Saturday, October 30, 2004
The Bush Legacy. In the current issue of the New York Review of Books, various of the left's leading lights weigh in on what, exactly, this election means. As usual, Mark Danner nails it, noting the damage the Bush administration's foreign policy has wrought in the past few years, and the difficulties Kerry would face if he ends up in the White House this january.
The danger has always been that [Bush's] urge toward metaphysical simplicity eventually obliterates the careful weighing of interests and risks that must guide a great power in its foreign policy. Osama bin Laden, in turning his sights from the "near enemies" ruling in Cairo and Riyadh to the "far enemy" symbolized by New York's mighty towers, had wanted nothing more than an ideological war; he had the great good luck to choose to attack a born-again president and advocate of "moral clarity" who not only was more than willing to give him one but to subsume under its banner a bloody diversion in a complicated, divided country that had up to then been irrelevant to the jihadist cause.
For better or worse, President Bush has now set the terms of the debate, and the political contest now underway, animated by a kind of fear and political anxiety not seen since the darkest days of the cold war, seems fated to be conducted according to those terms. When the rhetoric of crusade dominates public discourse, political leaders find themselves trapped, like characters in a mythological drama that long predates and powerfully overshadows them; Lyndon Johnson, unable to withdraw from and thus "lose" Vietnam the way his Democratic predecessor had "lost" China, came to understand this; John Kerry, if he manages to gain his place in the White House, may well find himself struggling to escape the same trap, caught in the metaphysical prison his predecessor constructed for him and hemmed in by ideologically fierce political opponents determined to make him suffer for any attempt he might make to break free.
For better or worse, President Bush has now set the terms of the debate, and the political contest now underway, animated by a kind of fear and political anxiety not seen since the darkest days of the cold war, seems fated to be conducted according to those terms. When the rhetoric of crusade dominates public discourse, political leaders find themselves trapped, like characters in a mythological drama that long predates and powerfully overshadows them; Lyndon Johnson, unable to withdraw from and thus "lose" Vietnam the way his Democratic predecessor had "lost" China, came to understand this; John Kerry, if he manages to gain his place in the White House, may well find himself struggling to escape the same trap, caught in the metaphysical prison his predecessor constructed for him and hemmed in by ideologically fierce political opponents determined to make him suffer for any attempt he might make to break free.
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
After Arafat ... What?
Civil war, most likely. As for who will replace Arafat if he dies, the Guardian's Chris McGreal gives us a run-down of the men vying for the throne:
Civil war, most likely. As for who will replace Arafat if he dies, the Guardian's Chris McGreal gives us a run-down of the men vying for the throne:
The successor could be a figure such as the existing prime minister or finance minister, or one of the warlords, such as Jibril Rajoub or Mohammed Dahlan, or Marwan Barghouti, at present in jail in Israel.
But the succession might not be that simple. Groups outside Mr Arafat's Fatah organisation might want a claim on leadership, not least the Islamist organisation Hamas that dominates life in Gaza.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been careful not to attack Mr Arafat but might not feel the same trepidation about confronting his potential successor.
But the succession might not be that simple. Groups outside Mr Arafat's Fatah organisation might want a claim on leadership, not least the Islamist organisation Hamas that dominates life in Gaza.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been careful not to attack Mr Arafat but might not feel the same trepidation about confronting his potential successor.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
'Soft targets.' Back to Iraq's Chris Allbritton tells a truly frightening story of the kidnapping of his friend and fellow journalist John Martinkus. Fortunately, Martinkus was released the next day, but as Allbritton notes, he was only released because he got very, very lucky. The implications, as Allbritton sees them, are pretty serious:
[I]t shows that journalists' plans for “security through obscurity” has been blown out the window. John's captors said they received a phone call that he was on the move and that the time for taking him was now. This fits in with our intelligence that there are kidnap teams up and down Jadirya Street looking for us. His captors said they had penetrated the staff at the Hamra Hotel, where many of us live. They have people in the compound watching us. They know who we are and they're looking for “soft targets” -- reporters moving around with little security or few precautions.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Cam in Jozi. Just found out Dj Cam played at Carfax in Jo'burg this month. Too bad I'm half-a-world away -- I bet that was a good show.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
'The Banality of Evil.' In an essay on the upcoming trial of Saddam Hussein, Michael Massing draws on Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem," which examined the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi henchman who orchestrated much of the Holocaust, and first raised the question of how millions of otherwise-normal German citizens could go along with the Nazi genocide. As Massing notes, the phenomenon, though still little understood, has repeted itself often enough now that there can be no doubt about Arendt's central point: look at Bosnia, Cambodia, Iraq and Rwanda.
