Abu Aardvark

2004-01-07T22:10:00.000-05:00

It's official...

Abu Aardvark has moved.

The new URL is http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/

Find me there, and update your links!

2004-01-07T13:09:00.000-05:00

Attention everyone: the aardvark has now begun the process of moving. I should be up and running over at Typepad very soon. I'll still be tinkering with the design and content for a while, but all new posts will be at Abu Aardvark courtesy of Typepad. Please update your links and your reading, and enjoy the new RSS feed! Many, many thanks to Jeanne D'Orleans and everyone else for their advice and help on this!

2004-01-06T11:33:00.000-05:00

Shorter David Brooks: Anyone who thinks Dick Cheney played a role in taking the US to war against Iraq is anti-Semitic.

Slightly Longer David Brooks: many people believe that the neocons are an intelligent, highly effective group. As their representative on the New York Times op-ed page, it is my job to prove that we are neither.

2003-12-23T09:28:00.000-05:00

Blogging will be light until early January. Have a great holiday season!

2003-12-22T07:18:00.000-05:00

On Saturday I suggested that Libya would pose a test of intellectual integrity to the supporters of the application of the "Bush Doctrine" in Iraq. The Bush doctrine declared that war with Iraq was necessary because international inspections could not guarantee American security against the threat of WMD in the hands of rogue regimes, and that only regime change to a democratic system could provide such security. In the case of Libya, the rather clearly non-democratic regime of Moammar Qadaffi remains in place, with a promise to allow international inspections to verify the country's surrender of its WMD. In other words, Libya is fairly clearly a repudiation of the Bush doctrine, not its vindication. The test of intellectual integrity, therefore, was this: would advocates of the Bush doctrine in Iraq attack Bush for violating his doctrine in Libya by dealing with a dictator and relying on inspections, or would they praise Bush out of partisan loyalty?

The results that I've seen so far? Unsurprising. Bill Safire leads the partisanship brigade, celebrating Libya as a vindication of him and his "fellow Wilsonian idealists" (!). The reliably hawkish Washington Post joins in, as does the Wall Street Journal and the National Review (come on - at the very least, Michael Ledeen, scourge of the "terror masters," has to hold the line, right? We'll see). Andrew Sullivan ("Gaddafi made the decision as the coalition invaded Iraq. Hmmm. Maybe Howard Dean would have sent Warren Christopher instead."), Glenn Reynolds, and Dan Drezner fell happily in line. Tacitus too, although he at least reserved some anger about Bush's continuing to deal with a dictator. That's about as far down the right wing food chain as I care to go.

In fairness, it's important to distinguish two arguments - the "hawk" argument and the Wilsonian argument. The hawk argument couldn't care less about regime change or democracy, it simply suggests that expressing strength pays off. The Wilsonian argument is the one that cares about democracy and regime change. Libya can be plausibly - incorrectly, I think, except at the margins, but plausibly - claimed for the hawks, but not for the Wilsonians. I seem to remember an awful lot of Iraq war supporters reinventing themselves as Wilsonians after WMD failed to turn up in Iraq ("this was never about nukes for me, it was about bringing democracy to the Iraqi people"), who now suddenly appear as reborn hawks. But these are differences that make a real difference, and sliding back and forth between them when convenient is intellectually sloppy.

I guess six months ago really is ancient history - remember, your arguments are only weapons with which to attack your enemies, and should be abandoned when no longer useful. Partisan advantage is everything.

2003-12-20T07:48:00.000-05:00

Not really here this weekend, but just a quick note on the Libyan announcement about its WMD programs. Three things:

First, this is definitely a positive development, one which would help to strengthen multilateral arms control as a way of providing for international security. Libya has long been identified as one of the states which has resisted such transparency, and has often described the international regime against the proliferation of WMD as a conspiracy by the powerful to keep the weak weak. Its acceptance, even rhetorically, of the legitimacy of the prohibition is a positive step to be rewarded and built upon.

Second, that said, it isn't an enormously big deal, in that Libya has not posed any real threat for a long time. Libya has been trying very hard to get out of the "rogue" game for many years, and this is only the latest gambit in its efforts to do so. Libyan cooperation with the Lockerbie investigation has been the leading edge of Qaddafi's drive for international rehabilitation, a drive which has included largely getting out of the terrorism business.

Third, and following from the second point, this doesn't have that much to do with the Iraq war and doesn't really represent the vindication for hawkish approaches to rogue regimes that is being claimed. I can understand why the Bush team wants to make this claim, and it isn't the stupidest claim they've ever made, but it doesn't really fit the facts. As I noted above, Libya has been seeking international rehabilitation for a number of years, desperate to get rid of the UN sanctions, and has been aggressively pursuing it via the Lockerbie investigation for several years. This fairly obviously means that the new Libyan approach can not be a result of the Iraq war, since the new approach predates that war (and the Bush administration).

So, final score: good news for multilateral arms control, a positive step towards integrating a 'rogue' regime back into international society, but not really evidence in favor of the Iraq war. Compare the British spin to the American spin, and you'll see what I mean.

Let's be clear: what Bush has accomplished here is to get Libya to accept exactly the kind of robust international inspections which his administration roundly denounced as useless in Iraq - while leaving Qaddafi in power, after insisting in Iraq that only a regime change could possibly guarantee security. In other words, this 'success' in Libya is a direct repudiation of everything which the Bush team argued for in Iraq, and a vindication of his multilateralist arms control critics.

Does this hurt Dean and the Dems? Not if you think about it rationally, rather than in partisan terms. Bringing Libya into a global nonproliferation regime would make America safer - which is a victory for multilateral arms control, which Dean, Clark, and most Dems support, and which Bush opposes. This also poses a bit of an intellectual test for the administration's supporters: intellectual consistency vs partisanship. Since the Libya announcement contradicts the hawkish regime change approach to arms control, does the hawkish right attack it, or do they support it out of partisanship for Bush? I haven't gone looking to see the answer to this, but it's an interesting test.

UPDATE: This Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler piece in the Post, which I just read after writing this post, makes many of the same points in more detail - definitely worth reading.

2003-12-18T12:03:00.000-05:00

I know this is silly, because if you can read this then the complaint goes away, but.... why oh why does my latest post (the one about MEMRI) appear in the blogger page, but not on the actual blog? This is exactly why I'm thinking of switching to a different host... thanks for the suggestions I've received so far - I'd still love to hear from more people about where I should go and why.

2003-12-18T10:08:00.000-05:00

MEMRI, again. Here's one small example of what's wrong with MEMRI, and why it matters for non-Arabic speakers attempting to understand Arab opinion: the reporting of Abd al-Bari Atwan's December 15 editorial in al-Quds al-Arabi.

Here's what MEMRI says about it: "While most newspapers reported the act of Saddam's capture in detail, there are beginning to emerge "conspiracy theories." Abd Al-Bari Atwan, the Editor-in-Chief of Al-Quds Al-Arabi and a loyalist of Saddam Hussein, wrote that the arrest of Saddam "without resistance, hiding in a small and filthy hole, was most likely a theatre and a finely woven hatching operation.""

Here's what Claudia Winkler of the Weekly Standard said about the same editorial (although I have to admit some skepticism about how she came across it while browsing the Arabic press - if she does read Arabic, I'm quite impressed, but otherwise she might be a little more candid about where she found the translation) : "In the space of three short paragraphs, the writer--editor in chief Abd-al-Bari Atwan--goes from the grossest conspiracy theory about the Americans' "staged" capture of Saddam to a disarming admission that none other than "democracy, equality, transparency, and an independent justice system" are prerequisites for a restoration of Arab dignity. Here is the passage (dated December 15):
"We realize that the Iraqi president's appearance--with matted hair and ragged clothes--was extremely humiliating because no one expected him to be captured alive and without resistance, hiding in a small, filthy hole. More than likely, it was staged as a carefully crafted operation to mislead people. We have only heard the American story, more accurately, what the American military wanted us to hear. We will need more time for the dust to settle and for some parts of the real picture to emerge. The capture of Saddam Hussein could be a blessing for many Iraqis, especially those who suffered as a result of his injustice and oppression. But it could come back to haunt the Americans invaders. The Iraqis, and especially those who have collaborated with the occupation, are greatly distressed. Some of them have justified their silence, and even their collaboration, saying that they feared Saddam Hussein's return to power. How will they justify themselves now? These are momentous events, perhaps the most important days in the history of the Arab and Muslim community. They hold important lessons. We must learn these lessons if we truly desire a better future. First and foremost among these lessons is that justice, democracy, equality, transparency, and an independent justice system are the basic prerequisites for any real movement toward progress and the restoration of the community's dignity."

Gee, that's a big difference, huh? Wacky conspiracy talk aside, Atwan is actually using his op-ed to put in a powerful appeal for the rule of law, democracy, and equality, in the service of creating a better Iraq. You'd think that MEMRI would want to report such an exciting contribution, huh? No, of course not.

Of course, Winkler isn't totally right either. She reads the passage above as evidence that Saddam's capture has created a "teachable moment" in the Arab world - if even someone as radical as Abd al-Bari Atwan is saying such things now, then it must be true that the invasion of Iraq really is spreading liberalism into the Arab world!

The only problem with this inference, though, is that Atwan has been saying things like this for a long, long time. Al Quds al Arabi is indeed a powerful voice for a radically-tinged Arabism - one which has been consistently critical, often brutally so, of the authoritarian and repressive Arab regimes. It has always combined its hostility to American foreign policy with an equally searing critique of Arab regimes. Is Atwan (or al Quds al Arabi) a beacon of Jeffersonian democracy that would warm the cockles of Tom Friedman's heart? No, not really. But in terms of criticizing Arab autocracy, Atwan's paper is an old hand, and what he said in the editorial above offers little support for Winkler's claim that Saddam's arrest is the trigger for a new openness.

2003-12-17T10:53:00.000-05:00

Not to the change the subject, but have you ever tried to imagine what goes on in Milwaukee Brewer strategy sessions?

"Sir, sir, we have a real problem! We have a player who hit 45 home runs last year, played every game, and - worst of all - he's only 28 years old! We'd better trade him right now!"

"Trade him? But what if we get good players in return?"

"You're right - that's a real danger. We'll have to be sure to take the first offer anyone makes us - and good god, man, don't negotiate!"

"Hey, here's an offer! Arizona wants to give us a washed up utility infielder, an injured second baseman who looks like a one year wonder, a first baseman who couldn't win the job from Mark Grace, and a pitcher with a bum elbow who won two games last year."

"Yes, yes, that's good - but do any of them have any potential?"

"Of course not, sir - what are you paying me for? To find *good* players?"

"Right, right - I trust you, of course. Do the deal... but first, make sure that that second baseman really is injured!"

Oh, the humanity.

2003-12-17T09:33:00.000-05:00

The new American Arabic language satellite station is coming soon. As I've argued many times, this isn't a particularly good or useful idea. An American-run station won't have much credibility, especially if - as is almost certain - its content comes under scrutiny from partisan groups in Washington. It will be seen as propaganda by most of its target audience - an audience of Arabs which is highly attuned to propaganda and conditioned to expect it from state-run media.

The station's backers draw inspiration from the "success" of Radio Sawa - "Executives of the broadcasting board said they were heartened that Radio Sawa, a youth-oriented radio station that mixes Western and Eastern pop and was also supposedly doomed, had built an audience of at least 15 million throughout the Middle East." But Radio Sawa's "success" reflects the nature of the radio band market - there just weren't very many (okay, any) decent pop music stations in most of the Arab world, which allowed Sawa to fill a niche. And that niche is purely entertainment, not news or politics - I've yet to see any evidence whatsoever that Sawa has had any success in the latter arenas. The TV station - al-Hurra - will not find such an available market niche. The Arabic television market is already saturated with both entertainment and news programming - not just al Jazeera, but a whole array of other competitors. Al Hurra is unlikely to be able to compete, and certainly isn't going to find the kind of opening that Sawa could.

Al Hurra reflects some basic pathologies in the American approach to American public opinion. One is the "subliminal fallacy," of which Sawa is the epitome - the idea that rather than try and persuade Arabs rationally, we should seduce them with pop culture and then change their minds without their even realizing it. That's great for an advertising agency, but is deeply unworthy as an approach to foreign policy. Another fallacy is what I call the "peekaboo fallacy" - the idea that if we ignore something, then it doesn't exist (when my cub covers her eyes, she thinks that I can't see her - adorable in a cub, less adorable in a superpower). Al Jazeera and al Arabiya matter, whether we like them or not, and ignoring them or insulting them only increases their influence. Another fallacy is the "my football" fallacy - based on the mature idea that "if you won't let me be quarterback, then I'll take the football and start my own game somewhere else." This one isn't very cute when kids do it, and it isn't any cuter when a superpower does it.

