As the U.S. falls, others prosper. You can’t understand what is going on in China right now (their return to their once-familiar role as #1 global superpower) if you have no clue what Confucianism is, and the role it is playing in Chinese policy and politics.

You can’t understand how cultures across the globe are responding to the rapid changes happening, a revolution in technology and society and the economy unprecedented since the Industrial Revolution, without religious literacy.

The Islamic world and the dizzying variety of cultures within it (peoples from North Africa to the Arabian peninsula to the Indian subcontinent to China and Indonesia, each very different from the rest) are in transition too, and you can’t hope to understand what is emerging without educating yourself about Islam, its beauty and its diversity and its role in people’s lives.

a rudimentary map of the countries with significant Muslim populations. This is what I mean by "the Islamic world."

PHOTO CREDIT: Saif Dahlah/AFP via Getty Images. Click the picture to go to the source, the NYT Lens blog's Pictures of the Day, August 20, 2010

Can anyone look at this photo of this Muslim girl praying to the ONE GOD, and not grasp in some way how beautiful Islam can be? There is no reason to think this girl is part of radicalism or terrorism. Only those who have closed their minds, part of the “Angry White Male” anti-tolerance, fearful, anti-intellectual fervor that’s re-emerging in force in America, would post negative comments about this beautiful photo. During times of economic anxiety, rejection of the foreign and retreat to the familiar is easy, and it spreads.

When I see deep religious ignorance, like foaming opposition to an Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan because so many people can’t distinguish between the peaceful Sufis behind the Park51 project and the radical Wahabbis who support terrorism, I know we need to refocus on religious literacy and understanding.
We’ve got right-wing protesters waving signs based on fear and ignorance about Islam and rich liberals who are just as clueless about Islam as they are about Christianity; the woman that cleans their house more likely to know what Pentecostalism is than her “educated” bosses. And then there are countless hipsters and hippies with their “all religions are the same, different paths up the same mountain” crap, which ignores very meaningful differences and conflicts, and makes real religious literacy harder. All this should change.

Learn! Sufis are known for the whirling dervishes, not terror. To my knowledge, there’s never been a Sufi terrorist! It’s the splinter groups, usually radical elements of the Wahhabbi sect that want war with the West.

Wahhabism is the ultra-conservative revivalist brand of Islam that sprung up in the 18th century, rejecting traditional Sunni scholars and interpretation in favor of a new, extreme, purist form of Sunni Islam. Wahhabism brings us radical interpretations of Jihad, a focus on destruction of infidels, everybody but them seen as infidels, etc., ideas which were not widespread within Islam prior to Muhammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab starting the Wahabbi movement, which has provided the foundation for radicalism (though it’s important to note that radical interpretations can be–and are–challenged on a textual basis, even within the movement). The radical splinter side of Wahhabism is the ideology of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas. Regular Wahabbism is the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia (in fact, Wahabbism is inseparable from Saudi history, from the first Saudi state (which came into being because of an alliance with al-Wahhab) onward… Note: today, most in this movement prefer the term Salafi/Salafism. The spread of radical Wahabbism hijacking Islam, a great and beautiful Abrahamic faith (some parts of the Koran are downright pacifist!), and how oil wealth has funded radical madrassahs that have caused problems from Yemen to Afghanistan to the Indian subcontinent, is a really serious problem and should not be minimized.

But, my point is, media so often paints ALL Islam as crazed Wahhabi radicals likes al-Qaida, when, in reality, Islam reflects the incredible diversity of 1.5 BILLION people (read here about the many divisions in Islam). Americans can understand the nuanced and many differences within Christianity: Protestants and Catholics, Mormons and Baptists and Episcopalians, but most of us don’t understand the difference between Sunni Wahabbis and Sufis, or between Sunni Wahabbis and Shias.
Historians can easily argue that Wahhabism formed as a simpler, puritan alternative to the heavily mystical Sufism. Wahabbism is a fundamentalist response, like the “Restorationists” that sprung up from the “Second Great Awakening” in U.S. Christianity. Wahabbism is certainly (in style and content) in stark contrast to Sufism. A Wahabbi would look at the Sufi tradition of whirling dervishes and see pointlessness at best and heretical “innovation” at worst, because whirling like that isn’t in the Koran. Wahhabism rejects traditional scholars and leaders and hierarchy (akin to “the priesthood of all believers” in Protestant thought) because that may lead to “innovations” incongruous with their ultra-purist beliefs.
In diametric opposition, Shia Islam tends to emphasize scholarship, a hierarchy of Mullahs with a Grand Ayatollah (roughly analogous to the Pope) at the top, veneration of Saints, going to shrines, etc. Shia Islam is so different than Sunni, like Puritans vs. Catholics, it’s easy to understand why they’ve been in conflict for so many centuries. And Sufi mysticism is so different, you can see why Sufis are a persecuted minority in both the Sunni and Shia worlds (here is a spot-on op-ed about the precarious position of Sufis in today’s world: Muslims in the Middle). Islam isn’t a united force, and never was; it’s at war with itself in countless ways.
The diversity in Islam is real, and meaningful to understand anything going on in the world right now. But so often, media portrays Islam as one MONOLITHIC enemy. This is false, and pushes us to support stupid and disastrous decisions (like bombing and invading majority-Shia Iraq because we’re mad at al-Qaida, a Wahabbi Sunni splinter group).

Most worrying: the attitude I’m constantly hearing is ETERNAL WAR with all Islam, even super-peaceful Sufis. Too many blame ALL Islam for 9/11, somehow even Sufis are seen as connected to 9/11 even if they have been against Wahabbi interpretations of Islam since before America was founded; they can never escape! It really scares me when demagogues paint all 1.5 BILLION Muslims as enemies. Not only is that unjustified morally, it means more wars, it means we can forget our counterinsurgency strategy (which hinges on convincing Muslims we have no beef with their religion and winning hearts and minds), it means more hate; we’ll need to bring back the draft if we want war with over a billion people!

An economic and technological revolution is happening. The globalization train has left the station. Our success (hell, because of all our countless mistakes, OUR VERY SURVIVAL) as an independent nation-state will hinge on nation-building at home, which requires 1) unprecedented investment in infrastructure, education and R&D which requires 2) the absence of budget-crippling overseas conflicts which requires religious literacy and understanding and 3) welcoming the best and the brightest immigrants to our shores which requires religious literacy and understanding and 4) groundbreaking levels of diplomatic and economic cooperation with foreign powers, which requires religious literacy and understanding! 1-4 will determine whether America sinks or swims and each of these need a lack of cultural/religious animosity that keeps us divided and off-task, which, once again, requires religious literacy and understanding.

We have to have religious literacy and understanding to help us with the heavy lift ahead of us to rebuild our country. Religious literacy and understanding, FOR OUR OWN SAKE.

Every high school and college should be make mandatory reading Stephen Prothero’s Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t and
God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter for a basic overview of the religions shaping our world. Or at least read some of the links in this post.

But, America needs more (much more) religious literacy and understanding. For our own sake.

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Just as in Kyrgyzstan’s revolution, in Iran, mostly young people, tired of decades of authoritarian rule, took to the streets en masse to overturn a fraudulent election that had ratified the rule of a dictator. In Kyrgyzstan, the protests were so loud, the people so united, that old Soviet boss Askar Akayev saw his power base erode to the point that continuing in office was too risky and untenable; protesters seized the presidential offices, and he ended up escaping to Russia. In Iran, this didn’t happen; the regime didn’t budge. Why? Because the entrenched support base loyal to the regime, especially the Sepah (Revolutionary Guards) and the Basij, wouldn’t allow it.

A photo of Basij volunteers drilling in their drill uniforms. (Credit: Vahid Salemi / AP)

Who are the Basijis? The best way for an American to understand them is as a combination of the Boy Scouts, the revolutionary Minutemen, the Taliban and the legend of the Persian Hashshashins (Assassins) who would take themselves out with their foes. The Basijis are a volunteer militia operated as an auxiliary of the Sepah, and take orders directly from Sepah commanders and the Supreme Leader, not the president. The Basijis are mostly religious youth, and they are charged with protecting the regime, along with Shia Islam and its people’s “virtues.” To show their Islamic virtue they may work in mosques, help elderly people cross the street, give gasoline to people stranded in their cars on the side of the road, or, on the other side of the coin, intimidate and assault Iranians dressed in “immoral” attire, and haul suspected dissidents into the nearest police station. The Basij responds to threats to the regime within and without; they played a key role in the Iran-Iraq war, with mass “human wave” martyr attacks by teenage Basijis to clear minefields and terrify Saddam’s troops, and they have often crushed Iranians citizens’ demonstrations, most notably during the uprising that followed the June 12 rigged election of this year, and the student protests of July ‘99.

