ms. Hirsi Ali's denunciations of women's oppression in the Muslim immigrant districts of present-day London displays a failure to recognize that, long ago, immigrant Jews suffered oppression in those same districts.
But this reeks of bad faith. Ms. Hirsi Ali is one of the world's most eloquent enemies of the Islamist movement. She makes a point of singling out Islamist anti-Semitism. And the anti-Semites have singled her out in return.
Six years ago, an Islamist fanatic murdered Ms. Hirsi Ali's filmmaking colleague, Theo van Gogh, and left behind a death threat, pinned with a dagger to the dead man's torso, denouncing Ms. Hirsi Ali as an agent of Jewish conspirators. And yet, the New Yorker, in the course of an essay presenting various excuses for the Islamist-Nazi alliance of yesteryear, has the gall to explain that, if anyone needs a lecture on the history of anti-Semitism, it's Ms. Hirsi Ali!
Such is the temper of our moment. Some of the intellectuals are indisputably in flight—eager to sneer at outspoken liberals from Muslim backgrounds, and reluctant to speak the truth about the Islamist reality
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Afghani Contrarian
fighting words
One More Mission
Gen. Stanley McChrystal should oversee the U.S. drawdown from Iraq.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, July 5, 2010, at 2:11 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Among the many bad impressions currently being given by the United States is the perception that we only have two real generals. And it seems to have taken a while for us to realize that this number has just been halved. Until last month, we only had two generals who could claim to have taken on al-Qaida and defeated it both militarily and politically. And this was when Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal were working in tandem in Iraq.
Afghanistan has proved much more resistant to their skills, whether exerted separately or together, while for making some crass comments about President Barack Obama's "too many cooks" policy, Gen. McChrystal has now disqualified himself from taking any further part in that struggle. But did we quite appreciate, as he was relieved of command in Kabul, that this meant that he was also removed from the struggle altogether? The second-order squabble—about how many of his stars he could retain in retirement—obscured the fact that we have now lost the services of a really serious warrior.
There's something irritating and alarming about his ending up this way, as a feather in the cap of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone. I find that most people, when asked to say what McChrystal accomplished in Baghdad, will reply vaguely that he deserves a share of credit for "the surge." This displays an ignorance of recent history and helps to obscure the extent and degree of the loss we have just suffered.
It is almost impossible to recall the true horror of the situation that confronted the coalition forces in Iraq during the middle years of this decade. Al-Qaida was able to operate with virtual impunity—and with the assistance of large stockpiles of Baathist war materiel—in several provinces and across big swaths of Baghdad. It was able to blow up the offices of the United Nations with a huge weapons-grade bomb and to destroy the most emotionally important Shiite shrine in Iraq: the Golden Dome at Samarra. Its beheaders and video-torturers roamed freely.
In some towns in Anbar province, a provisional "Islamic State of Iraq" was established, and victory parades were held, celebrating the defeat of the United States and its allies. Back in the United States itself, the demand for withdrawal from Iraq came quite close to reaching critical mass. As I tried to write at the time, this could have meant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the psychopathic killer who then had the Bin Laden franchise in Iraq, claiming to have out-fought the United States in open combat. The consequences of this—the frenzied bloodbath within Iraq, the collapse of a keystone state in the world economy, the chronic destabilization of the region, and the strengthening of ultra-fundamentalist groups everywhere—would have been infinitely worse than any defeat for our aims in Afghanistan.
I used to go to the occasional off-the-record briefing in Washington back then, and it was easy to see signs of exhaustion and bewilderment. Every now and then, though, there was a whisper of hope. The name was not supposed to be publicized, but a certain Gen. Stanley McChrystal was building a network of ruthless counter-al-Qaida fighters, both U.S. and local, who every night would fan out across Baghdad and give the enemy no rest. Not only did they break up cell after cell, but they must have become good at "turning" people as well, because Zarqawi's whereabouts was finally discovered and, though in the end he wasn't taken alive, he was still breathing when the soldiers entered his hut. He knew in his last minutes that he had been betrayed.
One understood by then that McChrystal had no great political talent. His dismal role in trying to muffle the story of Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan was sufficient proof of that. But he was a dedicated killer of al-Qaida members. He passed the informal Churchill wartime test—"Is he any good at killing Germans?" He not only inflicted severe pain and damage on the enemy, but he unmasked them—in front of their own supposed Sunni constituency—as wreckers and braggarts. It was this that laid the groundwork for the principles of the surge. One day, military history will acknowledge McChrystal for his great feat of arms.
And now he is destined for the shelf or, perhaps even worse, for a life as a consultant to the titans of the "procurement community." Meanwhile, reports suggest that U.S. policy in Baghdad is beginning to fray as the date for withdrawal approaches. Vice President Joe Biden's 10-minute trip to the Green Zone on July 4 appears to confirm McChrystal's low opinion of him. Taking advantage of the many political and other uncertainties, the greatly reduced al-Qaida forces are still preparing to inflict as much misery as they can upon Iraqis, so as to thwart any attempt at a democratic or federal solution. (By this way, this in itself is proof that their vile tactics, now directed at an army that is in the process of disengagement, are not a response to "occupation.")