It would be far better to work with the existing Arab media than to try and start up a competition. Why? Because it is that media which largely sets the agenda of Arab politics today, and ignoring it or trying to bypass it largely avoids the real issue. The real issue is that Arab public opinion makers largely believe that the United States - or at least the Bush administration - does not take their views seriously and has no interest in understanding their interests or concerns. Al Hurra is exactly the sort of thing which confirms those views, and which will drive the wedge between the United States and Arab public opinion even deeper.

To be fair, starting al Hurra isn't a disaster. It probably can't hurt that the station is out there, and it might even become something worthwhile against the odds. The greater concern is the opportunity costs - what is being foregone to pay for this expensive operation which is unlikely to produce much of a payoff? It's more likely to be an expensive and useless boondoggle, which distracts the US from doing what would actually work - which, I suppose, is one definition of disaster.

2003-12-17T07:54:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking about moving from Bloggerstan to someplace else - either to Movable Type or else maybe to BloggerProStan, or even somewhere more (or less) exotic. But I'm a bit worried about how difficult and time consuming it's going to be, what with links and constructing the template and moving the archives and all that. And I haven't a clue how much it costs. Could anyone out there who has made such a move email me and give me a sense of how hard it was to move, and whether it was worth it?

2003-12-16T16:12:00.000-05:00

Kieran Healy, ever the trendsetter, sets out his list of books that he did not read this year. Allow Mr Healy to explain: "As 2003 draws to a close, it’s time for me to reflect on all of the great books I did not read this year. This has been a particularly good year for not reading books. I would go so far as to say that there are more books I did not read this year than in any year in the recent past. Although a significant part of my job consists in sitting somewhere and reading something, I have still managed to find the time not to read a very wide range of material from many different fields. In special cases, I have bought the book and then not read it. Mostly, though, I did not get around to even doing that. I thought I would present my ten favorite nonfiction books I did not read this year. I hope that they will not deepen your knowledge or broaden your mind in 2004, as they didn’t with me."

In solidarity, the aardvark's own list of books that I did not read this year.

Jonathen Lethem, Fortress of Solitude. I had looked forward to not reading this book for quite a while, and once Mrs Aardvark gave up halfway through, I was even more eager to not read this fictional delight.

Queen Noor's Leap of Faith. As someone who has been interested in Jordan for a long time, this book topped my list of books to not read this year. This book no doubt tells a wonderful story of marriage into a royal family and a woman's struggles to be accepted in her new country. And it probably gives some juicy details about palace intrigues in the Hashemite court, and perhaps even some insights into the last days of King Hussein. Probably.

Joseph Braude, The New Iraq. Written by a "Middle East expert" who had never visited Iraq, and whose fluent Arabic allowed him to consult a full three Arabic language sources (okay, I peeked at the bibliography), and endorsed prominently by James Woolsey, this book promised to offer a bold and completely unrealistic but cheerfully optimistic blueprint for a post-Saddam era. When the Bush administration demonstrated that it had given virtually no thought to a post-Saddam Iraq, and then the author was arrested for smuggling antiquities out of the new Iraq, the book secured its place on the list of books not to read this year.

Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory. No doubt a masterful overview of the current state of democratic theory, this book has been on my list of books to not read for months. Anyone pondering how to build a democracy in Iraq would no doubt benefit from not reading it, or... hmmm, I'm getting tangled up in Kieran-talk here. I actually really do want to read this one, but that hasn't stopped it from landing squarely in the 2003 list of books that I did not read.

Okay, back to grading papers, so that I can finish and maybe shorten the list of books that I did not read!

2003-12-16T13:28:00.000-05:00

There's a really disappointing article in the Weekly Standard (available to subscribers only, sorry) about Khalid Abou el-Fadl. The article begins by noting a recent contoversy over an article published in Egypt (and then, of course, translated by MEMRI since it made a moderate Islamist look bad) which quotes Abou el-Fadl as saying a number of outrageous things about Bush and about the US. Abou el-Fadl denies that he said these things, and the Standard article gives a fair account of the reasons to believe his denial and conludes that "given the low journalistic standards of the Egyptian press, it seems obvious that he has been wronged."

But after declaring him innocent of these charges, the Standard article then goes on to attack him anyway. He had "cordial relations with Islamic organizations" in the United States, they allege - an odd charge to make against an American Muslim. The other allegations are even slimmer. The last word is given to Daniel Pipes, who says that calling Abou el-Fadl a moderate "is like making a distinction between a moderate Nazi and a radical Nazi," and to Nina Shea, who says that "those who say that [Islam] is compatible with democracy are facile and probably ignorant."

Abou al-Fadl is a US based Muslim who has written extensively on Islamic jurisprudence, and whose intellectual trajectory is one of a serious Islamist trying to grapple with how to reconcile Islam with modernity. Abou el-Fadl's books include "And God Knows the Soldiers," which carefully and critically reconstructs the concept of authority and authoritarianism in Islamic discourse - attacking Wahhabi and Salafi puritanism and arguing instead for a richly diverse interpretive methodology; "Speaking in God's Name," which also explores the concept of authority in Islam, with a particular emphasis on the question of women; and "Islam and the Question of Tolerance," based on a Boston Review essay, which argues for the need for a genuinely democratic Islam to combat the authoritarian impulse which he sees degrading the Islamist trend. In short, all of Abou el-Fadl's work revolves around the critique of authoritarianism in Islamism and a critical impulse towards democracy, toleration, and freedom of interpretation. If there are moderate Islamists, Abou el-Fadl is one.

And that is precisely the problem that some people have with him. For Pipes, moderate Islamists are far more threatening than radical Islamists. Pipes has consistently argued that moderate Islamists do not exist (although moderate secular Muslims might), and that the US should abstain from dialogue with them in favor of an extremely tough approach. Radicals like bin Laden fit well into his worldview, and strengthen his arguments for a tough American approach to the Arab and Muslim world. But where moderate Islamists can gain a public voice - as has Abou el-Fadl to some degree, it undermines the claim that no such creatures exist. And if such creatures do exist, then it requires considerable acrobatics to reject calls for a dialogue with them, given America's obvious need to find support from such moderates if it hopes to achieve its vision of democratizing the Middle East.

Such attacks on moderate Islamists are common among those who do not see any prospect of or value in bringing democracy to the region. But I find it disheartening that the Weekly Standard - which has consistently argued for the need to spread democracy abroad - to give space to mean-spirited attacks on exactly the kinds of people who could be allies in a struggle to reconcile democracy with Islamism.

2003-12-16T10:58:00.000-05:00

On the question of how and where Saddam should be tried... overall, there seems to be strong sentiment in favor of holding the trial in Iraq, but also concern for international law and the ICC. Here are three typical comments from major papers:

Ali Ibrahim in Al-Sharq al-Awsat: "The ideal scenario is that Saddam be tried in Iraq before an Iraqi court and an Iraqi judge and Iraqi lawyers because his crimes against his people are greater than anything else. But there are also voices outside which want to open the door to an international court such as that which tried former Yugoslav President Milosevic... .. A strong argument can be made for an exceptional international court in which Iraqis participate and in which all Iraqi and regional and international cases can be heard... but for the new Iraqi government and for ordinary Iraqi people who suffered under this regime for decades, the best would be a court in Iraq."

Hazem al-Saghiya in al-Hayat: "Arabs are caught between two edges of the question of a trial for Saddam: the first: any trial would be better than the non-trials of the Saddam era. Just giving Saddam the chance to express his views would mean that the occupying authority is less harsh than was his rule. .... The other: what needs to be defended is the international court in the Hague... this is a matter for international justice since Saddam is a criminal against human rights... This would rule out the death penalty which would surely be used if the matter were left to the Americans and the Iraqis. Those who reject this course... are more loyal to America than to the world, and their desire for vengeance against Saddam greater than their love for Iraq."

Sami Shoroush, al-Hayat: "With regards to the trail of the former Iraqi president, it is clear that all the crimes committed by him during the 30 years of his Baathist reign, it should be an international tribunal because his crimes went beyond the scope of Iraq to include other neighboring countries, and his tribunal should be a lesson to all the remaining despotic regimes in the world. The fact is that the capture of Saddam Hussein, gave Washington further incentives to bolster the role of the interim governing counsel, and rally international support to in its favor; this counsel that will give birth to a new Iraq under the supervision of the American civilian administrator Paul Bremer. The Americans might even impose foreign judges in the legal committee that is responsible for Saddam's trial. The trial of Saddam on Iraqi soil will be a lesson to all despotic regimes of the world, and it will convince the Iraqis that it is necessary for them to rebuild their country and turn the page on the past. In short, the Americans should not be convinced that with the capture of Saddam, they will have full control over security in Iraq. They should not be convinced that the best place to prosecute this brutal dictator is Guantanamo, Washington, The Hague or even Brussels. Improving security and controlling the security in Iraq is still critical. The best place to prosecute Saddam is Iraq, and this, for many reasons." [note - I translated this from the Arabic, and then found that it was already in English on the al-Hayat site so I substituted their translation for mine. No real differences.]

There's a lot more opinions out there, but this is all I have time for right now.

2003-12-16T09:35:00.000-05:00

David Brooks just gets sillier and sillier. Building on the solid foundations of recent hit columns such as "New Yorkers are weird" and "Bush is just too honest," he now boldly stakes out the "airy-fairy, naive and mushy idealism" ground for Bush. You see, Dean's problem is that he is too serious and worthy, while Bush bravely eschews such practical concerns. If Brooks weren't so clearly driven batty by Dean, I would think that he was actually a covert operative for the Dean campaign. I mean, set aside the cheap shots and the behind -covering in the last two paragraphs, and Brooks is basically saying that Dean endorses the multilateral world created by fifty years of bipartisan American foreign policy. Um, okay - if that's really how you want to frame the debate, then I think the doctor won't object.

2003-12-15T10:30:00.000-05:00

So, the plan was to give a round-up of Arabic newspaper commentary on the Saddam capture. But I ran into three problems. First, there don't seem to be any editorials on it yet, which is probably because of the timing - there should be a lot tomorrow, but I couldn't really find much interesting today other than straight news reporting (and every paper I saw had it featured very prominently, usually with the picture of the bearded, haggard Saddam).

But I hedge these claims because of the second problem: perhaps due to a blizzard in my vicinity, internet connectivity has been spotty today and I actually couldn't access some sources. So maybe I'll find more later in the day.

Anyway, all of this is kind of moot because, third, I continue to be far too busy to spend much time blogging today. My sympathies go out to all fellow academic bloggers: may your paper grading be painless and swift, may you find no cases of cheating, and may you suffer through a minimum of spelling mistakes, poor grammar, and flat out bad writing.

UPDATE: here's a nice preliminary roundup of the Arab press by Michael Young in Slate. But I'll be on this tomorrow, inshahallah.

2003-12-14T20:23:00.000-05:00

There's a lot of really weird - albeit predictable - ideas being thrown around now about the political impact of Saddam's capture. For example, here's this bizarre AP piece: "Around the world, it sent a thundering message of America's resolve to prevail in the war against terrorism."

Huh? For most of the world - well, the entire world outside of about half of the US - the war on Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism, so it's hard to see how the capture of Saddam sends a message one way or the other on that score.

Another idea out there - I just heard this on CNN Headline News - is that this is some kind of crushing blow against Howard Dean. Huh? Did I miss some point where Dean exulted in Saddam's continuing liberty? Dean's arguments against the war had nothing to do with whether or not the US captured Saddam, so it isn't clear why his capture would affect his position one way or the other (although his rivals no doubt will try to use it that way).

Yet another idea is that the capture of Saddam means that Bush has done what he set out to do, that the mission is now really accomplished. If removing Saddam actually takes the steam out of the insurgency, and then the US can figure out how to restore order to the country and figure out a way to manage a transition to democracy, then great. But until then, Saddam's capture is more of a symbolic victory - and a possible, but only possible - turning point.

One last point: I see a major, major issue coming up very soon. Based on his history in Texas, Bush is going to want the death penalty for Saddam - a public execution, timed shortly before the elections no doubt. Many Americans will no doubt cheer this. But most of the world recoils in horror at the American passion for the death penalty, viewing it as barbaric. Executing Saddam, especially if the US (as Bush will insist) rejects the jurisdiction of the ICC, would turn this into a debacle of major, major proportions for America's image around the world. But not executing him would be out of character for Bush, and probably unpopular at home. So what to do? Stay tuned.

2003-12-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

Your eyes do not deceive you - the aardvark is, hopefully, for now, back! Sorry for the long absence... the world imposes itself sometimes. Some great news the other day came as a shot of sunshine amidst a blizzard of papers, meetings, and deadlines. This was the cause for much celebration, and some hibernation. It also, perhaps, augurs big changes in the future of the Abu Aardvark blog - stay tuned!

I knew the aardvark was missed when someone helpfully passed along a slobbering comment from the Free Republic board a few weeks ago that "it wouldn't surprise me a bit of a bunch of those Abu Aardvark types ended up dead." With fans like that, how could I stay silent? Wouldn't want to let you down, boys, so I just had to come back. (Charming. But what do you expect from these people?)