The founder of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini founded the Basij (pronounced BAH-siege) when he became leader of the new Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. It was a shrewd move. Khomeini knew that he would always have a lot of enthusiastic extreme-fundamentalist young men on his hands, and it’s smarter to protect your Right flank, honor them and harness their energy to protect the regime, than it is to let them fester ignored until they become something that could overthrow him. In Persian, the Basij (literally, “Mobilization”) are also called Basij-e Mostaz’afin, “Mobilization of the Oppressed,” and there is a clear “class warfare” element to them. The Basijis are mostly poor, young, and fundamentalist, and they are often pitted against the mostly secular, modernizing upper class. President Ahmadinejad was a Basij, with the Basij culture and chip on the shoulder, and he framed the rich elite as decadent, corrupt, and “oppressing” the hard-working, pious, rural poor.

Ahmadinejad and fellow Basij veterans, in ceremonial uniform

For Iran’s rulers, this has them sitting pretty: in addition to having the judiciary, military and local officials firmly behind them, they can rally a religious proletariat to the defense of Islamic government whenever needed, with angry young Basijis as the head of the spear. Despite dissent from other Ayatollahs (Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, Ayatollah Mohajerani, Ayatollah Rafsanjani), the government’s lessened legitimacy and growing feeling in Iran’s cities that the current regime’s enforcers (Sepah, Basij, local police) are no better than the Shah’s brutal secret police (the SAVAK) that they united against in 1979, this regime is deeply entrenched, and the Persian people* will likely be watched over by Ayatollah Khomeini’s evil glare everywhere for years to come.

For more information on the Basij:
The New Yorker: Jon Lee Anderson: Understanding The Basij

Basij Violence In The News:
LA Times: Tehran’s streets erupt after a key cleric speaks

From The Miami Herald, a cartoon showing "New Boss, Same As The Old Boss," the Islamic Republic attacking their own people just as the Shah did

Contrasting brave Iranians willing to protest despite very real risk to life and limb with couch potato Americans doing little for their freedom, I feel like I’m in a nation of proles. Like Iranians, we Americans used to be a proud and revolutionary people. I hope that isn’t completely dead.

Nick

*For the uninitiated, Iranians are sometimes still referred to as “Persians,” and their country was called “Persia” by outsiders from the 5th century BC up until 1935, when Reza Shah Pahlavi issued a decree requesting everyone use Iran, meaning “the land of Aryans,” which Iranians had been calling their country since about 1000 BC. For more information, see Iran Naming Convention. Iranians are an Aryan/Indo-European people, and in physical appearance, look little different from the related Caucasians in the nearby Caucasus region. They are white people. Too many Americans lump Iraq and Iran together and say “bomb all them A-rabs,” which couldn’t be more wrong. Iranians are not Arabs, have a proud history and culture totally distinct from Arabs, speak a language (with grammar similar to many contemporary European languages) unintelligible to those who only understand Arabic, and Iranians’ bitter rivalry and wars with the proto-Arab and Arab peoples of the Fertile Crescent span back to the first written records of the region recorded by Sumerians. Saddam Hussein was infamous for his hate of Persians.

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My history professor friend Bridgett and I discussed this on her blog post about Kramer, “Same-sex sexuality in 17th century British North America,” and she explains that real historians can’t “out” people from the past as gay without definitive, absolute proof, or they’ll be filleted by critics, discredited and risk their careers.   Not a problem for Kramer, as he has no historian cred to risk.

To me, his biggest fallacy is that simply because no wives were available for many Jamestown colonists, they would “turn to each other.” It’s not something you can CHOOSE like that, and he of all people should know that. I could no more choose attraction to males amid a girl-shortage than Kramer could choose attraction to women.

Does anyone really believe that whenever there’s a scarcity of women in a society, large amounts of men will “turn to each other?” This made me turn my thoughts to China. Recently, a gay family member told me because of the lack of females in China and the fact that, mathematically, tens of millions of men will never be able to find women to marry (true) that millions will turn to gay sex. I don’t think that’s what will happen — it’s not A CHOICE!

Numerous articles about the gender imbalance in China (caused by abortions of potential girls and infanticide after birth) have been written. I recommend:

• New York Times: Chinese Bias for Baby Boys Creates a Gap of 32 Million

• NBC: China Begins to Face Sex-Ratio Imbalance

• Washington Post: ‘Bare Branches’ and Danger in Asia

In this Washington Post op-ed, Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. Den Boer, the authors of “Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population,” wrote:

The old saying goes, “When you pick up one end of a stick, you also pick up the other.” When a society prefers sons to daughters to the extent found in parts of contemporary Asia, it not only will have fewer daughters, but it also will create a subclass of young men who are apt to have difficulty finding wives and beginning their own families. Because son preference has been a significant phenomenon in Asia for centuries, the Chinese actually have a term for such young men. They are called guang gun-er or “bare branches,” because they are branches of the family tree that will never bear fruit. The girls who should have grown up to be their wives were disposed of instead.

We have already seen in China the resurrection of evils such as the kidnapping and selling of women to provide brides for those who can pay the fee. Scarcity of women leads to a situation in which men with advantages — money, skills, education — will marry, but men without such advantages — poor, unskilled, illiterate — will not. A permanent subclass of bare branches from the lowest socioeconomic classes is created. In China and India, for example, by the year 2020 bare branches will make up 12 to 15 percent of the young adult male population.

Should the leaders of these nations be worried? The answer is yes. Throughout history, bare branches in East and South Asia have played a role in aggravating societal instability, violent crime and gang formation.

Though the existence of sizable numbers of bare branches is not a necessary condition for instability — the sex ratios of Rwanda in 1994 were normal, for example — it plays a significant role in the amplification of levels of instability and threat.

Consider the fact that in the mid-1800s, a predominantly bare-branch rebel group in the north of China called the Nien, in combination with rebel groups farther south, openly attacked imperial troops and forts, taking control of territory inhabited by 6 million Chinese citizens before it was quashed by the government years later.

More recently, Indian scholars have noted a very strong relationship between sex ratios and violent crime rates in Indian states, which persists even after controlling for a variety of other possible variables. And worldwide, more violent crime is committed by unmarried young adult men than by married young adult men.

According to sociologists, young adult men with no stake in society — of the lowest socioeconomic classes and with little chance of forming families of their own — are much more prone to attempt to improve their situation through violent and criminal behavior in a strategy of coalitional aggression with other bare branches.

Historically, governments facing a growing population of bare branches find themselves caught in a dilemma. They must decrease the threat to society posed by these young men but at the same time may find the cost of doing so is heavy. Increased authoritarianism in an effort to crack down on crime, gangs, smuggling and so forth can be one result.

At some point, governments consider how they can export their problem, either by encouraging emigration of young adult men or harnessing their energies in martial adventures abroad. There are very few good options for governments that find that their greatest threat emanates not from an external source but from an internal one.

Years ago I saw Hudson and Den Boer’s book discussed on CNN, and in that segment, they argued that the explosive growth of Islamic conquests…

This map shows the expansion of the Islamic Caliphate. In dark red, is territory conquered by Mohammed himself (from 622-632 he consolidated all of the Arabian Peninsula), in pink are the territories conquered in 632-661 by the "Patriarchal Caliphate" (all of the Levant, Egypt, present-day Libya, Iraq, Iran and present-day Georgia in the South Caucasus) and, in beige, the lands taken during the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750; much of Central Asia, including Samerkand, present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all of the Maqreb of West Africa and Spain).

…in the 7th and 8th centuries wasn’t just “to spread the faith by the sword,” but, because the prevalence of polygamy on the Arabian Peninsula made it impossible for large numbers of angry young fundamentalist males with swords to ever find wives. Large groups of them invaded Egypt, Persia, etc., where the population of widowed women had just grown considerably from the war. Hudson and Den Boer suggested a similar phenomenon may happen in China.

We are already seeing the consequences of gender imbalance in China that Hudson and Den Boer’s research predicts: increased sex trafficking, prostitution becoming more widespread and more lucrative. Will we see China invading neighboring countries as well?