Might it be salutary to ask Gen. McChrystal for one more mission? Send him back to Baghdad to help oversee the drawdown and also to continue the trouncing of those who are trying to disrupt the transition. Help pass on to the Iraqi army a cadre of battle-tested fighters, Arab and Kurdish, who have learned to take the measure of the enemy. Make it plain that further help from over the horizon is available if they ask for it. This would be a much more fitting career conclusion than the one currently offered, which has something small and dishonorable about it.
One More Mission
Gen. Stanley McChrystal should oversee the U.S. drawdown from Iraq.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, July 5, 2010, at 2:11 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Among the many bad impressions currently being given by the United States is the perception that we only have two real generals. And it seems to have taken a while for us to realize that this number has just been halved. Until last month, we only had two generals who could claim to have taken on al-Qaida and defeated it both militarily and politically. And this was when Gens. David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal were working in tandem in Iraq.
Afghanistan has proved much more resistant to their skills, whether exerted separately or together, while for making some crass comments about President Barack Obama's "too many cooks" policy, Gen. McChrystal has now disqualified himself from taking any further part in that struggle. But did we quite appreciate, as he was relieved of command in Kabul, that this meant that he was also removed from the struggle altogether? The second-order squabble—about how many of his stars he could retain in retirement—obscured the fact that we have now lost the services of a really serious warrior.
There's something irritating and alarming about his ending up this way, as a feather in the cap of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone. I find that most people, when asked to say what McChrystal accomplished in Baghdad, will reply vaguely that he deserves a share of credit for "the surge." This displays an ignorance of recent history and helps to obscure the extent and degree of the loss we have just suffered.
It is almost impossible to recall the true horror of the situation that confronted the coalition forces in Iraq during the middle years of this decade. Al-Qaida was able to operate with virtual impunity—and with the assistance of large stockpiles of Baathist war materiel—in several provinces and across big swaths of Baghdad. It was able to blow up the offices of the United Nations with a huge weapons-grade bomb and to destroy the most emotionally important Shiite shrine in Iraq: the Golden Dome at Samarra. Its beheaders and video-torturers roamed freely.
In some towns in Anbar province, a provisional "Islamic State of Iraq" was established, and victory parades were held, celebrating the defeat of the United States and its allies. Back in the United States itself, the demand for withdrawal from Iraq came quite close to reaching critical mass. As I tried to write at the time, this could have meant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the psychopathic killer who then had the Bin Laden franchise in Iraq, claiming to have out-fought the United States in open combat. The consequences of this—the frenzied bloodbath within Iraq, the collapse of a keystone state in the world economy, the chronic destabilization of the region, and the strengthening of ultra-fundamentalist groups everywhere—would have been infinitely worse than any defeat for our aims in Afghanistan.
I used to go to the occasional off-the-record briefing in Washington back then, and it was easy to see signs of exhaustion and bewilderment. Every now and then, though, there was a whisper of hope. The name was not supposed to be publicized, but a certain Gen. Stanley McChrystal was building a network of ruthless counter-al-Qaida fighters, both U.S. and local, who every night would fan out across Baghdad and give the enemy no rest. Not only did they break up cell after cell, but they must have become good at "turning" people as well, because Zarqawi's whereabouts was finally discovered and, though in the end he wasn't taken alive, he was still breathing when the soldiers entered his hut. He knew in his last minutes that he had been betrayed.
One understood by then that McChrystal had no great political talent. His dismal role in trying to muffle the story of Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan was sufficient proof of that. But he was a dedicated killer of al-Qaida members. He passed the informal Churchill wartime test—"Is he any good at killing Germans?" He not only inflicted severe pain and damage on the enemy, but he unmasked them—in front of their own supposed Sunni constituency—as wreckers and braggarts. It was this that laid the groundwork for the principles of the surge. One day, military history will acknowledge McChrystal for his great feat of arms.
And now he is destined for the shelf or, perhaps even worse, for a life as a consultant to the titans of the "procurement community." Meanwhile, reports suggest that U.S. policy in Baghdad is beginning to fray as the date for withdrawal approaches. Vice President Joe Biden's 10-minute trip to the Green Zone on July 4 appears to confirm McChrystal's low opinion of him. Taking advantage of the many political and other uncertainties, the greatly reduced al-Qaida forces are still preparing to inflict as much misery as they can upon Iraqis, so as to thwart any attempt at a democratic or federal solution. (By this way, this in itself is proof that their vile tactics, now directed at an army that is in the process of disengagement, are not a response to "occupation.")
Might it be salutary to ask Gen. McChrystal for one more mission? Send him back to Baghdad to help oversee the drawdown and also to continue the trouncing of those who are trying to disrupt the transition. Help pass on to the Iraqi army a cadre of battle-tested fighters, Arab and Kurdish, who have learned to take the measure of the enemy. Make it plain that further help from over the horizon is available if they ask for it. This would be a much more fitting career conclusion than the one currently offered, which has something small and dishonorable about it.
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