2003-12-14T09:49:00.000-05:00

So they got Saddam Hussein - great! I hope that they figure out a way to hold a trial which can hold him accountable for crimes against humanity for the Anfal campaign. Regardless of how they were used for war propaganda, those crimes were all too real, and there is no doubt whatsoever that Saddam is personally responsible for them. Let's hope that this trial can bring the man to justice for his crimes, and reinforce global norms and institutions which protect human rights. The International Criminal Court is the obvious place to send Saddam, but this is the Bush administration, so let's at least hope that we can get an Iraqi tribunal which works within the evolving framework of international law.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is going to affect the insurgency as much as most people expect and hope. At the immediate outset of the insurgency, capturing Saddam probably would have nipped it in the bud, but at this point I suspect that it has taken on a life of its own, fueled by resentment over the nature of the American occupation. Getting and interrogating Saddam might weaken the hard-core of the ex-Baathist elements of the insurgency, but it won't change the other concerns. I would expect a lot of well-deserved celebrating in Iraq today, a lot of relief and a lot of pent-up cries for vengeance. But after the joy wears off, it might even make Iraqi public opinion even worse, if people see that capturing Saddam doesn't solve their problems and that excuse for continuing troubles disappears.

But those are problems for tomorrow. I for one am delighted to see Saddam captured, and I hope to see him brought to justice before an internationally legitimate court of law.

2003-12-09T08:30:00.000-05:00

Still absurdly busy. Blogging will resume at some point....

2003-12-04T14:36:00.000-05:00

Out of town until Monday.

2003-12-03T14:26:00.000-05:00

It's worth checking out this Lehrer transcript, with Juan Cole and Gary Sick discussing Sistani and the prospects for democracy. I'm not sure why Cole says "Sistani is a genuine democrat. He believes that sovereignty resides in the body public" - as I understand it, Sistani believes that ultimate sovereignty lies with God, but political issues should be resolved in a democratic fashion, with the ulema available for advice and consultation. He rejects the Khomeini concept of the vilayet-e faqih, and he clearly endorses a democratic political system, but I don't think Sistani goes as far as Cole suggests toward a liberal position on the fundamental question of sovereignty.

UPDATE:Cole's clarification: re description of Sistani as a pure democrat. "What I meant by that was only that in his fatwas since June, he has consistently said that legitimate government must derive from the will of the people ("al-hukumah ash-shar`iyyah munbathiqah min iradat ash-sha`b" or words to that effect). He specifically says that sovereignty derives from the people. That seems to me as democratic as anything said by Enlightenment thinkers in Europe. Of course, Sistani does demarcate a limit to democracy, which is that the people must not legislate or adopt policy that directly contradicts Islamic law. But then all democracies are limited by constitutional provisions. A majority of Americans now might not vote for all the 10 amendments to the constitution that make up the Bill of Rights. But they are stuck with them anyway. Likewise, Sistani thinks an Iraqi democracy would be stuck with the "constitutional" principles of shari`ah or Islamic law. But he nevertheless insists on one person one vote as the guarantor of governmental legitimacy. That seems to me a commitment to pure democracy."

I agree with Cole completely here, although I think that Sistani's thought here rests on an important distinction between government (hakumah) and sovereignty (siyada). Government can rest with the people, but sovereignty is reserved for god; the trick is to determine what aspects of life are legitimately within the bounds of temporal decision making. What makes moderate Islamist thought compatible with democracy (potentially) is a willingness to define the realm of the political (hakumah) broadly - god does not tell us about zoning codes or foreign policy alignment decisions - and to then look for the best political form to make decisions in that broad zone of the political.

2003-12-03T11:28:00.000-05:00

Maybe it's just me, but I'm a bit surprised by how easily people who seem to be genuinely interested in a democratic Iraq accept the various excuses offered for postponing it; and by how unimpressed (or even angered) they seem by Ali Sistani's insistence on democratic elections.

First: a lot of people have justified their support for the Iraq war primarily on their hopes to bring democracy there (at least retroactively, since the failure to find WMD). But they seem oddly unconcerned by the various anti-democratic provisions and maneuverings of the CPA and the IGC. Shouldn't the democracy advocates be on the front lines criticizing delays in elections, indirect selection of caucases, provisions for a continued role for the unelected and unpopular Governing Council exiles, and so forth? Why the willingness to accept excuses, if democracy is so important?

Second: most people seem to find Sistani's advocacy of elections to be purely cynical, in that Shi'ites will dominate by virtue of their numbers. But so what? Isn't it noteworthy that the most influential Shia cleric in Iraq is emphatically and under considerable pressure sticking to a demand for electoral democracy? Even if it's a temporary pain in the kiester for the US, shouldn't this be a cause for celebration? Why such an easy dismissal of what could be seen as holding extraordinary potential?

Let me be clear here - I fully appreciate the difficulties inherent in transitional elections. Anyone who spent as much time as I did back in the day following the Bosnian reconstruction can't help but be aware of the myriad pitfalls in such elections. And I fully appreciate the many pragmatic concerns in Iraq - about security problems, about voter lists, and all the rest.

But sincere democracy advocates should be much more skeptical of excuses for delays, especially when the excuses are based on outcomes - how do we get "our people" to win? - rather than on the deeper principles. And they should be less willing to dismiss public commitments to democracy just because such commitments coincide with self-interest.

2003-12-03T07:59:00.000-05:00

Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler point out how realities are once again resisting Bush's speeches. In this case, Bush's admirable rhetoric on democracy isn't being matched either by change on the ground or by a commitment of serious resources or political pressure to achieve such change.

Here's the lead: "In stark contrast to the president's four powerful speeches this year pledging to promote democracy in the Middle East, the Bush administration has settled on a combination of gentle nudging and modest funding to achieve its ambitious goals, U.S. officials say. Policy is constrained by the realities of the Middle East, they say, making it difficult to quickly switch tactics. The administration's closest Arab allies are still cited by the State Department as among the world's worst human rights abusers. U.S. aid is still dictated more often by the Arab-Israeli conflict than promoting democracy, officials acknowledge. And U.S. policy still gives greater priority to soliciting help with the war on terrorism than urging political and economic reforms."

No real surprises here, just mild disappointment at missed opportunities. Anyway, back to the termite mines... this is going to continue to be a very low posting week, as the real world intrudes on aardvarks just as it does on Bush's rhetoric.

2003-11-28T06:59:00.000-05:00

Important news: The US apparently is now considering holding actual elections in order to meet the objections of Ayatollah Ali Sistani. This is a good thing - Sistani the traditionalist cleric is right, and the liberal democratic Bush administration is wrong, about the importance of elections in the creation of any sovereign Iraqi government. Will it be easy, or convenient? No. But I'll say it again - nothing else is going to work, if the goal is to create a legitimate Iraqi government that can command popular support. Or, for that matter, if the goal is to spread democratic values, as Bush says. The US should be thanking its lucky stars that Sistani is being so obstinate - this could be a really dramatic example of the US being saved from itself.

Unimportant news: Bush's silly public relations stunt, flying into Baghdad in the dead of the night to shoot some campaign footage. As Hesiod points out, Clinton went to Kosovo in 1999, and Republicans, as I recall, didn't exactly rally around the chief.

2003-11-27T07:10:00.000-05:00

Don't you hate those anti-American radicals like Ali Sistani and al Jazeera?

Sistani insists on full democratic elections, and won't accept either an appointed government or a selectorate drawn from hand-picked notables. How un-American is that? Where does the Grand Ayatollah get these anti-American ideas about wanting democracy?

And al Jazeera, insisting on freedom of speech - obviously anti-American. What kind of crazy radicals would insist on freedom of speech and an uncensored media?

I'll say again what I said yesterday - pushing for real democracy is the only way this is going to work for the US, and the US only gets one shot at the transition. This isn't about reckless idealism, or liberal carping, it's about recognizing realities on the ground. In Iraq and in the wider Arab and Muslim world, anything else is going to be dismissed as hypocrisy, fairly or unfairly. Let's hope that the administration rethinks again, and starts taking its own democracy rhetoric seriously.

And on that happy note, have a nice thanksgiving!

2003-11-26T12:34:00.000-05:00

Another update on the responses to the closure of the offices of al Arabiya in Iraq. Today, al Jazeera ran a story titled "Freedom of the media American style in Iraq," illustrated with a photograph of an al Jazeera camerman being handcuffed by two American soldiers, and another photo of Iraqi police guarding the doors to the al Arabiya offices. The story concludes: "These practices give a negative picture of the future of freedom of expression if it isn't aligned with American tastes.... these practices will not end because the objective Arab media led by al Jazeera - in the view of many observers - rejects American custodianship and will exercise its right of free expression in its true meaning and not in its American meaning." Ouch.

2003-11-26T12:28:00.000-05:00

Earlier today I (along with most everyone else) linked to the Washington Post piece which emphasized the importance of Ali Sistani's fatwa for frustrating Bremer's transition plans. Today, Islam Online (Arabic edition) reports that Sistani also opposes the new plan. (The report doesn't seem to be on the English edition, sorry) According to the report, Sistani wants to review the agreement between the CPA and the IGC, and has expressed serious reservations about the document, which he does not see giving any real role to the Iraqi people. The report quotes Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of SCIRI, after Hakim met with Sistani in Najaf to talk about the plan.

UPDATE: as of 3:45, New York Times readers know what Abu Aardvark readers knew at 12:28! Of course, if you followed the AP you would have known at 1:35, which is better, but still not aardvarkian!

2003-11-26T09:39:00.000-05:00

Michael Ledeen, who can easily match Laurie Mylroie for obsessiveness (can you imagine the two of them locked in a room? Saddam is the source of all evil! No, Tehran is the source of all evil! Saddam bombed Khobar! No, the Iranians did! Saddam was behind 9/11! No, Iran was! Hey, maybe Saddam was actually an Iranian agent, and that whole 8 year war in the 1980s was just an elaborate ruse to pull the wool over America's eyes - you guys ever think of that?)...

Sorry, lost my train of thought there, I was having so much fun. Anyway, Michael Ledeen is still on the warpath: "How many reports of Osama operating on the Iran-Iraq border, how many stories of Saddam on one of the islands between Iraq and Iran, how many thousands of terrorists pouring in from Iran and Syria, how many hundreds of dead Americans, Turks, Italians, Brits, and Iraqis, before we take the war to the men who are driving it?"

Just a thought, Michael... do you really want the US to base war decisions on "reports" and "stories" (you left out "rumors" and "postings on wacky right wing blogs")? If so, what about the more convincing "reports" and "stories" of Osama operating in the Pakistan-Afghan border areas, and of jihadis pouring into Iraq via Kuwait and Saudi Arabia rather than from Iran and Syria?

To help make sense of Mr Ledeen, I recommend that you go back to this post, and just replace "Mylroie" with "Ledeen," and "Iraq / Saddam" with "Iran." That should cover it.

2003-11-26T07:57:00.000-05:00

Great article in the Post detailing the role of Ali Sistani in frustrating Bremer's plans for a transition without elections. As usual, Juan Cole has the best analysis of Sistani's role and the wider context. I'm quite struck by the ability and willingness of Sistani to act effectively in the new political environment. I'm not surprised by his insistence on elections, but - as I wrote about, and exchanged thoughts with Cole about, a few months ago - there are real questions about what exactly his fatwas on democracy mean in the context of his Usuli Shia jurisprudence.

What also doesn't surprise me is the frantic maneuvering of the Governing Council to retain some role for themselves. The IHT reported the other day (link to follow) that Chalabi and others were pushing the idea of turning the Governing Council into a Senate type body. The rationale was actually quite clever - a new elected Iraqi government might want policies different than the American policies enacted by the IGC, so the new "Senate's" role would be to make sure that the elected government couldn't easily change those policies. A pro-American safeguard against democracy - a fine self-described role for the appointed and unpopular exiles.

The real point, of course, is that many of these guys know perfectly well that they can not win real elections - Talabani and Barzani will be fine, as will some of the Shia party leaders, but Chalabi and Alawi most glaringly have no chance of democratic success without an American intervention on their behalf. Which is why Chalabi is spending his time in Washington, cultivating his real power base among Republican Congressmen and Senators and Pentagon civilian officials.

The sooner the IGC is dissolved, the better. But the US only gets one shot at this, and it had better get it right. So, for what it's worth, here's what the aardvark would recommend:

Real democratic elections are the only way to go here, if the US wants to be taken seriously. The 'democracy' can and will be engineered to get 'acceptable' results - everyone expects that - but it has to be real elections, not a transfer of authority to the Council and not the appointment of a selectorate to nominate candidates. You've got to have open elections, real competition, no pre-selected winners, a decent period of time for campaigns, tolerance of all sorts of rhetoric (within reasonable bounds - candidates would have to accept the principle of constitutional democracy, and they would have to abstain from violence or incitement defined very narrowly), and a free and open media - most especially the Arab satellite television media, which should be invited in and cultivated to broadcast to the entire Arab world the reality and sincerity of the American commitment to democracy. This will of course require getting the security situation under control, but it's at least conceivable that a public commitment to such a plan would swing Iraqi public opinion against the insurgency as hope for the future reappears. This might seem like a risky approach, but I honestly can not see that any other alternative can lead to anything other than a protracted, dismal stalemate. Like I said above, the US only gets one shot at this, and it had better get it right.