What do you think? Please comment below.

Nick

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PaulCanning forwards an urgent request from IRAQI LGBT:

IRAQI LGBT started to establish a network of safe houses inside Iraq in March 2006.

As of today, we have only one safe house, we had to consider closing down three of them in the last couple of months, because we are unable to keep paying the rent and other expenses.

The members of our group inside Iraq urgently need funds to open at least five safe houses. These funds will allow us to keep the five safe houses running, and provide safety, shelter, food and many other needs for our LGBT friends inside Iraq. Any funds we receive that go beyond what we need for these five safe houses could be used to open more safe houses in the near future. We desperately need to add more because we have so many urgent cases in other cities. We receive requests for shelter every day, but we are not able to help yet.

Source: http://paulcanning.blogspot.com/2009/05/support-safe-houses-project-for-lgbt.html

In recent months, Iraq’s mullahs have directed a vicious purge of gay Iraqis. Evidently, the Sadrist movement (who have plenty of supporters within the current regime) and the Iraqi government reached an agreement, and if gays aren’t simply shot by militiamen, they are jailed, executed, or tortured to death by the authorities. Many have died via extrajudicial execution, while others were officially imprisoned and executed by hanging. Still others (about 200 in Baghdad) are on death row awaiting hanging.

Activists will protest for the human rights of LGBT Iraqis Sunday outside President Obama’s home in Chicago, and implore him to act.

This year in Chicago, the Gay Liberation Network (GLN) is organizing the city’s IDAHO event as a protest against the Obama administration’s continuing silence about rampant anti-gay violence in U.S.-occupied Iraq. The protest will take place at 2 PM, Sunday, May 17th outside of the Obamas’ Chicago residence at the corner of Hyde Park Boulevard (5100 S.) and Greenwood (1100 E.).

Over the past month, several news outlets have reported an escalating, officially sanctioned campaign to torture and execute gays in Iraq, promoted both by Shi’ite clerics and by the Shi’ite-dominated government which is closely allied with the United States.

As the New York Times reported April 7, “In the past two months, the bodies of as many as 25 boys and men suspected of being gay have turned up in the huge [Baghdad] Shiite enclave of Sadr City, the police and friends of the dead say. Most have been shot, some multiple times. Several have been found with the word ‘pervert’ in Arabic on notes attached to their bodies, the police said.” And as the Huffington Post reported May 3rd, “According to Iraqis and human rights workers interviewed for this post, some sort of understanding was reached between the Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army to ‘cleanse’ Iraq of homosexuals.”

Tortures committed reportedly include gluing the anuses of gay men shut, and then force-feeding them diarrhea-inducing medications which cause agonizing pain followed by death.

Back in 2005, the country’s leading Shi’ite cleric said that gays and lesbians should be “punished, in fact, killed” and that “the people should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.” After some protests this language was removed from the cleric’s website, and the anti-gay campaign appeared to subside.

However, over the past month, the campaign in Iraq to murder gays has ramped up again as “Sadr City’s Muslim clerics have reportedly urged the faithful to destroy homosexuality in Iraqi society and police have undertaken an effort to arrest and jail gay men,” said United Press International.

Source: LGBT asylum news: Chicago protest about anti-gay pogram in Iraq

Nick’s Crusade, strongly believing that disability rights activists shouldn’t be stuck in their traditional “silos,” but should be supporting the inalienable human rights of all people, endorses this protest Sunday. Obama should take heed, and, if he can’t pull strings in Baghdad, at the very least he could grant asylum in the U.S. to those who are now hiding in fear.

I don’t have any money (I know; I’m a charitable case myself) but if I did, helping LGBT Iraqis who’re running for their lives is a very worthy cause.    For more information, see the IRAQI LGBT blog.

Regardless of your opinions on the gay issue, if you have friends and family that are gay (I do) and wouldn’t want them killed, you should pay attention to the persecution of gays around the world, and raise awareness.

Nick

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But this quote from TIME Magazine proves to me, it’s NOT a choice:

I don’t care about the militias anymore because they’re going to kill me anyway — today, tomorrow or the day after.
– SA’AD, a gay man in Sadr City, Iraq, on a spate of murders that has targeted the city’s gays; 25 people have been killed during the past two months.

If gayness were a choice, there’d be no gays left in Iraq–the executions of 400 gay Iraqis (and 4,000 gay Iranians) would’ve forced everyone into strict heterosexuality. Instead, gays are still gay, and some are moving from safehouse to safehouse, dodging religious militias and the police.

It’s not a choice. People are able to do almost anything to survive (even eat their friends) but they can’t change who they are. Even when death squads are knocking on the door.

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Most recently, in response to an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges, Bashir ejected all the aid workers from Sudan so that the remaining refugees are left without food or water and will die.

This weekend, the Arab League rewarded Bashir with the red carpet treatment at their summit in Qatar and a public hug and kiss session. They also drafted a resolution rejecting the ICC warrant for his arrest and continue to protect this wanted criminal.

Sudanese President Bashir Laughing It Up At The Arab League Summit

Bashir Laughing It Up At The Arab League Summit

It’s unbelievable that a war criminal of this magnitude would be so embraced by his Arab neighbors, and allowed to happily jet outside his country unfettered. Ugh! Arab League, you have forever lost credibility in my eyes.

Nick

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By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
Wed Aug 22, 8:58 AM ET

DAMASCUS, Syria – Iraq’s prime minister lashed out Wednesday at U.S. criticism, saying no one has the right to impose timetables on his elected government and that his country “can find friends elsewhere.”

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the U.S. presidential campaign for the recent tough words about his government, from President Bush and from other U.S. politicians.

Bush on Tuesday said he was frustrated with Iraqi leaders’ inability to bridge political divisions. But he added that only the Iraqi people can decide whether to sideline al-Maliki.

“Clearly, the Iraqi government’s got to do more,” Bush said. “I think there’s a certain level of frustration with the leadership in general, inability to work — come together to get, for example, an oil revenue law passed or provincial elections.”

Full article: AP: Iraqi PM lashes out at U.S. critics

Then the next day I saw this story:

CRAWFORD, Texas (CNN) — A powerhouse Republican lobbying firm with close ties to the White House has begun a public campaign to undermine the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, CNN has confirmed.

This comes as President Bush is publicly taking great pains to reiterate his support for the embattled Iraqi leader.

Al-Maliki’s government has come under sharp criticism and scrutiny from Washington lawmakers and officials, as reflected in Thursday’s National Intelligence Estimate.

A senior Bush administration official told CNN the White House is aware of the lobbying campaign by Barbour Griffith & Rogers because the firm is “blasting e-mails all over town” criticizing al-Maliki and promoting the firm’s client, former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, as an alternative to al-Maliki.

But the senior administration official insisted that White House officials have “absolutely no involvement” in the campaign to remove al-Maliki, nor have they given it their blessing.

“There’s just no connection whatsoever,” the official said. “There’s absolutely no involvement.”

When asked whether the White House will ask the prominent Republican lobbying firm to stop lashing out at al-Maliki, the official said, “I don’t rule it out.”

Pressed on why allies of the White House would be contradicting the president publicly, the senior administration official said of the lobbyists, “They’re making a lot of money.”

Full article: CNN: Powerhouse GOP firm working to undermine Iraqi PM

So basically, al-Maliki got a little rebellious under all the withering criticism, and also he won’t hand over the oil.

The next day, a major GOP firm is handed a fat contract to agitate against al-Maliki.

Coincidence? I think not.

And where would exiled former PM Allawi get that kind of money?
*cough* CIA *cough*

The lobbyists have even parked the domain name AllawiForIraq.com.

Hillary Clinton also said we should throw al-Maliki under the bus. As usual, she is on the same page with the neo-cons.

I would HATE to be al-Maliki. Worst job EVAR.
He’s surrounded by a zillion impossible catch 22s and is simply stalling.
Poor bastard.

I hope he flees before a bullet makes the decision for him.

Nick

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The Western powers, angry at being cut out of the oil money, and fearing the wave of anti-corporate sentiment would allow Iran to fall under Soviet influence, imposed crippling sanctions on Iran, plunging their people into poverty and the country into chaos. Then the UK and U.S. decided to stage a coup d’etat.