The mention of a book on the Rwandan genocide, called "Une Saison de Machettes," by Jean Hatzfeld, caught my eye. Hatzfeld interviewed scores of the killers as they sat in their jail cells, asking them variations on this question: How could you do it? The answer, it seems, is "Easily."
The mention of a book on the Rwandan genocide, called "Une Saison de Machettes," by Jean Hatzfeld, caught my eye. Hatzfeld interviewed scores of the killers as they sat in their jail cells, asking them variations on this question: How could you do it? The answer, it seems, is "Easily."
Instructed by Hutu militia leaders to kill Tutsis, these villagers approached the task much as they would a 9-to-5 job. ''Some offenders claim that we changed into wild animals,'' one of them told Hatzfeld, ''that we were blinded by ferocity. . . . That is a trick to sidetrack the truth. I can say this: outside the marshes, our lives seemed quite ordinary. We sang on the paths . . . we had our choice amid abundance. We chatted about our good fortune, we soaped off our bloodstains in the basin, our noses enjoyed the aromas of full cooking pots. We rejoiced in the new life about to begin by feasting on leg of veal. We were hot at night atop our wives, and we scolded our rowdy children. . . . We put on our field clothes. We swapped gossip at the cabaret, we made bets on our victim, spoke mockingly of cut girls, squabbled foolishly over looted grain. We sharpened our tools on whetting stones. We traded stories about desperate Tutsi tricks, we made fun of every 'Mercy!' cried by someone who'd been hunted down, we counted up and stashed away our goods.''
Apparently, the book will soon be published in English.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
High Stakes. Now more than two weeks in, the Israeli offensive in Gaza is the biggest operation the Strip has seen since the start of the second intifada. As Mouin Rabbani's clear-eyed piece in Middle East Report demonstrates, it's all about who will run Gaza in the future, and how, after the Israeli pullout next year. (Of course, Israel won't relinquish control of Gaza's borders -- if anyhting, Gaza is likely to become even more isolated from the rest of the world.) For Israel, the operation -- which has been brutal even by the IDF's standards -- is about crippling Hamas at its base and sending a message to Islamists in the West Bank. On the Palestinian side, Rabbani writes, the prospect of a pullout has fostered some of the worst infighting in years. Now, the various factions -- the Islamist resistance, what's left of Arafat's PA and the 'reformers' of the US-friendly thug Muhammed Dahlan -- jockey to see who will get to be Gaza's prison warden when the IDF pulls its troops out.
On the Palestinian side of the equation, three main trends have emerged. The first, represented by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, sees disengagement primarily as a threat, and is above all determined to avoid the political consequences of Sharon's initiative as spelled out by Weisglass. Sharon's success necessarily entails their failure to achieve their strategic objective of a viable Palestinian state within the Occupied Territories established on the basis of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and to maintain their stewardship of the Palestinian national movement. The second trend, associated with former Gaza security chief and current strongman Muhammad Dahlan, views disengagement as an opportunity to revive the political process interrupted by the renewal of violent Israeli-Palestinian conflict in September 2000. Rather than seek to scuttle Sharon's initiative, they believe that through cooperation or, failing that, reciprocal Palestinian measures, disengagement will establish the basis for renewed international engagement leading to an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. Their ability to ensure stability in the Gaza Strip in the wake of an eventual Israeli withdrawal will both place them at the helm of the political system and mark them out as reliable partners with whom Israel and the international community can do business. The third trend, most visibly represented by Hamas but encompassing a broader array of Islamist and nationalist militants, sees disengagement as vindication. As in southern Lebanon, a strategy of armed struggle is compelling Israel to withdraw from occupied territory without an agreement or a political quid pro quo. It therefore follows that those who sowed the seeds of resistance will reap the harvest of political profit.