2003-11-25T10:36:00.000-05:00

Terrible, terrible decision. Bremer and the Iraqi Governing Council close the offices of al-Arabiya and ban their broadcasts, sending yet another clear message about the hypocrisy of American rhetoric about real freedom of speech. The US has been fighting an on and off battle with al Arabiya and al Jazeera for some time, and, as the Post points out, this marks a sharp escalation.

While the decision reflects frustration over American problems in Iraq, and a long-festering anger with the Arabist tone of the satellite stations, it is almost certainly going to be self-defeating. The satellite stations are arguably the most important independent political force in the Arab world today. Ignoring them won't make them go away. Indeed, banning them only enhances their prestige. What is worse, shutting them out like this leaves them no reason to take American ideas and preferences into account when formulating their programming.

This kind of approach - shutting down a station you don't like - is far too typical of the American approach to the Arab media. And it is going to backfire here just as it always does. And people wonder why Arabs roll their eyes when Bush gives grand speeches about democracy. What a mistake.

UPDATE: here's what al-Quds al-Arabi's lead editorial has to say about it: "The temporary governing council in Iraq is living in confusing and frustrating conditions, so it isn't surprising that its chairman, Mr Jalal Talabani, would try to conceal its failure, and its lack of popularity, by expelling the Arab media and strangling any coverage of the deteriorating security conditions in Iraq... [the decision] is the clearest evidence yet of this confusion, and the hidden hostility in the psyche of council's members and its president to a free media. ... Al Arabiya benefits from Mr Talabani's decision to ban it, while the United States which talks endlessly about democracy and public freedoms is the biggest loser."

2003-11-25T10:08:00.000-05:00

The American Enterprise Institute has resumed its Black Coffee briefings on Iraq. As you might recalll, the last Black Coffee briefing had been held on April 22, at which point - according to neocon theology - the problem of Iraq had ended. With Saddam deposed, it was only a matter of sweeping up all those hugs and puppies, turning power over to Ahmed Chalabi, and basking in American hegemony. At the time, I criticized them for what seemed to be an astonishing lack of interest in what would happen in Iraq once they had got the war for which they had spent half a decade agitating.

On October 7, the Black Coffee briefings returned, to ask: "Is the Bush administration losing control of the situation on the ground, or is the media transforming a military victory into a defeat in the public mind?" And on October 21, a second briefing in this newly resumed series was held to discuss questions related to the Iraqi constitution and the counterinsurgency. These briefings are worth reading in their own right, and can provide important insights into how the neocons are thinking, but for now I just want to highlight the more basic point: the resumption of the black coffees is a clear indicator that even the neocons now recognize Iraq's future as an open question.

2003-11-25T08:18:00.000-05:00

The peaceful uprising in Georgia has received a surprising level of play in the independent Arab media. Events in Georgia were plastered all over al-Jazeera's web site yesterday, and most of the Arab newspapers that I checked had extensive front page coverage. Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor of the Arabist al-Quds al-Arabi, cast the events in Georgia as a warning to Arab rulers and as a model for frustrated Arab publics. Atwan is no fan of American foreign policy, though (to say the least), and he pointedly compares this kind of change achieved by the Georgian people on their own, for their own reasons, with the American campaign of rhetorical democracy promotion.

This reinforces an argument which I've been making for a long time - there is enormous demand for change among Arab public opinion, and enthusiasm for democracy. But these views are often held most powerfully by the same people who are most articulate and passionate in their opposition to American policies. They want change, but they don't want to be in the service of American policies. It's too easy to assume that the democrats are also the "pro-American moderates." Sometimes that's true, but an equally - if not more - important slice of Arab public opinion is oppositional, hostile to both the United States and to existing governments. Any serious democratization push has to come up with a way to approach that group - one which has far wider influence in mass public opinion than does the more congenial pro-American group.

2003-11-25T07:45:00.000-05:00

This was supposed to be the rest of the Laurie Mylroie post below, but darn blogger went down. Anyway, here it is:

Mylroie's piece is actually a fabulous example of the wacky conspiracy theorist at work. All the hallmarks are there:

(1) a single nefarious force controls all events. The world is simple, everything is interconnected, nothing is random.

(2) the lack of evidence, or contradictory evidence, actually proves your point. The stronger the evidence against your position, the more certain you can be that you are right! Example: the proof of Iraqi responsibility for the Turkey bombings is that all of the evidence implicating al-Qaeda was too easy to find: "Moreover, one indication of a "false flag" operation is that the investigation is too easy. Authorities are immediately led down one track, away from the real culprits. Thus, the passport of one suicide bomber in the first set of attacks, on the synagogues, was found amid the wreckage. He was easily identified and the link to al Qaeda quickly established."

(3) on the flip side, even the slightest, most circumstantial or coincidental evidence of your position should be seen as ironclad proof. Mohammad Atta once ate at a Czech restaurant? What more do you people need to see the truth!?!?

(4) nefarious forces in your own society prevent others from seeing the truth. For Mylroie, it's the "beltway": the "beltway" doesn't want you to know the truth - and the denials and ridicule of experts only proves that you are right.

(5) oh, and a helpful hint: be sure to prove your bonafides by casually dropping "facts" which nobody else recognizes as such - like Khalid Shaykh Mohammed being an Iraqi agent. Yeah, everybody knows that!

2003-11-24T14:30:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile, more seriously, Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid writes in al-Sharq al-Awsat about "Rumsfeld's battle with the region's television stations." Al Rashid marvels at Rumsfeld's behavior towards al Jazeera and al Arabiya, which he has often described as enemies of America in Iraq: why would a man so well known for his preference for solving problems by force be so ineffective against such dangerous enemies? How is that the world's greatest power can not silence stations which it considers enemies by diplomatic means? How can it be that two stations, one Qatari and one Saudi, could really stand alone against the power of the United States? Isn't it odd that Rumsfeld pressures Syria to close the offices of Hizbollah and al-Jihad and Hamas, but can't get America's friends Qatar and Saudi Arabia to close the offices of al Jazeera and al Arabiya? Let's be serious, Rashed says: if the US really wanted these stations closed, one phone call would do the trick. Does anyone really believe that Rumsfeld honestly cares about the freedom of the press or open dialogue?

Sadly, al Rashid's article ends before he can answer this puzzle he has so elegantly set out. What a cop-out! But I'm sure others can offer some suggestions. Not the aardvark, though.

2003-11-24T14:20:00.000-05:00

Laurie Mylroie might have to wait a while for the occultation of Saddam, though. Al-Quds al-Arabi today reports that a villager close to Baghdad received a surprise visit from Saddam the other day, and Saddam is healthy and in good spirits. He asked them where they stood on the American presence, and they told him that they were all against the Americans and loved him. Smart move, I'd say - hey, when Saddam's sitting in your living room, what are you going to say?

What to make of such a report? Not much, I'd say... just enjoy the lovely details about Saddam sitting on their old sofa.

2003-11-24T14:13:00.000-05:00

America's leading 9/11 al-Qaeda denier, Paul Wolfowitz pal Laurie Mylroie, is at it again. Ms. Mylroie is upset with those who believe that al-Qaeda had a role in the Turkey bombings. The real culprit, as in 9/11, was Iraq.

Seriously. Allow Mylroie to speak for herself: "Most probably, the Istanbul bombings were the work of Iraqi intelligence, in concert with Islamic militants. As I have written — at length, throughout the 1990s — Iraqi intelligence worked with and hid behind Islamic militants to attack the United States. Now it appears that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was, in fact, an Iraqi-intelligence agent....Al Qaeda on its own — if it still exists in any meaningful form — would not have had the capability to carry out the attacks in Istanbul."

Yes, that's right- Saddam, despite no longer ruling Iraq, continues to be responsible for all the world's evil. When he dies, I suspect, Ms Mylroie will announce his occultation and transformation into a higher being of evil.

2003-11-21T06:37:00.000-05:00

Sorry for not posting lately... incredibly busy week. Hopefully will have some breathing space soon.

But, for the record - no, Stephen Hayes's piece based on Douglas Feith's leaked memo about Saddam and al-Qaeda isn't the least bit convincing, except in one regard: if we assume that Feith cherry-picked the best intel available to make the case linking Saddam and al-Qaeda, and this really is the best they've got, then it does increase confidence in the already very strong case that no such links existed.

That's it for now. Hopefully the aardvark will return to regular blogging sooner rather than later!

2003-11-17T08:58:00.000-05:00

Well, the more I look at the American plan for transferring sovereignty, the worse it looks. As you'll see in the post below, my first inclination was to be guardedly optimistic. But now, that optimism is rapidly fading. Here's why: the "selectorate" approach promises to be a fiasco in every way that matters. Given the widespread distrust of American intentions and skepticism about American sincerity about democracy, the absolute last thing the US should be doing in Iraq is introducing this kind of pseudo-democratic "town councils" approach. You don't have to be a professional cynic to see how easily such a system can be manipulated. And will be. And even if it isn't (yeah, right), everyone will believe that it is. Which means that the government that results will only have dubious legitimacy, and will remain open to accusations of being an American proxy. If Chalabi or someone like him were elected in real elections, that would be one thing - but to be "selected" in this way just confirms everyone's worst fears about American intentions. What a disastrous missed opportunity, if Bush really does proceed in this way.

2003-11-17T06:27:00.000-05:00

Sheesh, go away into an information black hole for a weekend, come back and find out that a lot actually happened over the weekend. The new plan for a quicker transition to Iraqi sovereignty strikes me as a good thing, but I haven't really had time to work through the details yet.

From what I can gather, the good things include a firm commitment to creating a sovereign Iraqi government and - crucially - dissolving the IGC and the CPA. One of the biggest things about which I worried was that the US would try to just turn the IGC into an Iraqi government - and, some Chalabi comments aside, this doesn't seem to be the case. Some members of the IGC will easily win - the Kurdish leaders, for example. Others, like Chalabi and Allawi, will win only if the US engineers the outcome.

Which brings me to the single biggest bad part - the really terrible idea of using a tightly controlled selectorate instead of a general electorate in the process, thereby avoiding full democracy and increasing the American ability to engineer results. This is the kind of thing that looks good in a narrow way - who wouldn't want to be able to shape the results you want - but could be disastrous for the bigger picture, which has to be winning widespread support for a legitimate new government. If the process is seen as manipulated by the US, then it would critically undermine the legitimacy of the new body. Iraq needs real democracy, even if it produces some results which the administration finds uncomfortable.

I'll have more to say on this later - these are just some early thoughts. I'm not one of those who is going to attack Bush for doing this for electoral advantage, even if this is very likely true. A rapid return to Iraqi sovereignty is important regardless of why Bush is doing it. For now, I take this as a tentatively positive step. The Bush team has taken it only under grave duress, and all spin aside it clearly represents the failure and exhaustion of their original plans. But I also am extremely wary of falling into the trap of the liberal hawks - supporting a plan of this administration by projecting my own motivations onto them, and then being surprised when they don't follow through in the way that I wanted.

UPDATE: if it's true, as Josh Marshall is reporting, that Bush is seriously thinking about internationalizing the occupation through NATO, bully for him! Of course, this goes back to that whole question about the meaning of internationalizing - if it's just troops in support of an American occupation, it isn't going anywhere. And I have a hard, hard time believing that the Bush team would entertain anything else. If this is true - and I'm skeptical - then their internal intelligence must be even worse than what we've seen in public (which would be, well, pretty darn bad).

2003-11-14T10:55:00.000-05:00

And now I'm really gone. Have a nice weekend!

2003-11-14T10:54:00.000-05:00

Just a quick check-in - I'm really not here.

After Andrew Sullivan's amusing non-response to Josh Marshall's quotes on imminent threat, here's another chance: please respond to Thomas Powers in the New York Review. Powers lays out a large number of clear examples of Bush officials declaring an imminent threat, which requires him to go back and review what every sentient person remembers: "To justify preemptive war on Iraq the administration made three interlocking claims: that Iraq was actively developing weapons of mass destruction including nuclear bombs; that it had a secret working relationship with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network...; and that the danger that Saddam Hussein would provide terrorists with weapons of mass destruction was so grave that it amounted to an imminent threat. There was nothing tentative or timorous about this argument; officials hammered home all three points for months."

He then recounts in detail Colin Powell's UN speech. He then lays Powell's speech against Kay's findings, again in some detail lest the point be lost in generalizations. The result: "It is the first part of that sentence which answers the question whether Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States - no weapons found. The rest of the report is full of interesting detail about Iraqi science, industry, and technology but contains not a single clear and unambiguous confirmation of any claim made by Colin Powell in his speech to the UN."