Operation Ajax, led by the CIA, deposed and imprisoned Prime Minister Mossadegh, and installed sympathetic general Fazlollah Zahedi in his place. Not only did BP retain a hold over Iran’s oil, but Shell oil and other corporations got a piece of the pie.

Imagine what could’ve happened if Mossadegh had succeeded? Democracy may have spread from Iran all over the Middle East.
We stopped democracy cold. We don’t want democracy in the region.

In 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issued an official U.S. apology to the Iranian people for the overthrow. “We deposed your democracy. Sorry about that.”

CIA documents about the coup were also released in 2000, and they contained the first use of the term “blowback.”
And man, was there major blowback from Operation Ajax. It created deep and lasting rage that led directly to the Iranian Islamic Revolution, and continues to be reflected in the body counts of U.S. troops in the various wars in the region since then.

Happy un-democracy anniversary, Iran!

Nick

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LiveScience.com
Thu Aug 9, 11:05 AM ET

New discoveries at dig sites in Middle Asia are rocking the archaeological world and redefining the origins of modern civilization.

Numerous sites in modern-day Iran and the surrounding region suggest that a vast network of societies together constituted the first cities, whose residents traded goods across hundreds of miles and forged parallel but strikingly independent cultures.

Archaeologists have thought that modern civilization began in Mesopotamia, where the large Tigris and Euphrates rivers bounded a fertile valley that nurtured an increasingly complex society.

The social structures, wealth and technologies of this society slowly spread along the Nile and then the Indus rivers in the 3rd millennium B.C.

The findings at the new sites may have shaken conventional ancient history to its very foundations, reporter Andrew Lawler told LiveScience.

“People didn’t think you could have large settlements this early without large rivers emptying into an ocean. No one knew of these sites,” said Lawler, who reported in the Aug. 3 issue of Science magazine on the key findings, which were discussed at a recent archaeological conference in Ravenna, Italy.

Full article

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At the time, the area that is now Iraq, Iran (Persia) and more was ruled by the Parthian Empire.

What was the Parthian Empire like, and how did they collide with mighty Rome?

The Parthians formed from the steppe tribes of Central Asia (for details on these tribes and their impressive contributions, you can listen to this mp3 of the Hardcore History podcast).

The Parthians rose and wrestled Persia back from Alexander the Great’s successors, and combined the martial prowess of the steppe tribes (they were unmatched horsemen) with the cultural, organizational and technological achievements inherited from the Persian empires of old. While the Parthian Empire was never as powerful, or expansive, as the Persian empires of Cyrus the Great and Darius that preceded them, or the Sassanids that followed them, they were nonetheless very formidable, and even their Roman enemies recognized they were not “barbarians,” but an advanced urban civilization to be respected and feared. Their capital was near modern Baghdad.

Coin showing King of Parthia Mithridates I

Rome even sent ambassadors and tried diplomacy with the Parthians when they weren’t attacking them. The first contact the Romans had with Parthia was around 96 BC, when they sent an envoy that negotiated the boundary between the two empires at the Euphrates. Plutarch reports that at the meeting, the Roman ambassador managed to arrogantly take the center seat at the table, and that the Parthian king quickly put his ambassador, Orobazus, to death for allowing such an affront to Parthian dignity.

The Romans did not view the Parthians, or anyone, as equals. Rome saw itself as the greatest nation ever, superior to any other empire in history, so they often viewed invading and annexing other peoples as helping them (i.e. “they will greet us as liberators!”) But, to be fair, they usually DID benefit the lands they conquered. It’s like in that Monty Python movie Life of Brian when the head of the “People’s Front of Judea” says:

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Attendee: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace – shut up!
Reg: There is not one of us who would not gladly suffer death to rid this country of the Romans once and for all.
Dissenter: Uh, well, one.
Reg: Oh, yeah, yeah, there’s one. But otherwise, we’re solid.

On the other hand, for conquered peoples, the Roman experience (even in the best case scenario) included loss of autonomy, moderate to severe brutality and religious repression, and oppressive taxation (and what I’m talking about isn’t like taxes today, it’s more like “Roman legionaries show up unannounced and loot your $#!t.”) Also, any resistance to Roman authority may be punished with you and your entire village being crucified, and full-scale revolts could end in mass deportation and genocide.

I don’t want to glorify either the Romans or Parthians, as both were incredibly brutal, and from an era where horrific violence was fairly commonplace and men slaughtered large numbers of other men up-close with swords. But we should still examine history closely and glean all the lessons we can from it.

The Parthian border was supposed to be at the Euphrates, with Armenia as sort of a buffer state between the two empires, but with Rome feeling, as the Hellenic heirs of Alexander the Great, they were entitled to his Persian conquests, plus their lust for glory and loot, peace didn’t last long.

The first major expedition directly against Parthia happened during the First Triumvirate (Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus).
Marcus Licinius Crassus was the rich consul and general who had brutally put down Spartacus’ slave revolt by crucifying all six thousand rebels and leaving them lining the road as an example. However, Pompey stole the credit and told the Senate it was his victory. This made Crassus furious, and he despised Pompey for the rest of his life. Crassus, who had made himself ruler of Syria, was not content with his incredible wealth; he had to one-up Pompey and gain more prestige and power for himself.

What was his plan? Invade Iraq.

Many members of the Senate tried to dissuade him from invading Iraq, but Caesar and Pompey stood firmly behind him and the Senate relented.

Plutarch gives us the low-down. Crassus gathered around 35,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry in Syria and crossed the Euphrates at attack Parthia. Did this work? Not so much. Despite being badly outnumbered, a Parthian force of 9,000 horse archers and 1,000 armored horsemen crushed the Romans at the Battle of Carrhae. The Parthians were one of the only foes in ancient times able to destroy an entire Roman legion at the height of its power.

How did they do this?
They were the best horsemen in the world, and they hopelessly outmaneuvered the Roman infantry. If the Romans ever chased them, they shot backwards while retreating, the famous Parthian shot. Crassus made his men assume the protective testudo (turtle) formation to block the onslaught of arrows.

But the arrows were so strong, some pierced the Roman armor. And they never ran out of ammo; they had a caravan of arrow camels there so they could reload endlessly.
But Crassus insisted on “staying the course” and not breaking formation. Then (while still bombarding them with arrows) the armored cavalry (“cataphracts“) charged, and butchered the infantry. The Romans were routed. Crassus’ son’s head was put on a pike and paraded by the Parthians. Then Crassus asked to parley with the Parthians, but when he reached their camp to discuss terms, they executed him, and kept his head as a souvenir.

The loss of Crassus was devastating. The First Triumvirate no longer existed. The delicate balance of power between the three men was shot. Without the Crassus buffer, Pompey and Caesar soon clashed, leading to civil war and Caesar crossing the Rubicon to declare himself dictator perpetuus. Crassus’ debacle in Mesopotamia was one of the final nails in the coffin of the Republic, and the birth pangs of the new Empire.

Here is a fun tidbit: the Romans lost their famous eagle flagpole standards in the battle, a grave defeat and evil omen, and it took roughly a half-century of diplomacy for them to get it back.

They finally secured it by offering a displaced Parthian king safe haven if he agreed to broker terms for the return of the standards. He did, and the Parthians exchanged the standards for a bunch of money and some concubines.
Here’s where the plot twist comes in. According to Josephus, one of the concubines traded for the eagle married the King of Parthia. She had the other heirs sent away as hostages to Rome, poisoned the King, and took the throne as Queen Musa, and ostensibly co-ruled with her son. That’s right: the only woman to ever rule Parthia was a Roman concubine! Ha!!!

Josephus says she then married her son (ew!) and this was too much, so the Parthians deposed her.

Are we Rome? Not really. America is very different, more like the British interventions in Iraq which I discussed here.

But the Iraqis are even more different today. They are carved out into separate countries, divided, weakened, stripped of their former might. What struck me the most when researching Parthia is what proud, advanced civilizations Mesopotamians have crafted over the years. The centuries of imposing Western plans on them, the lack of freedom to decide their own borders or form larger, more powerful empires is the source of much of the animosity in the region. We should lift our jackboot from their throats and allow the Iraqis the actual freedom to create a new nation.

And we should really learn from history. Attacking the Mesopotamians never works. Ever. They are a people that have never tolerated foreign conquest for any length of time.

In the next edition: more invasions of Iraq, and the fall of Rome.

Hope you’re enjoying the series!