As always, it seems, things are likely to get worse before they get better:Palestinian armed groups are bent on demonstrating that Sharon will be leaving Gaza in the same manner that his predecessor Ehud Barak left Lebanon. They have been neither deterred nor defeated by the security zone established by the Israeli military within the northern Gaza Strip. Inexorably, Sharon is being driven to pursue the militants ever deeper into the Gaza Strip in order to demonstrate that Israel's generals only retreat in the wake of decisive victory. Horrific as the current reality undoubtedly is, it could yet prove to be the opening gambit of a larger conflict.
Indeed, Sharon's refusal to countenance either a negotiated disengagement or even a reciprocal ceasefire that would necessarily curtail Israel's freedom of action within the Occupied Territories makes further bloodshed all but inevitable. In the meantime, the choices facing Palestinians are stark. To many, the conflict between those allied with Arafat and Dahlan appears, in the words of a Fatah activist, as little more than "a struggle between Palestinian thieves and collaborators over the privilege of governing the world's most desolate corner on behalf of Israel's foremost war criminal." By the same token, people have little faith that Hamas can end the occupation with homemade rockets, but full confidence that Israel will extract an increasingly high price from the civilian population in lieu of its inability to eliminate the rocket crews. Meanwhile, the periodic attempts to forge a Palestinian strategic consensus, now sponsored by Cairo, remain blocked on account of competing strategies and interests. Yet these on-again, off-again talks could offer the only escape hatch from an increasingly desperate reality.
Indeed, Sharon's refusal to countenance either a negotiated disengagement or even a reciprocal ceasefire that would necessarily curtail Israel's freedom of action within the Occupied Territories makes further bloodshed all but inevitable. In the meantime, the choices facing Palestinians are stark. To many, the conflict between those allied with Arafat and Dahlan appears, in the words of a Fatah activist, as little more than "a struggle between Palestinian thieves and collaborators over the privilege of governing the world's most desolate corner on behalf of Israel's foremost war criminal." By the same token, people have little faith that Hamas can end the occupation with homemade rockets, but full confidence that Israel will extract an increasingly high price from the civilian population in lieu of its inability to eliminate the rocket crews. Meanwhile, the periodic attempts to forge a Palestinian strategic consensus, now sponsored by Cairo, remain blocked on account of competing strategies and interests. Yet these on-again, off-again talks could offer the only escape hatch from an increasingly desperate reality.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
The Abkhaz Vote. Came across this interesting analysis of the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia's recent experiment with democracy today. Essentially, this piece argues, if the opposition candidate (who is known as being slightly less rabidly pro-Russian than the current ruler) comes out on top, Georgia wins.
"Georgian authorities can talk more openly with a president chosen by the people and not appointed by Moscow because he will be more flexible and less under a Kremlin diktat," said Paata Zakareishvili of the Center for Development and Cooperation, a Tbilisi-based think tank.
That's assuming that movement is good and will lead toward peace and Abkhazia's reunification with Georgia, of course. Seems to me it could just as easily spark renewed fighting, as this piece in Civil Georgia suggests might be on the horizon.
Sunday, October 10, 2004
An All-Purpose Enemy. The lead story in the Times' Week in Review today is on Abu Musab Al Zarqawi -- specifically on his transformation into the Bush administration's go-to bad guy in Iraq since things really started going south. The piece devotes a lot of time to knocking down White House claims that Zarqawi is responsible for more or less all of the chaos in Iraq these days, but it leaves an important part of the story out. Despite its 1,700-plus words, it doesn't mention the fact that Washington passed up repeated chances to kill Zarqawi last year, before we went to war. As I've written earlier, killing Zarqawi would have weakened the administration's case for going to war. Back then, he was worth more alive than dead. Judging from the mileage they're getting from him these days, it looks like that's still the case.
Saturday, October 09, 2004
White and Black. Over at Njalonjalo, Nick has a thoughtful post on white guilt and privilege. In part, he writes:
There is a fundamental difference to the way we view wealth, and it has, for me, a lot to do with white guilt. You see, for him wealth and status symbols represent accessing opportunities that were formerly deprived of him, his family and his ‘people’ (his term, not mine). This is a totally understandable position. On the other hand, as a self-consciously white South African I am embarrassed by outward displays of wealth. I feel that so much of white South Africa’s prosperity has been (and still is) gained at the expense of South Africans of colour, that flaunting it is a bit crass. The continuing inequality in South Africa also means that these displays fuel the feelings of resentment that the poor still have against whites.