This really shouldn't be necessary, but the "what Bush said today is what I have always said" crowd makes it so.

2003-11-13T10:07:00.000-05:00

Off to a workshop for the weekend... back on Monday.

2003-11-12T15:41:00.000-05:00

Last week I complained about the election process in the major Political Science professional associations. One point I made was that I refused to vote in the International Studies Association election because they simply provided a slate to be voted by acclamation - no choices, just a full slate to approve. Well, it looks like I might not be the only one to be put off by such a sham. I just received this email from the ISA:

"A few days ago, you received an e-mail ballot with which to vote in the elections for ISA's president and vice presidents. It is imperative that you e-mail back your ballot with your vote. Our constitution requires that with an uncontested slate, we need a 20 percent turnout in order for the slate to be valid."

I can only fervently hope that the ISA fails to reach its 20% turnout rate, which might force the organization to consider why more than 80% of its members don't bother to vote for its leadership. This has nothing to do with any of the candidates, by the way, who may or may not be excellent choices for these positions. It's about the ridiculous absence of democratic choice in an association dominated by, of all things, political scientists.

2003-11-12T07:47:00.000-05:00

Several commentators on other sites lavished me with scorn for suggesting that Bush's endorsement of democracy in the Middle East somehow contradicted established conservative thinking. Martin Kramer, one of the leading conservative writers on the Middle East, emailed me at the time agreeing with my notes. Now, Kramer has elaborated this point on his own site:

"Frankly, the President's speech reminded me more of Jimmy Carter's human rights idealism, with its heavy overtones of missionary purpose. At the end of the day, Carter's human rights diplomacy in the Middle East undermined only one regime: the Shah's. The result was not a net gain for human rights or U.S. interests."

He also links to his more systematic argument against trying to promote democracy in the Middle East here.

It's no secret that I disagree with Kramer about most things, most definitely including this, but it is to his credit that he is sticking to his intellectual guns even when the winds in Washington have changed for the moment. It makes for a more honest argument when one's opponent doesn't reverse his/her positions 180 degrees every month or two, while pretending that he/she has been saying the new thing all along.

2003-11-12T07:03:00.000-05:00

The Bremer regime in Iraq may be coming to a close, as frustration in Baghdad and Washington mounts. Josh Marshall and Juan Cole both have interesting analyses of this developing situation. Nobody seems to know for sure, but everyone seems to expect a major change in the occupation administration. Among other things, this is a clear admission that things are not in fact going wonderfully, that things are bad and getting worse, and that it is getting dangerously close to being too late to stop pretending otherwise.

The Republican "it's morning in Iraq" campaign assumed that the problem was negative media coverage, without really caring whether or not that media coverage was accurate. Boy, morning didn't last very long did it? From "morning in Iraq" to "long hard slog" so fast, it's amazing that there weren't more diagnosed cases of whiplash among the "this is just as I've argued all along: the truth is whatever the Bush administration says it is" crowd.

Whatever happens with Bremer in Washington, the insurgency is driving events right now. Steadily increasing attacks in both Sunni and Shia areas, in areas of the south far outside the so-called Sunni Triangle (see Cole's comments on this today), including increasingly frequent mortar attacks against Coalition command centers, have the security situation on a downward spiral. It seems plausible to me that the insurgency is gaining confidence and momentum - although I do not think that it is winning any great popular support among Iraqis in most of the country.

The IGC, with its appointed and unpopular exiles, continues to be ineffective and unpopular. Multiple sources now confirm that it is common for no more than six or seven members to actually attend meetings anymore. And Bremer's frustration with the Council doesn't even count as an open secret anymore, it's so public. Of course, Bremer and Washington don't seem willing to consider that the Council's failure was inherent to the Council's composition and mandate, and not just the fault of the (admittedly considerable) character flaws of its members. While I certainly hope that any post-IGC arrangement is made sans Chalabi, I also hope that they learn some deeper poltical and institutional lessons here.

If the stories that the US is preparing a dramatic military escalation and for the dissolution of the IGC are true, things are in for some changes. Can they get things right on the third try (Garner - strike one; Bremer - strike two)?

Unfortunately, the US lost its best chance for a genuine internationalization of the occupation with its hardball negotiating over SC Resolution 1511. This is especially unfortunate given that the administration is now, only weeks later, openly considering many of the options - such as a rapid creation of a provisional government - which it refused to entertain in those talks. Even if it goes back to those ideas now, it will do it without the international and multilateral dividends which they would have gained a month ago. But better late than never.

2003-11-10T13:03:00.000-05:00

Whenever a terrorist attack takes place, the predictable call goes out: where are the Muslim moderates to condemn these atrocities? The question goes out into the rhetorical void, as if it answers itself... there are none. No condemnation of terror, no moderates, no hope for the Islamic world.

In that context, those asking where the moderates are should turn their eyes to Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi's public response to the terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. Qaradawi, as I've mentioned many times here, is probably the most important moderate Islamist public intellectual in the Arab world today. He has a vast constituency due to his frequent appearances on al-Jazeera, and has played a key role in the Islam Online website.

Qaradawi issued a public response to the Riyadh bombing today, which Islam Online ran under the headline "al-Qaradawi: no to explosions, yes to dialogue." He declared the terrorist attack to be illegitimate under Islam, and called for an end the violence in the kingdom. Qaradawi condemned all who would direct violence towards Muslims, called their actions contrary to Islam, and urged all Muslims to struggle against those who would use such violence. He also called on Saudi reformists and the Saudi government to work together to achieve change without violence.

2003-11-10T06:26:00.000-05:00

A reader sends in some interesting thoughts on the question of conservative and neoconservative positions on democracy in the Middle East. He is not as sure as I am that Lewis is hostile to the idea of Arab democracy, and notes that Wolfowitz, who is much more powerful, is a democracy enthusiast.

My response:
On the cons vs neocons, I agree that I didn't express this quite as clearly as I meant, but I think that the point I intended is right. The traditional conservatives, and the Washington Institute-style Middle East analysts, have been consistently hostile to the idea of promoting democracy in the Middle East. Some take crude "Arabs (or Islam) are incompatible with democracy" lines; others the more pragmatic "democracy now would elect our enemies" line. But either way, they have been consisently opposed to democracy promotion - and they haven't changed their minds (for what it's worth, Martin Kramer emailed me and agreed with me on this point).

The neocons, by contrast, are as you say much more democracy optimists -which is why, if you go back to the original post, I made a partial exception for Wolfowitz (who I think differs from much of his neocon cohort on this point). But the neocons have a different problem - a willful blind spit to reality, such a deep attachment to their theories that they end up with hopelessly unrealistic policies. And their enthusiasm for democracy is thin. They see it as a magic solution for the region's problems, but are unwilling to really tolerate its messiness when it doesn't immediately produce pro-American results. And they are peculiarly uninterested in what people from the region actually think, which does not sit well with their avowed democracy enthusiasm.

2003-11-09T10:35:00.000-05:00

What a non-story. You see a lead article with a headline like "Iraq Seen as Al Qaeda's Top Battlefield," and you expect to maybe see some interviews with people affiliated with or with some insight into al Qaeda. Or maybe some dramatic new evidence about the identity of the insurgency. Instead, you get: "Answering Osama bin Laden's call for holy war in Iraq, hundreds of followers from at least eight nations have entered the country and are playing a major role in attacking Western targets and Iraqi civilians, U.S. and Iraqi officials say."

Oh, US and Iraqi officals say so, huh? Look, the role of al Qaeda in Iraq might or might not be true, and it's certainly important... which means that it is too important for a major American newspaper to run a story based only on interviews with Bremer, three members of the IGC, and anonymous intelligence officials, all of whom are clearly self-interested parties.

Has losing Robin Wright made the LA Times so desperate for copy that they are reduced to publishing US government press releases as "news"? Don't we already have Fox News for that?

On the other hand, the op-ed page editor's piece on his recent visit to Iraq as part of an American propaganda operation is worth a read.

2003-11-09T09:18:00.000-05:00

It's about time: Robin Wright reports in the Post:
"Increasingly alarmed by the failure of Iraq's Governing Council to take decisive action, the Bush administration is developing possible alternatives to the council to ensure that the United States can turn over political power at the same time and pace that troops are withdrawn, according to senior U.S. officials here and in Baghdad. The United States is deeply frustrated with its hand-picked council members because they have spent more time on their own political or economic interests than in planning for Iraq's political future, especially selecting a committee to write a new constitution, the officials added. "We're unhappy with all of them. They're not acting as a legislative or governing body, and we need to get moving," said a well-placed U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "They just don't make decisions when they need to."
.....

"The move comes after repeated warnings to the Iraqi body. Two weeks ago, Bremer met with the council and bluntly told members that they "can't go on like this," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad said. Bremer noted that at least half the council is out of the country at any given time and that at some meetings, only four or five members showed up. Since the council appointed 25 cabinet ministers in late August, the body has done "nothing of substance," the U.S. official in Baghdad added. The council has been seriously remiss in oversight of its own ministers, holding public hearings, setting policy for cabinet departments and even communicating with cabinet members, he said. The United States, which financially and politically backed several of the council members when they were in exile, has also been disillusioned by the council's inability to communicate with the Iraqi public or gain greater legitimacy. The senior official in Baghdad called the council "inept" at outreach to its own people."

What can I say? Since the official title of the Iraqi Governing Council over here at Abu Aardvark has always been "appointed, unrepresentative, unpopular and illegitimate," this hardly comes as a surprise. Just one more example of reality catching up with the neocon fantasy world.

The article reviews several possibilities for replacing the IGC, including an Afghan style national conference. I haven't had time to think through the various options on the table, but I'm glad that official Washington is finally broaching the possibility of cutting their losses on Chalabi and company. The IGC was never a good idea, it hasn't worked, and rather than throwing more energy and effort into pretending otherwise, the Bush administration should seriously think about new options. It seems more likely, however, that this will end up being little more than a warning shot across the brow delivered via the Washington Post, which will get the IGC to perform marginally better for a few weeks. Let's hope not.

2003-11-07T09:18:00.000-05:00

I just heard that a distant relative was killed in action in Iraq the other day. He left behind a two year old, a one year old, and a pregnant wife.

I wish that I could tell them that he died for some good reason. I wish that they could grow up knowing that their father died in the pursuit of a noble cause.

I can't.

I hate this.

Sorry, nothing else.

2003-11-07T09:15:00.000-05:00

Robin Wright in the Washington Post (when did she leave the LA Times to join the Post?) has the best analysis I've seen of the Bush democracy speech:

"In a speech that redefined the U.S. agenda in the Middle East, President Bush waxed eloquent yesterday about his dream of democracy coexisting with Islam and transforming an important geostrategic region that has defiantly held out against the global tide of political change. But Bush failed to acknowledge the tough realities that are likely to limit significant political progress in the near future: the United States' all-consuming commitment to fighting a global war on terrorism and confronting Islamic militancy. Washington still relies heavily on alliances with autocratic governments to achieve these top priorities."

She correctly notes the importance and novelty of the assertion of the compatibility of Islam and democracy, and goes on: "The words were striking in the context of 25 years of tensions between the United States and various Islamic movements. For half a century, U.S. policy has implicitly accepted the concept of "Islamic exceptionalism" -- that Islam and democracy are basically incompatible and that Islam cannot be a vehicle for political reform.... For Muslims, the U.S. legacy on political systems in the Middle East has been most starkly defined by the U.S. intervention in Iran to oust a nationalist movement to put the shah back on the throne in 1953 and by the U.S. failure to act, or even condemn the military, when Algerian generals aborted democratic elections in 1991. But as a result, Washington has a long-standing credibility problem -- and the administration will need to take concrete steps to prove it intends to follow through in ways earlier administrations did not. Bush's speech was short on specifics."

And finally, on the claims for current democratic success: "In a broad assessment of the region, the president inflated the progress toward democracy made by allies such as Saudi Arabia that are harshly criticized for their abuses in the annual U.S. human rights report, while he criticized countries such as Iran that have made some inroads but do not have good relations with Washington. "His portrayal of what's going on in Arab countries is totally unrealistic," said Marina Ottaway, co-director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The reality that he is overlooking is that in all these countries that are supposedly making progress, hostility to the United States is at an all-time high," she said. "So the idea that these are countries where progress on democracy is going to make them better allies is certainly not supported by what is going on.""

Very good, very sharp. While you're there, check out the Reuters roundup of the, um, unimpressed Arabs. Words like "sham" and "double-standard" and "hypocrisy" seem to be the order of the day. Can't think why.

Hey, anyone know why Sullivan and company don't attack the Washington Post like they do the New York Times for reporting the truth, um, I mean for being politically motivated Leftist propaganda attack dogs? Oh, and another one - anyone know why the Post's op-ed columnists don't read their generally top-notch reporters when they write things like this?