Nick

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This testimony is riveting. She is very angry, screen-melting angry, about America invading her country. She is furious at the chaos, lack of water, and the WMD that the U.S. is using in Iraq (depleted uranium, napalm, white phosphorous). It’s such an inflammatory speech, I was initially reticent to post it here, but it is so compelling I had to. I consider her viewpoint unassailable, since she saw what’s happening in Iraq with her own eyes and we didn’t.

She says the Jewish motto “NEVER AGAIN” (never again should a people be destroyed) must extend to Iraqis too. I think this is the only moral approach.

If we’re in Iraq (supposedly for humanitarian purposes) without Iraq’s consent, isn’t that like rape, and doomed to fail?

Nick

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Check out this story from the AP wire, Iraqi Insurgents Now Fighting Each Other. It describes how some of the Sunni insurgents are turning against al-Qaida:

MUQDADIYAH, Iraq — At least two major insurgent groups are battling al-Qaida in provinces outside Baghdad, American military commanders said Friday, an indication of a deepening rift between Sunni guerrilla groups in Iraq.

U.S. officers say a growing number of Sunni tribes are turning against al-Qaida, repelled by the terror group’s sheer brutality and austere religious extremism. The tribes are competing with al-Qaida for influence and control over diminishing territory in the face of U.S. assaults, the officers say. The influx of Sunni fighters to areas outside the capital in advance of the security crackdown in Baghdad may have further unsettled the region.

The Iraqis are going to work it out. They will crush al-Qaida and inevitably find some stability. We can best accelerate this process if we stop kicking the hornet’s nest and get out of the way.

As this Staff Sgt. put it, “this is our generation’s Vietnam,” and they are caught in a civil war they can’t win.

Is it “supporting the troops” to keep them in such an untenable situation?

American commanders cite al-Qaida’s severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.

Such radicalism has fueled sectarian violence in Iraq and redrawn the demographics of many mixed Sunni-Shiite towns in Diyala, where tens of thousands of Shiites have been forced to flee large population centers.

These guys are CRAZAAAAY!! Fruit segregation is nowhere in the Koran, but evidently this is something extremist groups are pushing. Check out this video:

The Iraqi people aren’t buying what the al-Qaida types are selling; they have nothing to offer but neurotic religious stringency and authoritarianism, and almost no one wants to live under that. Al-Qaida is already being marginalized and would have no meaningful support at all if there were no Western “Crusaders” in the region to attack (antipathy toward Europeans from Medieval times runs so deep that some Arabs paint houses blue to ward off “the blue-eyed devils”).

“Iraqis are sick of foreign people coming in their country and trying to destabilize their country.” —George W. Bush
The president was jabbing at the Iranians here; he has no ability to detect the irony of saying this while commanding 160,000+.foreign people in Iraq.

We toppled Saddam, our military was victorious. Now it’s a political clash between competing factions and, unfortunately, there’s little more we can achieve other than exacerbating the violence.

It’s past time to leave Iraq! No more wasted blood and treasure, please!

But of course, guys like Congressman Don Young say you should be executed for treason if you want to pull out. How do we find solutions in that climate?

Sadly, we will likely be bogged down in Iraq for years to come.

Nick

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A camel crossing in Dubai.

In the Mideast, the new world is colliding with the ancient.

Nick

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The real T.E. Lawrence

It should almost go without saying that America is failing in Iraq today mainly due to our woeful ignorance of history and the nature of the region and its people.

We can learn a lot from the British Empire’s mistakes in their Mandate of Mesopotamia.

1) There is a natural tissue rejection of any foreign body. The Iraqis in 1919 and 1920 revolted against British rule. The Ayatollahs in Karbala and Najaf declared jihad against the English. The Kurds resisted as well. The area was only controlled with heavy bombing from the Royal Air Force and use of poison gas.

2) Subjugating people who don’t want to be subjugated is ugly. It was ugly when Saddam did it, it was ugly when the British did it, and it is ugly with our new version Subjugation 2.0 that we’re attempting today. It is immoral, and lends itself to atrocities. Facing the 1920 rebellion in Iraq, Winston Churchill wrote, “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.” And use gas on tribes they did. “gas was used against the Iraqi rebels with excellent morale effect,” Churchill said. Phosphorus bombs were also employed. The West today acts outraged that Saddam gassed the Kurds, but had no problem selling Saddam said gas, nor with gassing rebellious tribes themselves decades earlier.

3) Iraq, and Arabs, are not what people think. Iraq is a fake construct, and though Iraqis are now attached to the current territory, the borders were drawn by the British in such a way to engender instability and dependence on foreigners.

Everyone should watch Lawrence of Arabia. While it is flawed, it did win seven Oscars (including Best Picture) and it gives real insight into the turbulent birth of modern “Arabism” and the struggles with it today.

What struck me most in Lawrence of Arabia was that the concept of “Arab” is also a new construct, and an identity, to an extent, also imposed by outsiders. The line in the movie when the Bedouin chieftain Auda abu Tayi says “what’s an Arab? I am Howitat!” says it all. Not only did he not have a unified Arab national identity, he did not know what an Arab was!!! He knew only a tribal identity.

Then after Lawrence and the chieftains seized Damascus from the Ottoman Turks, the Howitat and the Harith tribes can’t agree who will control what city services. Water is offline because the Howitat who control electricity won’t coordinate with the Harith who control water and need power to run the pumps (or visa versa). “Being an Arab will be thornier than you suppose, Harith!” Auda abu Tayi says. They blame each other and despise each other. I don’t know what happens, I think they end up giving the British the water duties and eventually the Imperialists play the tribes off each other as further pretext for foreign rule, but Lawrence says “There may be honor among thieves, but there’s none in politicians” and leaves Damascus.

The Damascus situation and the failure of the independent Arab state post-WWI seems like an eerily similar forerunner of the disturbing reports coming out of Baghdad lately, with tribes in gridlock and some areas devoid of basic government services like water and trash collection because sectarians will attack anyone working for the government as a “collaborator.” One of the most powerful quotes in the movie that hits home today is when Lawrence says, “So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people – greedy, barbarous, and cruel…” and while this statement had plenty of imperialism behind it, it’s hard not to see insight in it given the current tribal bloodbath in Iraq.

Though decades of nationalist rule created a strong Iraqi identity (check out Hometown Baghdad for a great vlog by ordinary Iraqis) and many Iraqis demand the old borders and stability be maintained, much of the population seems to have reverted to the same kind of pre-national tribalism and sectarian infighting seen in Lawrence of Arabia. Once tyranny is removed, whether it be Saddam or the Ottomans toppled, Arab society seems to inexorably revert to the more basic tribal forms. When in crisis, you go with what you know.

WWI created the outlines for all the disasters that we have in the Mideast today. The British stacked up the House of Cards that was Iraq. Now the U.S. has toppled it, but doesn’t know what the cards and identities even mean as they try to stack something back up, and are probably just making it worse.

We would do well to heed the lessons of history, and abandon our fruitless quest to pacify and remake the Middle East. It’s 2007, and we should know better than to retrace British blunders.

Leave Iraq to Iraqis; it’s the only way.

“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” — George Santayana.

Nick

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The British divvied up the Ottoman Empire’s holdings and created Iraq out of the three Ottoman “vilayets” (regions) of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra. Why would they do this? If we understood why Iraq was formed, we might could answer why Iraq should remain united or break apart into three states.

Iraq today

Clearly the Brits created a lot of rage by drawing colonial borders all over West Asia, but what I’m asking is, “why did they draw Iraq’s borders the way they did?” Was it just, “hey, this is a good shape!” ????

These are the borders proposed by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) of new states from the parceling-out of the Ottoman Empire, based on sensibilities Lawrence observed talking to the local populations. This is fascinating to me.

Lawrence has most of Syria and all of Jordan and Saudi Arabia as one state under King Faisal. This makes a lot of sense given tribal patterns.

He has “Irak” defined as the Shi’ite regions of the Mesopotamian Basin, and the Sunni West as a separate state.

It’s entertaining that he puts “?” over central Iraq and a “?” over Kurdistan, lol. He didn’t know what to do with them. The only outright oddity here is a state for Armenians in Southern Turkey. wtf?

But overall Lawrence’s map would make way more sense than the current divisions. Jordan, Syria and Arabia aren’t separated unnecessarily like they are today, Shias in Iraq have their own state, etc.