I'd like to offer up a related take on white privilege in South Africa, from the perspective of an outsider -- albeit an outsider who grew up in the extremely segregated white suburbs of Detroit (translation: I've got plenty of white guilt myself).
When I was working in South Africa a few years ago, I made a fairly long reporting trip from Gauteng out to Lesotho and then on to Colesberg, a sleepy town right on the border between Northern Cape, Eastern Cape and the Free State. My fixer Alex and I had been traveling mostly by public transport or bus up until that point, but we realized that we'd need a car for some of the rural areas we were planning to visit. So we rented a car at the Bloemfontein airport. At the rental agency counter, the pretty young Afrikaner agent told me the Corolla I had reserved wasn't available, but I could have a Mercedes for the same price. (I couldn't drive a stick, and Alex couldn't drive at all, so our rental options were limited.) I worried how this would look, because we were going to be working almost exclusively in the townships. Wouldn't it be too conspicuous? I wondered. Sort of crass (to use the word Nick used above)? Alex, an Ndebele from Mpumalanga, laughed off my concerns. "It doesn't matter, man -- you're white," he said. "It's expected that you have a new car. It doesn't matter what kind."
He was probably right in this case. I was uncomfortable with it, but as far as I could tell the Mercedes attracted no more attention than any other car I rented during my time there. What people noticed, as always, was my skin color; to them, the fancy car just completed the picture.In South Africa, I was always acutely aware of my skin color, and of the skin color of those around me. A bit of guilt usually accompanied this realization. Even though I gave a lot of people rides to a lot of different places while I had that Mercedes -- almost a given, I discovered, when you have a car in the townships -- I was glad to be rid of it a few days later. No matter how nice the ride (and Phat Joe sounded damn good on that stereo), I never quite shook that guilty feeling.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Open Studios. I'm participating in San Francisco Open Sudios this year, so come by and say hello if you live in the Bay Area. I'll have photos from the Middle East, southern Africa, Georgia and some local stuff on display.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
Saddam's Suicide Bombers? Unsurprisingly, neither Edwards nor Cheney said anything serious about the Israaeli/Palestinian conflict, but Cheney's comment here was at least original:
In respect to Israel and Palestine, Gwen, the suicide bombers, in part, were generated by Saddam Hussein, who paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers.
I personally think one of the reasons that we don't have as many suicide attacks today in Israel as we've had in the past is because Saddam is no longer in business.
This is just an astonishingly stupid thing to say. If Cheney actually believes it, then he really knows next to nothing about the conflict. Maybe it's true, though, in that alternate world we hear so much about these days -- you know, the one in which all of Iraq is flourishing and the Iraqis are showering our soldiers in rose petals.
I personally think one of the reasons that we don't have as many suicide attacks today in Israel as we've had in the past is because Saddam is no longer in business.
Missed Opportunities. While it looks like John Edwards held his own in the national security part of the debate with Dick Cheney tonight, it seems to me he missed a golden opportunity here, when Cheney blamed all the troubles in Iraq on Abu Musab Al Zarqawi:
CHENEY:
But let's look at what we know about Mr. Zarqawi. We know he was running a terrorist camp, training terrorists in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. We know that when we went into Afghanistan that he then migrated to Baghdad. He set up shop in Baghdad, where he oversaw the poisons facility up at Kermal (ph), where the terrorists were developing ricin and other deadly substances to use.
We know he's still in Baghdad today. He is responsible for most of the major car bombings that have killed or maimed thousands of people. He's the one you will see on the evening news beheading hostages.
He is, without question, a bad guy. He is, without question, a terrorist. He was, in fact, in Baghdad before the war, and he's in Baghdad now after the war.
The fact of the matter is that this is exactly the kind of track record we've seen over the years. We have to deal with Zarqawi by taking him out, and that's exactly what we'll do. [My emphasis.]
Unfortunately, Edwards didn't ask Cheney to explain why the Bush administration passed up not one, not two, but three attempts to kill Zarqawi last year in the run-up to war.
But let's look at what we know about Mr. Zarqawi. We know he was running a terrorist camp, training terrorists in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. We know that when we went into Afghanistan that he then migrated to Baghdad. He set up shop in Baghdad, where he oversaw the poisons facility up at Kermal (ph), where the terrorists were developing ricin and other deadly substances to use.