2003-11-06T20:18:00.000-05:00

Jennifer Weiner fantasizes about a Baby Zagat's guide:
"The "ORGANIC PEAS" in the "SMALL GLASS BOTTLE" had an "UNAPPEALING" "GREENISH-GRAY" color and a "RUNNY" consistency. However, because of the waitstaff's "CAJOLING, INSISTENT" manner, you'll more than likely find yourself "EATING SEVERAL BITES" and even "SUCKING THE BIB" afterwards."

Mmmm, yes. Sucking the bib - one of the baby aardvark's favorite new hobbies, as well. Although I have to admit that the current dramatic new concept - Strawberry-Banana-Applesauce - almost looks good enough to, well, eat!

2003-11-06T17:15:00.000-05:00

There are very few things in Bush foreign policy that I admire, like, or even respect - in general, the foreign policy concocted by Bush's neoconservative radicals is only barely (and rarely) salvaged by State Department salvage operations. But there is one part of the Bush approach which I do like and support, and about which I only wish that he was sincere: the commitment to Arab democracy.

Today's speech to the NED embodies both the good and bad here.

Bush starts his remarks on the Middle East with this: "Some skeptics of democracy assert that the traditions of Islam are inhospitable to representative government." To his credit, he forcefully rejects this belief: "It should be clear to all that Islam, the faith of one-fifth of humanity, is consistent with democratic rule. Democratic progress is found in many predominantly Muslim countries: in Turkey, Indonesia and Senegal and Albania and Niger and Sierra Leone." It is really quite remarkable that Bush and company have embraced a drive for Arab democracy given that the intellectuals behind his policy have generally been closely associated with the argument that Islam and democracy are not compatible.

Let's be clear: it is not the much-maligned professional Middle East scholars who are skeptical of Arab democracy. It is their conservative and neoconservative critics. Go back and read Bernard Lewis. Go read Martin Kramer's indictment of the field of Middle East studies for being too naively optimistic about democratization and civil society in the 1990s. In other words, Bush is on the side of the angels here, and is implicitly criticizing his intellectual allies, something which can get lost in the clumsy spin operations.

He is also absolutely right about the demands for change within the region, and the widespread enthusiasm for democracy. He goes a little off track in trying to praise democratic developments in recent years... Saying that "Jordan held historical [sic] elections this summer" is rather a stretch, as I've written earlier. Few of the other examples he cites are very impressive. Iraq has not created the democratic domino effect that the neocons and their supporters predicted, as the sparse list of highlights Bush mentions here makes sadly clear.

But that does not mean that such change is impossible, and certainly not that it is undesirable. If you spend any time at all with the Arab media, like al Jazeera, you can't miss the overtones - and often overt arguments - rejecting the political status quo and demanding change. That demand is real, regardless of American foreign policy.

But that's the rub. Despite Bush's spin (which the increasingly desperate liberal hawks are rushing to embrace), the US has not often been on the side of democracy in the Middle East, and there is very little sign that this is changing. The fundamental problem has always been that real democracy could bring to power popular groups which are not supportive of American foreign policy. And faced with a choice between Arab democracy and national interests, the US has almost always chosen the latter, for better or for worse. That's the reality, which no amount of Presidential spin can change. And the complete collapse of public support for the US among Arab public opinion attests to the overwhelming skepticism about American intentions.

If Bush genuinely wants to promote Arab change and democracy, great - and I really mean that. But look at the deeds, and see if they match the words. Arabs do. What does Bush actually say, and what does he actually do? There is, despite everything, absolutely nothing in the speech that suggests a serious willingness to prioritize democracy over support for American foreign policy goals. And, quite frankly, there is nothing in Bush's foreign policy team to suggest that they prioritize democracy (although I might make a partial exception for Paul Wolfowitz, for reasons I might get into later).

And so, once again, it's back to Iraq. If Bush wants to make genuine Iraqi democracy the standard for judging the success of his war, wonderful. How to reconcile that with actual American policy on the ground in Iraq I don't know. The Iraqi Governing Council remains a powerless, appointed, unrepresentative, and unpopular joke (did you catch the part in Friedman's column today that only about 7 of them even bother showing up to meetings anymore?). The security situation continues to deteriorate, there's been no progress on a constitution, and very little sign of any political development whatsoever. But given where we are now, a serious public commitment to building a real Iraqi democracy is a positive development, and one to which Bush must be held accountable as things continue to go bad.

2003-11-06T12:24:00.000-05:00

In one of the less significant political events of recent days, the American Political Science Association recently held elections. This in itself was something new - in the past, the APSA would simply present a slate of 'nominees' and ask people to vote for them (I just throw my hands up at our professional associations - I refused to cast a vote in the International Studies Association elections because they had one candidate for President, and three candidates for three slots in the other open position. Didn't acclamation voting go out with the Soviet Union and Saddam?). This year, the "Perestroika" movement submitted a write-in candidate, meaning that there were an astonishing 9 candidates for 8 seats (yes, this really is the best that the American "Political Science" Association can do....). When the Perestroika candidate lost, it led to some thoughtful discussion about future reform possibilities, election strategies, and the like - all too the good.

I only bring it up here because of one of the funniest exchanges that took place over the last few days.

Harvey Mansfield, the famously conservative (and famously tough grading) professor at Harvard, has attempted to provoke Perestroika on its list-serve several times. The first time was over that silly David Brooks column about conservatives in academia - Mansfield agreed that conservatives in political science should be seen as a minority facing discrimination and persecution, and that Perestroika's refusal to lobby on behalf of this oppressed minority showed their intellectual incoherence. That set off a reasonably interesting debate, which brought forward voices on both sides of the issue (which, incidentally, kind of gives the lie to the whole 'Left groupthink' claim, but that's a story for another day).

But here's where it gets funny: the other day, Mansfield posted this about the election result: "One reason why Perestroika did not do well in the APSA elections may be that you turn off thousands of conservative political scientists by dwelling on left-wing political issues such as affirmative action and minority preferences. Yours, Harvey Mansfield"

As one clever person then pointed out, "I am puzzled as to how there could be thousands of conservative political scientists when, as Harvey also claims, conservative students are so discriminated against that there are hardly any conservatives in the field of political science."

Ah yes... rigor, logic, and standards. I actually think that Mansfield may be closer to mark this second time, that there are substantial numbers of conservative political scientists who voted against what they see as a left insurgency (despite the prominence in the movement of quite a few folks not usually identified with the left), but this does make his previous intervention look kind of silly. At any rate, the APSA election results were probably more driven by a general methodological and self-interested hostility to Perestroika among mainstream political scientists, who resent the attack on the dominance of methods over substance, than by these 'political' issues. But still, it's amusing to see Mansfield get himself tripped up in conflicting political spin points... sounds like a C- to me.

2003-11-05T07:17:00.000-05:00

A guest poster over at Kos draws an analogy between Baghdad and Beirut, focusing on the evolution of the guerrilla military tactics. S/he wonders whether this might be a harbinger not of a unified national resistance movement, like Vietnam, but rather total collapse into civil war.

I was thinking about the Lebanon analogy yesterday for a different reason: the rather stunning similarities, across the board, to the Iraq war. Remember - Lebanon 1982 was the original "war on terror." Ariel Sharon, then Defense Minister, hoped to crush the PLO in Lebanon and thereby end Palestinian resistance to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza - remember that back then, Israel defined the PLO solely as a terrorist organization and rejected the existence of a legitimate Palestinian nationalism with political grievances.

Sharon's desire to crush the PLO dovetailed with the ambitions of Bashir Gemayal and the Phalange, a right wing (near fascist) Maronite Christian militia, to establish their hegemony over Lebanon. The expectation was that Gemayel would be installed as a pro-Israeli, pro-Western President who would align Lebanon accordingly. Sharon also expected the Shia to welcome the IDF as liberators, not conquerers, based on their clear and very real hatred for the Palestinians (which they did, initially - not with hugs and puppies, but with tacit acceptance... until the Israeli presence proved too oppressive and Hizbollah rose up to seize the mantle of resistance). To get this war of choice, Sharon manipulated intelligence and lied - certainly to the Israeli people, and arguably to Prime Minister Menachem Begin - about the nature and magnitude of the Palestinian threat.

Sharon expected a quick and easy military campaign, and he got one: the IDF raced to Beirut in only six days, confirming Israel's vast military superiority. Once they got to Beirut, though, things bogged down. The horrific siege of Beirut followed, and then the litany of tragedies which we all associate with the Lebanon war - the Sabra and Shatilla massacres, the Hizbollah bombing of the US Marine barracks, the collapse of the society into an unbelievably vicious cycle of senseless violence. Gemayel was assassinated before he could take office. Hizbollah, which many Israelis now consider to be Israel's most dangerous enemy, was born in the 1982 invasion, and rose to prominence by virtue of its military effectiveness in the long struggle against the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon.

The results of an unnecessary, illegal, and misguided war? Well, the PLO was in fact expelled from Lebanon - the one success cited by Sharon and his defenders. But the PLO reconstituted itself abroad, Palestinian nationalism continued to thrive, and the PLO's weakness allowed the spread of Islamic politics in Gaza and the West Bank which soon gave birth to Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Meanwhile, Lebanon descended into chaos and horror, Hizbollah thrived, and Israeli soldiers became easy targets (flypaper!) for Hizbollah attacks in the security zone. To Israel's vast credit, a massive peace movement protested the war, leading to Begin resign in disgrace.

You see the similarities, even if I don't spell them out: a war on terror, fought on false pretenses, expectation of a rapturous Shia welcome and the quick creation of a friendly pro-Western proxy, quick military victory followed by long, slow, painful guerrilla war, a steady bleeding of the occupying military force, the rise of a militarily effective and radical Islamist resistance, and finally a withdrawal in 2000 from what was widely seen as a senseless quagmire. The only - really the only - cause for hope in this whole sordid tale is Begin's fall from power in the face of an outraged public which demanded answers.

2003-11-04T12:21:00.000-05:00

Juan Cole links to this Gulf News article about trends in Iraqi viewing habits. It's a short but important piece, which points out that satellite dishes are rapidly spreading through all parts of Iraqi society (now up to about one-third of all Iraqis, which doesn't count those who watch satellite TV in cafes or at friends' homes). And among those with satellite dishes, 63% primarily get their news from al-Jazeera or al-Arabiya, with only 12% getting their news from the official Iraqi Media Network (about which I wrote last week).

Al-Quds al-Arabi prints a longer version of the the same story. Here's part of what was missing: "Some officials in the IGC and the administration think that hte news provided by al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya is not balanced. Last September the Council banned the two stations for a period from attending official press conference in protest against its style of news coverage. But Hussein Ali (28 years old) said that his family watched the news on the Arab stations, and that the official Iraqi station did not present a true picture of Iraq... which is a country wracked by economic problems and escalating violence... He also said that his sister bought the television set to watch Egyptian serials (soap operas, basically) during the month of Ramadan."

2003-11-04T10:04:00.000-05:00

A sharp reader notes a flaw in my explanation of the meaning of the name "Abu Aardvark": "If you gave birth to Abdallah, wouldn't you be known as Umm Abdallah (Mother of Abdallah)?" I suppose I could make some witticism about unique aardvark anatomy, or blame my oversight on an over-enthusiastic baby aardvark banging away at the keyboard while I type... but instead I shall have to bow to the reader's superior logic! This father of the aardvark did not, in fact, give birth ... to which Mrs. Aardvark would be quite happy to attest!

2003-11-04T08:27:00.000-05:00

David Brooks got the memo about "resolve face": "Somehow, over the next six months, until the Iraqis are capable of their own defense, the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror, the crucial turning point where either we will crush the terrorists' spirit or they will crush ours."

So did Reuel Gerecht (or, to be fair, the headline writer at the Weekly Standard): "The Long, Hard Slog: We've made military strides against al Qaeda. Next step: Iraqi democracy."

Coming soon: why a long, hard slog in Iraq is a vital step in the war on gay marriage!

2003-11-03T13:32:00.000-05:00

How depressing. Al-Hayat reports today that al-Azhar has issued a ruling declaring Ahmed al-Shahawi's book "Al-Wasaya fi Ashiq al-Nisa" to be against Islam and a threat to morals, and on those grounds for its publication, distribution and sale to be immediately stopped. Al-Hayat describes this as a major blow against the Egyptian Ministry of Culture ("an Azharite bomb"), as well as a sharp rebuke to a Parliamentary subcommittee which - in response to a question submitted by a Muslim Brotherhood MP - had determined that the book was not insulting to religion. I haven't read the book and know nothing about it beyond what's in this article, but the wider issue is one I've been following for many years: the ever-growing (if contested) power of al-Azhar's conservative ulema over Egyptian intellectual and cultural life.