Lawrence’s proposal was shot down.

My question for historians is this: why were the borders of Iraq we have today chosen vs. Lawrence’s or others? The current boundaries make no sense.

UPDATE: I got a great response from a history professor. This is what she wrote:

Nick — I’m an American historian, but I study empire, so I have some expertise to answer your excellent question. The answer is (and this may strike you as cynical) that the current borders were drawn to create instability that would require sustained British involvement in Iraq. They’d had interests in the area for a long time (Suez Canal was hugely important to the British economy), but had been held in check by the Ottoman Empire. At the end of WWI, with the Ottoman Empire in eclipse, they had the chance to expand influence in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, etc and control both the geopolitics and the economy. (Hey, they were very successful imperialists. This is what imperialists do!)

Lawrence’s plan was envisioning self-rule, which is something that the British government did not want to bestow. Their plan (see “imposition of empire game plan, version 53.0″) was to “civilize” and “modernize” the Middle East, slowly apprenticing them to the demands of life in the free capitalist Christian global marketplace and constitutional monarchy rather than sheikdoms. During so-called British Mandate period, the Brits imposed a puppet Haashemite monarchy, gave most of the land to the Sunnis, then proceeded to look for oil). Because few Arabs had the money to invest, the prime investments were purchased by the British and the money directed out of Iraq and back to Bristol, Manchester, and London.

There were also other reasons to keep all the three groups together. The plan was a regional one that would keep the warring groups of Iraq weak and focused on their internal divisions rather than going to war with Saudis, etc.

Did it work? No. Both the Shia and the Kurds fought for independence under the Brits and the Brits bombed them with phosphorous bombs (a chemical weapon — only wrong, apparently, when European or American trops are targeted). In 1941, when Iraqi Petroleum (a British corporation and subsidiary to British Petroleum, I think) interests were threatened, the Brits again shot up Iraq with troops from British India and Jordanian mercenaries. (Their own army was somewhat engaged in WWII.) The monarchy was finally overthrown in 1958 (after the British were forced to give up the Suez Canal in 1956…the post WWII empire fell apart pretty quickly.)

So…that’s the long and short of it. I’m so glad you asked something that I knew something about, as I’ve been reading you lately and really learning a lot. Nice to have something to give in return.

She is right that the British used WMD against Iraq. Winston Churchill wrote about Iraq: “I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.”

What we are coping with today in Iraq are the scars of the British Empire. They set up a fractured amalgam of a country that would, since then, be forced to rely on strongmen to achieve stability. Yet most of the Iraqi bloggers I read want the old (British) borders maintained, they don’t want Iraq redrawn and they don’t want to lose what status they had.

Iraq is changing, and unfortunately, neither the Iraqis nor the new American “managers” can predict how it will turn out.

Nick

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That’s the argument Ron Silver famously made at the ‘04 Republican National Convention (old video).

It’s the argument I hear over and over from Bush apologists.

Prediction: it’s the argument that rightist politicians will be pitching throughout the ‘08 election cycle, which (lamentably) is rolling ahead full-bore already in spring ‘07.

And it isn’t true.

Here’s how a friend framed it. He actually makes a respectable case here, and I give him props for the cogent argument.

But Nick, my whole point is…what does it matter what our Health Care system is if we’re facing the same type of suicide bombing campaign IN AMERICA that they’ve had in Israel, or God forbid in Iraq?

You don’t understand me…I’m a liberal. I’m not a right-wing asshole. But what good is liberalism if we don’t have a world to practice it in??

I’m also very pro-the world existing, always have been.

I don’t want us to throw up our hands and let terrorist cells metastasize all over the world, no president would allow that. Don’t believe the straw men that right-wingers keep building to scare you; it’s false.

I took a class in American foreign policy in college (which by no means makes me an expert, but does mean I know slightly more than the other bloggers) and in reading the books what struck me most was that American foreign policy has changed remarkably little in the last 100 years (I’m fascinated by this stuff). Don’t believe the hype; whoever has accepted the weighty mantle of commander-in-chief has acted very consistently to intervene overseas for U.S. interests (in the study of foreign policy, this school of thought, that the role determines things more than its occupant, is called Role Theory) . President McKinley annexed Guam, the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Theodore Roosevelt built the Panama Canal, decided the U.S. could unilaterally intervene in Latin America, and sent The Great White Fleet circumnavigating the globe to show off American military might. William Howard Taft toppled a regime he didn’t like in Nicaragua and installed a puppet. Woodrow Wilson threw U.S. troops into World War I. Franklin D. Roosevelt brought us into WW2. Truman nuked Japan and invaded Korea. Eisenhower intervened in Vietnam and LBJ surged over 550,000 troops into the war. Reagan intervened in Lebanon, Grenada and Central America. Bush Sr. invaded Kuwait, Clinton continued bombing Saddam and launched Operation Desert Fox, as well as toppling Serbia.

My point (aside from thinking we really need to reevaluate whether we want to continue the 100 years of near-perpetual warfare) is that U.S. presidents have been consistently interventionist for a century (mostly for good motives) and you should not expect that to stop on a dime in another Democratic administration.

Why have American presidents, no matter what the person is like, or what he has promised, implemented consistently similar foreign policy? Because they have the same foreign policy equipment (the same Joint Chiefs of Staff, the same Armed Forces, the same CIA, the same intelligence data) that doesn’t change from the previous administration. So …

1) Whoever is president will respond similarly and do whatever it takes to protect us. No president wants to be remembered as allowing catastrophic consequences, and (from what history has shown) will likely err on the side of over-intervening, not isolationism.

2) What is the greatest threat to the lives of our citizenry, really? We lost over 3,000 Americans to terrorism on 9/11, which is horrible, but we lose 600,000 Americans every year to cancer alone (source). Lance Armstrong is involved in the National Commission on Cancer Survivorship, and they have found that at least 200,000 of those deaths are totally preventable with existing treatments, but are not treated (given basic chemotherapy) because our health care system is so lame (Armstrong discusses this near the end of this interview). Our wasteful, greedy culture is devastating our population in this area. It’s not hard to see health care is a huge threat, arguably the most important.

Also, I follow Jewish theology in saying that doing mitzvos, doing good, the spiritual quest for righteousness is the most important overriding goal of life, and if we do good, we can never truly be destroyed, where conversely, doing bad, bad motives, bad faith, will ultimately cancel out perceived gains. We can bomb every Iraqi village (or, as one poster suggested to me, nuke the Sunni triangle and nuke Iran) and satisfy our fear momentarily, but if we’ve sold our soul by tossing our moral code to commit such acts, what good will it do long-term? It would come back on us. We are only a great country because we are good. If we are not scrupulously good, we will never be great; karma won’t allow it.

3) What kind of society are we protecting from terrorism? This gets right back to the heart of my earlier post about the social contract. What if we wake up and realize the society we’re defending is a society that says “screw you if you’re sick! if you can’t pay, you die!”? The Army Times is reporting that soldiers coming home wounded are being deliberately shortchanged on their disability classifications to save money. The big picture is that right now our government, our society is fundamentally unrighteous, spiritually sick, and needs to be transformed. We agree to form a government and allow it to rule so we can ensure life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, and when a people fail at this and injustice is rampant, change is the top priority.

The Hebrew prophets always stressed this point, and were far harsher than I am in putting a return to righteousness ahead of national defense (in fact I can’t find a single prophet who didn’t do this). The Nevi’im (prophets) make people really uncomfortable (sometimes even me). They are in your face and get in your business. I want to be more moderate than Jeremiah here, who insisted that forsaking idolatry was the only overriding concern and wrote that we had to check ourselves, even if it took invasion by Babylonians (which he believed we deserved) to make us see we’re not keeping our end of the covenant and need to check ourselves. Of course Jeremiah was tortured and imprisoned several times by the ruling elite for saying this (the true prophets, from Abraham to Moses to Jeremiah are always against the ruling elite, and you should be too).

As predicted, Jeremiah saw Babylon conquer Israel in his lifetime. I don’t think we deserved 9/11, and Babylon isn’t going to militarily defeat us, but repentance is always a good idea, and it can’t be insignificant that now America has invaded Babylon, a spiritual Babylon (idolatry, moral anarchy, survival of the fittest) has invaded America at the same time. This is the premise of another great social justice blog by my friend Y-Love, ThisIsBabylon.net.