We know he's still in Baghdad today. He is responsible for most of the major car bombings that have killed or maimed thousands of people. He's the one you will see on the evening news beheading hostages.
He is, without question, a bad guy. He is, without question, a terrorist. He was, in fact, in Baghdad before the war, and he's in Baghdad now after the war.
The fact of the matter is that this is exactly the kind of track record we've seen over the years. We have to deal with Zarqawi by taking him out, and that's exactly what we'll do. [My emphasis.]
Sunday, October 03, 2004
The Intifada at Four. Here in the US, the chaos in Iraq and the presidential elections have largely pushed it off the front page, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict grinds on. Since Tuesday, an IDF offensive in Gaza has killed more than 60 Palestinians. Some of them were gunmen, certainly. But, just as certainly, the vast majority were civilians. It's a fitting way to mark the fourth anniversary of the Intifada. As this solid piece in the Times indicates, it's been a bad four years for the Israelis but an absolutely catastrophic time for the Palestinians. More and more, the Palestinians seem to be acknowledging this reality in public, too, which is a good thing:
"Our lives are deteriorating on all levels," said Salah Abdel Shafi, 42, a Gazan economist. "This intifada began O.K., but got confused and lacks a clear message," he said. "The moment the intifada was militarized, it lost its popular character, and with suicide bombers and rocket attacks inside Israel, we lost the image of an occupied people. We are playing now on Sharon's field, and we have done everything to help him pretend that Israel is in another war of national survival."
Sad but true, it seems to me. The Palestinians -- with suicide bombings, rampant corruption and anti-semitic rhetoric -- have played right into his hands. It's (long past) time to switch tactics, if not for moral reasons then for pragmatic ones. I wonder if things are so fractured now, though, that there's no one directing the show?
Friday, October 01, 2004
Hunted Like Buffalo. I came across it a little late, but this piece by Mark Irkali aptly sums up the state of affairs in Russia and Chechnya. It also shed a little light on the consistently brutal history of Russian-Chechen relations, something I haven't seen much of in the press over here.
Not to be outdone in neo-con-esque ghoulishness, it's only taken several hundred dead children for Vladimir Putin to finish off whatever was left of Russian democracy. For audacity, at least, he should be congratulated. I think there's an award for something like this, but it's only awarded posthumously and several hundred miles beneath the Earth's surface.
This is an uncomfortable time to be an opponent of the Chechen War, as uncomfortable as it must be to be a real democrat in Moscow. Putin has declared war against both, even though history has provided ample evidence that neither the Chechens nor the spirit of the Russian people can be crushed. It still hasn't stopped several generations of Russian leaders from trying.
The Chechens were hunted like buffalo in the 19th century, then deported - every last one of them - for supposed collaboration with an enemy that never set foot in their territory in World War II (the last part of that is often forgotten in journalists' accounts of their mass exile). Their great crime was their decision to do what tens of other peoples in the Soviet Union didn't have the balls to do: they rebelled against Stalin. They didn't enlist in the SS, but took to the mountains as they had before and have since then. For that they faced the cattle cars.
Along with the Chechens, the most outstanding Russian citizens in generations past had Siberia as their final resting place. Neither of these strategies have worked, ever. I can see this, you can see this. It should be commonly understood. Unfortunately, among Russia's leaders, it's not.
This is an uncomfortable time to be an opponent of the Chechen War, as uncomfortable as it must be to be a real democrat in Moscow. Putin has declared war against both, even though history has provided ample evidence that neither the Chechens nor the spirit of the Russian people can be crushed. It still hasn't stopped several generations of Russian leaders from trying.
The Chechens were hunted like buffalo in the 19th century, then deported - every last one of them - for supposed collaboration with an enemy that never set foot in their territory in World War II (the last part of that is often forgotten in journalists' accounts of their mass exile). Their great crime was their decision to do what tens of other peoples in the Soviet Union didn't have the balls to do: they rebelled against Stalin. They didn't enlist in the SS, but took to the mountains as they had before and have since then. For that they faced the cattle cars.
Along with the Chechens, the most outstanding Russian citizens in generations past had Siberia as their final resting place. Neither of these strategies have worked, ever. I can see this, you can see this. It should be commonly understood. Unfortunately, among Russia's leaders, it's not.