Al-Azhar has this power because Hosni Mubarak has, over the years, ceded a tremendous amount of power over cultural content to the conservative ulema of al-Azhar in order to buy their support against more radical Islamists. This is only the latest of many examples of their use of their power to suppress Egyptian intellectual and cultural life. These conservatives - like many American religious conservatives - care rather more about the culture wars than about politics, which serves Mubarak just fine. These are the kind of people who would, say, make "gay marriage" the central political issue of their day, ban music which they find offensive (or at least put warning labels on it), or publish jeremiads about the degradation of the contemporary media. You know the type.

For a different face of Egyptian Islamism, check out al-Ahram Weekly's profile of Mohammed Selim al-Awa. Al-Awa is one of the key figures of the Wasatiya (Centrist) movement in Egypt, a movement which also encompasses Islamists such as Tareq al-Bishri, Fahmi Huwaydi, and Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

The profile says: "El-Awa is seen as one of the more important voices from within that group of Islamist intellectuals regarded by many commentators as representing the voice of the Muslim mainstream, as grounded in the Qur'anic verse "We have willed you to be a community of moderation" (2:143). This idea of moderation, of Al-Wasatiya, is the basis of the notion of centrism which he embraces and may well have underwritten his decision to side with Al-Wasat Party, a group of young professionals who defected from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1995 and sought to establish a political party. When some of the party members were arrested he represented them, and their right to form a party, in the courts. "I was defending the idea of Al-Wasat (centrism) first because I believe it to be a notion that could create waves of change in this society."

Al-Awa remembers that his father cut off his contacts with the Muslim Brotherhood in 1965, when the movement was associated with violence against the government: "He cut off his links with them from that day on. It was an act of protest against their act of violence. He always believed that shedding innocent blood was prohibited. He had argued and counter-argued in countless debates with members of the group that whoever committed such acts was in violation of Islamic teaching."

On the question of an Islamic state, al-Awa says: "I think their project -- as defined by Hassan El-Banna -- was about the Muslim individual, the Muslim family, the Muslim community and the Muslim world . And this is the project of Prophethood, not of Brotherhood. I mean, it was the project of Islam itself and no one can object to this vision but when it comes to translating it into actions I would ask, how do you raise the Muslim individual. Do you raise him or her to be free, independent, capable of making decisions and to think and act out of his own free will or do you indoctrinate blind obedience in him or her? I believe that most Islamic movements, including the Brotherhood, opt for the latter. They raise the individuals to be cogs in the machine. They cannot question or think critically. The same applies to most political parties in this country." .... "I consider myself a part of the reformist trend in Islamic thinking. I have been preoccupied with the issue of Islamic reform, though on the level of political thought not political activism."

There's a lot more in the profile, which makes for interesting reading. Al-Awa and al-Azhar.... both part of the story of Egyptian Islamism.

2003-11-03T13:05:00.000-05:00

I was trying to figure out why in the world Abu Aardvark was suddenly getting referrals from Little Green Footballs, a site which I rarely (okay, never) read. So I tracked it down and discovered that they've been having a debate about the meaning of "Abu." I couldn't make it through all the digressions, name-calling, abusive language, simple-minded anti-Arab and anti-Muslim vitriol, and repetition (is this a normal thread? Yikes - reminds me why I don't have comment boards here), but I think I made it far enough to register three points for anyone who came here from there:

(1) thanks to whoever it was who called Abu Aardvark a "moderate" - probably the nicest thing anyone on LGF has ever said about me (at least I think it was meant to be nice)!

(2) both sides of the debate are right, to some extent. In Arab cultures "Abu" is typically taken by any father with the birth of his first son. So if your name was Hussein, and you gave birth to a son named Abdullah, you become colloquially known by your proud friends and family as "Abu Abdullah." It is also true, however, that "Abu Whatever" did have political significance among Palestinian resistance fighters of a certain generation and their admirers.

(3) Over here, "Abu Aardvark" should be taken as "proud father of the aardvark," as well as an inside joke to which outsiders (being outsiders) are not privy, not as any sign of membership in any Palestinian faction. Just in case you were wondering.

2003-11-03T09:41:00.000-05:00

A bit late, I'm sure, but here it is anyway: if you only have time to read one article today, make sure that it is David Rieff's NYT Magazine piece on the failures of planning for a postwar Iraq. It lays out as clearly as I've seen anywhere how Chalabi and his neocon enablers managed to overcome an entire institutional apparatus of careful planning in the State Department and the Pentagon in order to impose their ideological fantasy. Overreliance on Chalabi for everything from defector information on WMD to supposedly rallying Iraqi public support to the American side during the war lies at the heart of many, if not most, things which have gone wrong since the war. His neocon enablers really seem to have believed his line, and seem to have genuinely expected him to deliver when they airlifted him into the country. He didn't.

The article also documents that the argument that nobody could have foreseen the current mess is just simply factually wrong. The State Department's Future of Iraq project, which was run by professionals and involved both academics and quite a few non-INC Iraqis, got it pretty much right. So did many academics and non-neocon think tank reports. They were all ignored or actively suppressed by the neocons simply because they weren't on the neocon team - it was from State, so it must be killed. The article says that Jay Garner says that he was specifically told by Rumsfeld to ignore the Future of Iraq project, and that his request to add Tom Warrick (the head of the project) to his staff was rejected.

There's a great line Rieff quotes from an Iraqi-American participant, which responds in part to Tom Friedman's foolishness yesterday along the lines that critics of the American occupation don't think Arab democracy is possible: "From Colin Powell on down, I've spent hundreds of hours with State Department people, and I've never heard one say democracy was not viable in Iraq. Not one."

Anyway, it's a must read.

2003-11-03T08:45:00.000-05:00

New talking points: "President Bush and his aides sound distinctly less triumphal these days about the prospects for early success in the continuing war in Iraq — a deliberate change in tone after a week of setbacks on several fronts."

Fair and balanced bloggers who do not take hating this country as a north star take note. Only anti-American America haters pretend that everything is going well in Iraq - such pollyannas can not be tolerated. This will be a long, hard war, as the President has always said [fill in your own gratuitous links to "mission accomplished" and "the media only shows the bad news" here], but we will show our resolve and our credibility so that the dominoes do not fall. Remember - resolve, resolve, resolve. No more "morning in Baghdad" routines - for some bizarre reason, that whole "American soldiers being killed shows how desperate the enemy is" argument didn't seem to be going over all that well (weird, weird - it sounded great at the AEI luncheon...). Anyway, it's all about resolve now: if we don't win, the terrorists do. Don't miss the talking points, folks, and remember the party line - the RNC will be watching.

2003-11-02T09:57:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think Tom Friedman argues with himself in his columns because those are the only arguments he can win. In today's rather peevish swiping at Germany and France, as an arriviste in the Freedom Fries club, Friedman puts forward a lot of his favorite kind of adversary, the straw man. Almost every sentence in his Sunday column defines the word "tendentious." Amazingly, he still almost manages to lose the argument.

For Friedman, Germans and French didn't contribute money in Madrid because they don't support Iraqi democracy (which, bizarrely, leads Friedman to the surreal inference that the Saudi pledge of $1 billion means that they do support Iraqi democracy - and if you believe that, well, contact me about this great business opportunity involving an ancient aardvark buried treasure and the need for an honest American business partner to process the transaction). It couldn't possibly be opposition to how the US is running the occupation, or the American insistence on keeping control in its own hands rather than in the UN's, or a reluctance to legitimize an illegitimate military action - no, it's because they don't want democracy in Iraq.

Friedman attributes to Germans and French the idea that Arabs are not capable of democracy. This is a view widely held among certain sectors of American punditry, but has about as much to do with European views on the Middle East as does that shocking but now revealed to be true ancient aardvarkian prophecy (you know the one: 'And on a day when Buffy is no more, there shall come a show which mocks your Faith').

Then Friedman marvels wonderingly that many Europeans seem to find a dominant America more threatening to global stability than Saddam's tyranny. Well, actually, framed like that, the straw man Europeans are pretty clearly right. Saddam might have been a horror to his own people, and a source of regional tension, but what threat did Iraq really pose to global stability? If it had really had nuclear weapons, then an argument could be made for a threat to global security (as it can be for North Korea), but by now most hawks have accepted that Iraq didn't have nukes and have ret-conned accordingly (translation: "retroactively reconstructed the continuity to make your version of the past fit the current plot line" - the comic book equivalent of 'we are at war with Oceana, we have always been at war with Oceana' or 'I never thought that Iraq's nukes were the real reason for war). On the other side, basic Intro to International Relations theory would tell you that the most powerful state almost by definition has the greatest potential for changing the system (for good or ill) - so if led by someone with dangerous and threatening views, then that country does pose a greater threat *to global stability*, simply because it has the capabilities to act on its beliefs in ways that others do not.

Friedman: the Dorian Gray of the liberal hawks. The self-portrayal remain young and vigorous, but behind the facade the whole position grows rotten and weak, increasingly shrill and petulant, blaming others for not accepting his fantasy as reality.

2003-11-02T07:08:00.000-05:00

More good news! Fourteen dead American soldiers and a helicopter down - right out of the President's plan! The more Americans die, the more desperate the enemy must be, just like the President said. Lots of desperation among the insurgency tonight, I'll bet. Sure, some anti-American and unpatriotic Leftists will probably try to minimize or downplay this wonderful news, but we know the truth. Bring it on!

2003-10-31T07:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the aardvark urged people to watch Tru Calling so that it doesn't suffer Firefly's fate at the hands of Evil!Fox. Well, I saw Tru last night, so how does the comparison hold up? Firefly was a brilliant, near-genius ensemble drama with a genuinely original premise, a carefully and fully imagined universe, and almost an unbelievably in-synch cast of stellar actors. And it got axed midway through its first season despite the passionate attachment of its respectable and growing audience. And Tru Calling.... well, Eliza sure is cute.

2003-10-30T14:45:00.000-05:00

Bernard Lewis and James Woolsey may (or may not) have produced quality work in their respective fields over the years; that is for others to judge. But dragging out - again! - the tired old dog of a Hashemite restoration in Iraq betrays a remarkable confluence of opportunism and ignorance. Never mind that nobody in Iraq wants this - any more than anyone in Iran wants the restoration of the Shah that the neocons seem to want so badly.

What makes this astonishing isn't so much the proposal, which is a chestnut that turns up in the National Review every year or two (David Pryce-Jones andMichael Rubin, for two recent examples). What is surprising is the authors: these are the same two people who spent a decade flacking for Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, which was at least in principle calling for some form of democratic federalism in Iraq. And Lewis and Woolsey each, over the years, has waxed eloquent over both Chalabi's personal qualities and the absolute necessity of this democratic federalist model.

But in this Journal piece, they forget about all that and instead yearn for a king, a pro-Western royalty which could unite this troubled land and restore order. Go back to the 1925 Constitution, they argue, and a Hashemite prince could deliver what former golden boy Chalabi apparently could not (and their poor judgement over the last decade in endorsing Chalabi shouldn't, of course, be held against them, or remembered).

What kind of king would accomplish this miracle? Quoth Lewis and Woolsey: "The king should be a Hashemite prince with political experience and no political obligations or commitments." Now where might such a noble creature be found?

Where have you gone, Prince Hassan of Jordan, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you, ooh ooh oooh...
What's that you say, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Woolsey, Joltin' Hassan was replaced at the last minute by his brother's son Abdullah and is now cooling his heels thinking big thoughts all day... hey, hey, hey.

2003-10-30T13:08:00.000-05:00

Bashing the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) is something of a cottage industry in certain circles. The Campus Watch website, Martin Kramer, Daniel Pipes, Stanley Kurtz and others have spearheaded a campaign against academic Middle East studies for some time. One of their complaints is that MESA (as a proxy for academic Middle East Studies) does not take seriously radical Islamism or Islamist violence.

So I'm sure that they will be delighted with the new issue of the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the official journal of MESA. The November IJMES, edited by Juan Cole (yes, that Juan Cole), has three (out of four) outstanding articles on political Islam. First, William Shepard takes apart Sayid Qutb's concept of 'jahiliya,' the cornerstone of radical Islamist thought, and considers how latter-day radical Islamists such as Osama bin Laden have used (or misused) Qutb's thinking. Second, James Toth offers a rare and fascinating analysis of Islamism in Upper Egypt; most studies of Egyptian Islamism concentrate on Cairo, but radical groups have long been stronger in Upper Egyptian towns than in the capital. Finally, Farzin Vahdat writes on recent 'post-revolutionary' political theories of modernity in Iran, particularly the writing of Abdelkarim Soroush. While this is not about radical Islamism, it does address a major intellectual challenge to the Islamic Republic's official ideology, which could be scaled up to wider intra-Islamist debates writ large. All three are worth reading.