Anyway, I don’t think it’s at all radical or off-base to suggest that the means of defense is less crucial than what it is we’re defending. It’s just common sense. The type of society we are, correcting injustice, eschewing idolatry, these are the chief goals in my worldview. And given the growing inequity in health care harming more and more Americans, and killing more than terrorism, it’s no surprise that voters now list universal health care as their top domestic priority (Health Care Top Domestic Concern: Poll).

Expect to hear a lot on TV that war is all that matters, a lot of scare tactics. But it’s not true.

To recap:

1) Whoever is president will respond similarly and do whatever it takes to protect us.
2) Inequity in health care is killing more Americans than terrorism.
3) The overall social contract is the most important, and it is broken.

Isn’t building the riches in our vault just as important (if not moreso) than the Army guarding it?

Rebuild. Renew. Fulfill.

Nick

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Thoughts on a “regional conflagration” in Iraq. Also, Israel in the spotlight

Your foreign policy forecast for 2007: Iraq will be partly cloudy with a high chance of scattered shrapnel, and heavy sectarian bloodshed expected to the north, south, east and west of Baghdad.

Earlier this month, the nation was abuzz about the findings of the Iraq Study Group (AKA the Baker-Hamilton Commission). Now people have largely quieted down for the holiday season and are waiting while President Bush takes months to figure out what Iraq strategy to use for the rest of his tenure. Meanwhile, simmering civil war is filling the power vacuum we created in Iraq, and we just passed the grim milestone of losing more Americans in Iraq than in the 9/11 attacks.

In case anyone is wondering, here’s my take.

The Baker-Hamilton report basically says this: “the war thingy in Iraq is a massive debacle. The best we can hope for now is achieving some modicum of stability and prevent a ‘regional conflagration’ engulfing the whole Mideast. We’re not sure how to achieve that or if we can even affect the outcome anymore, but we recommend removing combat brigades and focusing more troops, more intensively on training the Iraqi military.”

Iraq is a foreign policy disaster of unprecedented proportions.

The Iraq Study Group also put forth some ideas on the Israeli peace issue that had Jewish bloggers on edge. Former Secretary Baker is suggesting a peace deal in Iraq be linked to a “grand bargain” that gives Palestinians a state and gives the Golan Heights to Syria.

Let’s go deeper and look at the machinations behind all this. When I browsed the Arab blogosphere a few months ago, I saw a Lebanese dude venting that when the U.S. went to war with Iraq in 1991, in return for cooperation in the war, (then Secretary of State) Baker gave Syria the green light to occupy Lebanon. When Syria didn’t prove helpful in the 2003 war in Iraq, that tacit approval for controlling Lebanon expired, and the Syrian puppet regime was overthrown. Arab bloggers saw the hand of the CIA, etc. all over it (and I have no reason to doubt them). I think we’re seeing Baker do the same exact thing here (remember that past actions are indicative of future results). In return for cooperation in the Iraq war, Baker is offering Syria the Golan (and Lebanon?)

I haven’t blogged about “an existential threat” to Israel though, because I think this stuff is just maneuvering and something Israel will never let happen. Israel has the most advanced military in the region and won’t allow something unless they have agreed to all the specifics. My dream would be some sort of peace deal that gives Syrians access to the Golan while at the same time a deal is made to ensure Israeli security, and Israelis and Syrians would be hugging and making smores around a campfire, though I doubt that will happen. And despite the panicking, I doubt the Israelis will ever agree to something that’ll mean their own demise either. We’re not talking about stupid people here.

BUT

That old guys in smoky back rooms are divvying up land to different powers without consulting the people who live on that land, acting like Imperialist bastards, I find ABHORRENT. And I think most people in the Middle East find this kind of “return of colonial deal-making” distasteful at best and worthy of insurrection at worst.

On the Iraq front, Syrian (read: Ba’ath Party) involvement in Iraq would also entail re-Baathification, which has Iraq’s Kurdish President rejecting the report outright.

We have no good options here. Shutting out the Ba’ath party (much of the Sunnis) from the power structure means further revolt by the Sunni tribes. And letting Baathists back into the power structure means further revolt by the Shias and Kurds.

I think these plans put forth by the Iraq Study Group, and the plans floated by Bush, by McCain, and all sides, are very lame, and would have only helped had they implemented them in 2004. This thing has gone so far, is so beyond out of control, and these mindless politicos are at least 2 years behind.

Bush and McCain’s plan for 20,000 troops? Iraq Study Group’s plan for more training / less combat? I’m like “please.” The Right-wing is labeling Baker and Hamilton “surrender monkeys,” but the report doesn’t offer anything as decisive as surrender, nor a sweeping plan that would actually mean victory.

This is SO beyond small adjustments. You would need a gigantic change like 400,000 additional troops, or a huge multi-national peacekeeping force like some Arab monarchs have suggested, or to pull the hell out, and even these huge changes would be unlikely to put out a wildfire the size of Iraq.

These guys are disconnected from reality.

Does anyone actually expect the same Bush regime that the Iraq Study Group revealed has staffed our 1,000-man embassy in Baghdad with only 6 Arabic-speakers, to be able to right this ship, that ran aground into civil war and capsized years ago? How do we win a civil war? Do we pick sides?

Saudi Arabia and Jordan are openly stating they’ll intervene and arm Sunnis to kill Shias if the U.S. pulls out, while Iran is arming the Shias.

Saudis tell Cheney they’ll intervene

Iraq may become the main front in a world war between Sunnis and Shias, a battle against Persian ambitions along the sectarian faultlines in Iraq. That’s what the Baker-Hamilton report meant by fears of a “regional conflagration” engulfing the whole Mideast. And it’s bad news. Very bad.

In 2007 you’ll see this emerge, and you’ll see the U.S. increasingly blame the Iraqis for what’s happened since WE dismantled the indigenous regime and dissolved the stable water, nutrition, electricity and security they had and turned the Sunni-Shia political food chain upside down. We committed a GRAAAAAVE error. DAMN this world is messed up.

I’ll continue blogging about it here in 2007. I’ve got lots of time to ponder these difficult issues.

Nick

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“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” — George Santayana

Steven Pressfield recently wrote an in-depth piece on Iraq, Why We Will Never See Democracy in the Middle East. His main thesis that we are operating in Iraq while largely ignorant of
its culture and history is something our leadership needs to hear badly, and his statement that “to understand the nature of the enemy in the Middle East and to evaluate the prospects for democracy and peace, we need to extend our gaze not five years into the past, but five hundred and even five thousand” is very true. History couldn’t be more relevent right now. It’s clear our leaders, invading a country totally unrelated to 9/11 with some broad verbal brushstrokes and comments like Trent Lott’s: “Why do Sunnis kill Shiites? How do they tell the difference? They all look the same to me,” are woefully ignorant of the Middle East.

Pressfield, who recently penned two books about Alexander the Great’s campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, draws upon his knowledge of the East-West clash back then to draw conclusions about the conflict today, and concludes the worldview of tribalism and the tribesman is simply
irreconcilable with worldview of democracy and the citizen. And this is completely unrelated to religion. Pressfield’s citizen vs. tribesman formulation has some major flaws (Arabs aren’t the only
ones with a tribal mentality, anyone remember Hatfield and McCoy?) and we know that
any culture, no matter how tribal, can develop democratic institutions. But the argument is fascinating, and has some valid and very important aspects: mainly, it’s very apparent that Western pluralism and capitalism is incompatible with tribalism. The tribesman, as Pressman points out, owes loyalty only to his tribe and group, not a nation-state. He has no interest in a corporate economy of working for rich guys; he works for his family and tribe only, and his livelihood is
primarily goat and camel-based. The American right-wing made a miscalculation of historic proportions when they preemptively invaded Iraq on the premise that we would be “greeted as liberators” like when we liberated Holland from the Nazis in WWII. It is a laudable goal to want to overthrow tyrants and liberate people, but Holland had a centuries-old liberal tradition they were yearning to revert back to; Arab tribesmen don’t have Western values and aren’t particularly interested in them, nor should we expect them to want them. They certainly won’t come to Western values by the sword, and if we would learn from history, we would know Alexander and the Greeks couldn’t convert pre-Islamic Mesopotamia into Hellenized citizens even though they put much more direct effort into the project than we are, British colonialism couldn’t convert Islamic Mesopotamia to Western values no matter what they tried, and on and on. Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Study the interactive flash map above of the history of Imperial conquest in the Mideast. It’s a fantastic resource and really puts the current conflicts into a wider perspective.

What drew my attention in the animated map are:
First, empires expanding to massive proportions, encompassing many diverse cultures through force, then collapsing. We should see what’s coming.

Second, the colonial borders creating artificial nation-states in the 20th century! OMG! Am I the only one that sees this is causing the bulk of the Mideast’s problems? What we’re seeing now is the violent cramping from a century of colonialist border constipation. We’re experiencing the severe, severe consequences of the British Empire arbitrarily drawing crayon borders on their colonial “holdings” all over the globe without regard to natural ethnic and regional divisions. Enclosing people who have little in common and hate each other into the same country is not a good idea. It means violence. I talked about this in my last blog on Iraq.

Random crayoning in of Kurds, Sunnis and Shias into the artificial country of Iraq leads to a bad situation that has never functioned without a brutal tyrant holding it together. Before Saddam, it was another despot, and before that, a British-installed monarch. As we speak, Iraq is rapidly and violently breaking down into three nations. With the tribal mentality, Shia militias are going, “are you my tribe? (Shia)? Oh, you aren’t?” *SHOOTS YOU IN THE HEAD*

And visa versa with Sunni vs. Shia. It’s no coincidence that the most mixed area of Iraq, Baghdad, is also the bloodiest.

The newly adopted Iraqi constitution creates ethnic regions with basically all the power, and federal authority has few powers, so the groundwork for new nation-states has been laid. I’ve heard people moaning that the Iraqi Prime Minister isn’t stopping the violence, but how can he if the constitution gives him little power? The constitution was like a divorce document and armistice accord between the three factions. We already have, for all intents and purposes, an independent Kurdistan. We may end up, after a few more decades of bloodshed, with an independent Sunnistan and Shiastan.

In Afghanistan, the same problem of walling in completely different ethnic groups with random British crayon borders is creating constant violence today.

Iraqis aren’t greeting us with flowers, they’re greeting us like this. The latest polls show that 65 percent of Baghdad residents want an immediate pullout of U.S. forces (Washington Post).

If we really wanted democracy, we’d lean on all the Arab nations to allow a pan-Arab referendum. I bet Arab tribesmen would overwhelmingly vote to dissolve colonial boundaries and revert back to some sort of pan-Arab Caliphate, just as Holland yearned to revert back to what they were familar with, democracy, post-Nazi occupation. But we love propping up the oil monarchies who enforce the old British borders to preserve their reason for existing, so we would never sincerely push real voter freedom in the Middle East. And Bush has no new plan to hold together Iraq, nor the additional troops needed to actually hold territory, so it will continue to dissolve along sectarian lines, with the Shia region already a client state of Iran. Great work, Bush!

The Galbraith plan that I discussed in my last blog on Iraq, addresses the three factions and the reality on the ground of three new nations violently forming. Unfortunately, our leaders will not discuss any other plan besides “stay the course” of aimless bloodshed, but a new Iraq is emerging either way.

Another thing that popped out at me on the animated map was Israel. Jews have lived in Israel throughout 2000-years of foriegn domination. The most famous Jewish Kabbalistic scholarship was in Safed, Israel in the 16th century, where many fled after the 1492 explusion from Spain. The Jews established the Middle East’s first printing press there in 1578. The Jerusalem Talmud was written by Jews in Jerusalem in the 2nd century. Not too long prior to that we built the second Temple and a Jew named Jesus walked the Earth. The Jews have had a presence in Israel long before the mass Jewish immigrations of the 1890s and 1940s. We’ve always been in our ancestral homeland, Israel, and always will be, notwithstanding all the “expel the Jews” BS. The difference is that Jews are now a self-governing majority, since such a huge population fled the Holocaust and previous Russian explusions, whereas before, as the map so vividly illustrates, Jews in Israel were governed under the boot of the Assyrian Empire, Babylonian Empire, Persian Empire, Roman Empire, Greek Empire, the Caliphate and half a dozen huge Muslim Empires, the Crusaders, then the Ottomans, then the British Empire. Jews, especially the Orthodox, are wary of relying on the colonial powers. Yet miraculously, our tiny tribe has survived and kept our identity despite all that and the recent mass Holocaust. We’ll live on. Like our cousins, the Arabs, we are also very tribal, and will continue to cling to our tribal homeland. I identify with those Iraqis caught in another conflict with a superpower. May peace come to ALL PEOPLES of the world very soon.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Nick

Filed under: Politics and Government

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You can read the full text of the speech here at the Vatican web site.

That the Pope trying to argue against forced conversion and for rationality and peace gets such an irrational backlash from the Muslim world just makes me angry at the Muslim world.

Those seeking to inflame the Arab street pulled “Islam is evil and inhuman” from the speech, totally out of context. And just awful reactions have happened.

Italian nun slain in Somalia, Pope link speculation

Five Palestinian area churches attacked

Isn’t religious and intellectual freedom of expression without fear of getting murdered, a very important thing?

Where are the moderate voices within Islam? Do they exist?

There’s no way for me to relate to this.

Like the protest of the Mohammed cartoons:

Yeah, “behead those who say Islam is violent!” kinda proves the accusations that you’re violent.

Dear Islamic world: Rioting and killing whenever anyone criticizes you is way, way worse defamation of Muslims than any cartoon or speech could ever be.

Just stop it.

Love,

Nick

Filed Under: Torah Insights and Religion

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The last century, 1900-2000, was “the communism century” and was defined by the USA vs. USSR struggle. Now the world is no longer bi-polar, the only pole left is the US, and in place of a conflict between nation-states, we have clashing cultures and ideologies. A rising tide of religious fervor, among Muslims, Christians and Jews, is increasingly overrunning the dominant soulless corporate culture. The 21st century is “the religion century,” but where that will lead us is highly unpredictable.

What we do know is this: in response to the overwhelming bleakness and falseness of our ever-more-materialistic world, people are rapidly becoming more devout. The old paths have failed us, and people want something more.

The latest American Jewish Committee report shows young Jews (ages 18-29) have double the percentage identifying as Orthodox than their older counterparts (now up to 1 in 6) and given birth patterns (Orthodox women often have 4 or more babies), Torah Judaism will only increase its influence, and in new, vibrant ways. See Y-Love’s analysis of this study here.

We’re seeing similar intensification in Christiandom. This week there is a new Baylor study out on American faith, and though it is severely flawed (people obviously believe G-d has more than one attribute for crying out loud!) it still offers a fascinating snapshot of America’s evolving religious fabric (click here). Reporters have been covering the explosion of fundamentalist, non-denominational “mega-churches” with thousands of members who are increasing the influence of born-again theology to a degree no one expected. And for the Catholics, the only groups seeing significant growth right now are on the fundamentalist side.

On a smaller scale, there is also a rise in Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, Odinism and other forms of paganism.

Americans are soul-searching.

Y-Love’s blog has done a great job covering this. Explaining why more and more people are turning to the spiritual, he points out that:

We’re living in a society thick with despair, and more disconnected from each other in daily life than ever before. Americans work more and more hours than any other people on earth, go home alone, veg out on fake corporate food and culture, rinse and repeat. In this rat race culture, devoid of much meaning and largely disconnected from religious traditions, if you don’t give us something hardcore, something with deep meaning and deep connection to G-d that cuts through all the BS, we don’t want it.

I saw an OpEd in the wake of the capture of American John Walker Lindh for fighting with the Taliban, and it said we young people want extreme everything, extreme sports, extreme products and extreme religion. While this has a kernel of truth, it misses the why and what entirely. Today’s young people are sinking in this mushy, mishmosh morass of American culture, and something real with absolute answers is incredibly appealing. But it’s exactly because of this absolutism that many people react so negatively to it. They shouldn’t. We all must learn to “get it.”

In the Arab world, in the face of tyranny and exploitation, young people have turned en masse to extreme Islam with an utopian vision. And they aren’t that different from Americans turning to hardcore religion, despite our leadership’s cluelessness of either.

In short, this IS “the religion century.” Studying theology has never been more important. Theology departments are going to be overflowing.

And those without answers to life’s big questions will be increasingly left behind. That is, in a way, very scary, but it is true, and that’s why it’s more critical than ever before to aggressively foster deep, G-d connected, peace-loving humanism within Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Nick

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