Also, Social Research, a generalist journal, has just released a stellar fall issue focusing on the question of the public and private spheres in Islam. This is just an outstanding collection of essays, covering an astonishing range of topics, and it's well worth your time. I particularly recommend the introduction by Mohsen Kadivar (although his take on the public/private distinction in Islam reads to me as pretty distinctively Shi'i, so reader beware!), Frank Vogel's piece on the morality police in Saudi Arabia, Juan Cole (again!) on the Taliban (fun fact: did you know that the Taliban issued a fatwa against Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet for making a film celebrating love out of wedlock? I didn't... but disliking "Titanic" may be one of the only points of agreement between aardvarks and the Taliban), Geneive Abdo on the Iranian media, and Hassan Mneimneh on the Arab response the American "What We're Fighting For" letter.

That should be enough to keep y'all busy for the weekend! But don't forget to watch Eliza Dushku's new show tonight, Tru Calling. Remember, Fox the Evil canceled Firefly on a whim.... if Eliza doesn't get an audience, she'll be gone. Which, I'm sure you all agree, would be a tragedy.

2003-10-30T11:59:00.000-05:00

Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber links to this almost unbelievably revolting essay by John Derbyshire in the National Review Online, in which the gentleman expounds at length his deranged hatred for Chelsea Clinton, a then 20 year old undergraduate student who had done absolutely nothing other than be born to Bill and Hilary Clinton.

Derbyshire states: "Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past — I'm not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble — recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat." He fantasizes about such other societies - Stalin's Soviet Union, Imperial China - where such a threat could be met by Chelsea's murder, but then regretfully concludes: "Our humanity and forbearance, however, has a cost. The cost is, that the vile genetic inheritance of Bill and Hillary Clinton may live on to plague us in the future."

Any time - ANY time - you hear someone argue that today's so-called "Bush hatred" is worse, more virulent, or more irrational than right wing Clinton-hatred, just recall this essay from the National Review.

2003-10-29T06:21:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post has an interesting piece on the CPA's media strategy, which reminds many Iraqis of the old regime's propaganda. While Bremer has said that he wants to create a model of "Western style journalism" for Iraqis, what he is actually doing seems more like a familiar model of a state-run information service. Which, not surprisingly, doesn't look all that different from the Iraqi model of state media propaganda. Far be it from an aardvark to pass up the obvious - that this kind of dutiful propaganda seems to fit quite closely with what Bush's partisans actually seem to want from the American media.

The Post says: " To many Iraqis, though, Bremer's prime-time addresses are more reminiscent of the regular television appearances of former president Saddam Hussein, according to both American and Iraqi media specialists who have studied IMN, the Iraqi Media Network. Iraqis see the station not as a vehicle for free speech but "as the mouthpiece of the CPA," the BBC World Service Trust reported after studying the stations this summer."

It goes on to describe the Iraqi Media Network as "psyops on steroids" (as the story says it is known in parts of the Pentagon). Here's the crux of the matter, from my point of view: "At the heart of its difficulties is that IMN is supposed to promote U.S. goals and provide an alternative to often critical Arab-world media while evolving into Iraq's version of a free press. "They need psyops to get their message across and at the same time allegedly want to create an indigenous, independent media . . . goals that are counterintuitive," said a senior congressional aide familiar with the program."

That's exactly right. The US should be backing a genuinely free, privately owned and run, and critical media - and it should lavish time and attention and access on this media, regardless of its perceived politics. Instead, it is trying to "create an alternative" to the "critical Arab media." This is the Fox News model - fight alleged bias with your own naked bias, call it "fair and balanced," and accuse others of the bias that you yourself embrace.

To this point, the Fox model for IMN isn't working. The Post points out: " IMN needs to move quickly if it wants to counter critical coverage of U.S. and coalition efforts by the Arabic-language satellite channels of al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya. About 35 percent of Iraqi homes have satellite receivers, which were banned during Hussein's rule, but that number is growing rapidly. A recent poll showed that Iraqis who can get satellite television choose the Arab stations over IMN by more than 2 to 1."

If the CPA must get into the media game - and I'm not at all sure that it should - then it should be extremely proactive in providing access to critical voices and to not insisting on an unrealistically upbeat, pro-American tone. This is exactly the same problem, scaled down, as will plague the proposed Arabic language satellite station. If it is simply to be a vehicle for pro-American propaganda, it won't find an audience. And if it is to be a genuinely open vehicle for free public discourse, then it is going to have to find a place for those "critical" views now found on al Jazeera and al Arabiya which it is so mistakenly intended to 'combat.'

Arab audiences know propaganda when they hear it or see it. They expect it. The US should be bending over backward to show that it does not mean "propaganda' when it says 'free press.' But if the shoe fits...

2003-10-28T19:09:00.000-05:00

Even close observers of the Middle East might have missed that over the weekend, Jordan got a new government. Yes, Faisal al-Fayez is now Prime Minister. Out with one group of bland technocrats charged with putting Jordan and its economy first, in with a new group of bland technocrats charged with putting Jordan and its economy first. Jordan's change of government was a non-event even by non-event standards... even Jordanian newspapers have hardly covered it. But before you shrug your shoulders and move on, remember that Jordan is one of the 'best' of the 'pro-American democracies.' And the change of government registers as even more of a non-event than the Jordanian elections a few months ago. Well, on the other hand, given all that could happen and be exciting, maybe boring isn't such a bad thing in the Middle East.

UPDATE: not to be misunderstood here.... for all the virtues of boring, I don't think that the Jordanian political system is doing very well here. It should be quite telling that the change of Prime Ministers - done in the undemocratic fashion of a royal appointment - arouses no real interest anywhere. The Jordanian regime has taken little action to roll back the phenomenal wave of extraordinary laws enacted without Parliamentary approval over the last few years - laws which place tight restrictions on the media and especially the press, while curtailing civil society and political parties and - really - any means of independent political mobilization. Jordan is buying temporary stability at the price of any goods that democracy might bring - exactly the kind of tradeoff which the so-called new Wilsonians in the Bush administration were supposed to be against. So don't mistake my boredom for approval. The recent report by the International Crisis Group (link to follow) sums up nicely the impasse of Jordanian politics these days.

2003-10-28T16:34:00.000-05:00

Aha! A sharp-eyed reader has an answer to the mystery of the poll I quoted a few days ago, the one which showed Chalabi with 26% support and Sadr with 1%. The poll was, in fact, according to a State Department briefing yesterday, "conducted by the staff of the State Department Office of Research, in coordination with the Iraq Central Statistics Office and the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies (ICRSS)." That's right, it was a State Department poll, cleverly concealed as an Iraqi poll. No newspaper that I saw - not AFP, not al-Zaman - mentioned its American origin, although I may well have missed some stories which did. This makes some of its pessimistic findings all the more remarkable... and probably explains Chalabi's lofty (by his standards) showing. (Disclaimer - It's also slightly possible that this is a different poll - some of the particulars look a bit different, although its the same research center named.)

2003-10-28T15:55:00.000-05:00

The lead editorial in al-Quds al-Arabi today takes to task Saudi Mufti Shaykh Abd al-Aziz bin Abdullah Al Al-Shaykhfor his fatwa which (according to them) declares the protestors inspired by London-based dissident Saad al-Faqih to be "non-Muslim." The paper points out that there is nothing in the Quran which says that protests are forbidden or that they are an un-Islamic innovation, but that there are many verses which condemn tyranny - which, the paper suggests, can be found aplenty in the Saudi regime. What I want to know, but don't, is whether this is really what the fatwa says; how common it is for a Saudi mufti to deploy what sounds an awful lot like the takfir (declaring someone to be an apostate) card; and how people other than al-Quds al-Arabi are reacting. How does this fit in with the recent reform petition submitted to Crown Prince Abdullah? More later, I hope. Anyone want to point me to some interesting articles on this?

By the way, for good background on Saad al-Faqih, you could do worse than Mamoun Fandy's book "Saudi Arabia and the Politics of Dissent." I was thinking about Fandy because yesterday I was asking "who is the best moderate Islamism has to offer". Fandy has a piece in today's al-Sharq al-Awsat arguing that "the moderates are the problem" - not radicals. Since Fandy was a member of the recent Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, I find this an interesting argument to be making.

2003-10-27T19:11:00.000-05:00

The aardvark's head is spinning. Calpundit helpfully provides the following quotes:
"President Bush this morning said the increasing attacks on U.S. personnel and supporters in Iraq are a sign of progress because the attacks indicate Iraqi opponents are getting increasingly desperate. And just in case you thought Bush was merely speaking carelessly, Scott McClellan repeated the theme: "We've always said the more progress we make, the more desperate the killers will become," the spokesman said. Asked how it could be determined that the attacks signaled desperation rather than sophistication, McClellan repeated: "The more progress we make toward a free and prosperous Iraq, the more desperate they will become."

Okay. So, does that mean that if there are no attacks, then it would be an indicator that the administration's policy is failing? Are all the conservatives who have spent the last few months claiming that everything in Iraq is rosy and happy actually the ones claiming that Bush's policy is failing? How can their anti-American negativism by tolerated?

Spinning, spinning, spinning... dizzy now.

2003-10-27T12:05:00.000-05:00

Dan Drezner wonders whether Mohammed Mahathir is the best moderate Islam has to offer. What a strange question! Mahathir may have just given a speech challenging the Muslim world to reform and criticizing (or praising) Jews for ruling the world. This speech, and its response, may deserve comment and critique. And Mahathir may be a Muslim. But he is no Islamist, and I doubt that very many moderate Islamists would either see him or accept him as a spokesman. Mahathir is generally seen as a cranky and savvy nationalist, someone who will say anything if it serves his personal ambitions. He banished the most important moderate Islamist in Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, to jail on trumped up charges because Ibrahim was getting too popular. This did not endear him with Islamists either in Malaysia or abroad. Taking Mahathir as somehow representative of mainstream (or exemplary) Islamism just makes no sense, if Islamism as a political ideology/movement is to mean anything more than "Muslims."

Who is the best moderate Islamism has to offer, then? Now that would be a good question. Here are a couple of nominations. What is interesting is that many of them were initially quite sympathetic to the US after 9/11 and publicly condemned the terrorist attacks (not that this made much of an impact in the United States), but have become much more skeptical and bitter over the last two years. Many make very harsh criticisms of American foreign policy. Not all of these people agree with each other. Many of them hold views with which I strongly disagree. But if you are going to say anything serious about moderate Islamism, here are my nominations for people you need to deal with (not including people who write mainly in English for a Western audience): Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Fahmi Huwaydi, Tareq al-Bishri, Hassan Hanafi, Kamal Abu el Magd, Rashed Ghannouchi, Said Binsaid, Mohammed al-Awa, Mohammed Khatami, Abdelkarim Soroush, Tariq Ramadan and Abd al-Wahhab al-Affendi.

The aardvark is now open to other nominations, as well as to the inevitable criticisms about some of these folks (whose views, remember, I am not endorsing... simply presenting as important moderate voices in contemporary Islamist politics).

2003-10-27T09:01:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: Silly aardvark, no wonder the link below didn't work, and no wonder that article sounded so familiar. The Kagan article was from June, not from today.... which explains that feeling of deja vu I got writing up the response. What the heck, I'm going to leave it up anyway, even if it shows me getting sucked into a months-old argument... valuable minutes of my life were spent on it, right?

Anyway, we now return to our regularly scheduled Republican Approved Commentary: please disregard the above negative, anti-American defeatism.

The Liberation Parties which broke out all over Baghdad last night should convince even the most determined skeptic of the epidemic of peace, love, and understanding which now characterizes Iraq. Anti-American and unpatriotic reporters are probably going to point to the dead and wounded, but think about it - how many people are killed and wounded in post-Final Four celebrations every year? Does that mean that the Final Four is a fiasco? Of course not. As the President has often said, the best proof of our success in Iraq will be terrorist attacks, I mean Liberation Celebrations, throughout the capital city. Last night proves, once again, the wisdom of his policies.

NOTE: the preceding news bulletin has been approved by the White House and by the Republican National Committee as appropriate coverage of the situation in Iraq. The Republican Seal of Approval - don't trust any news without it!

2003-10-27T06:40:00.000-05:00

An anonymous reader with the delightful name "Abu Fan" (I hope that's the name s/he uses when writing to other blogs!) asks me to comment on Robert Kagan's piece in the Post today, a fairly typical hawkish recitation of quotes of a bunch of non-Bushies like Chirac, Clinton, Gore, and others at various points in the last few years to the effect that Iraq had WMD and posed a threat, which he then takes to conclude that anyone who says that Bush is lying must think that Bush is part of a vast international conspiracy of liars.

Here's my response:
I have never argued that Iraq did not at one time have a WMD program, nor that it posed a potential threat (although I have argued consistently that there was no evidence of a nuclear program). My argument has always been that this was a threat which was best met via UN inspections, which had largely succeeded in their mission and which could have been reconstituted effectively. This, it seems to me, has been almost entirely vindicated. The lying and manipulation - of which there was a lot - did not begin with Bush. The Clinton administration manipulated UNSCOM through 1998, which directly contributed to the collapse of that agency (which explains some of those quotes). But to conclude from this that Bush did not lie would be wrong. All the folks you (Kagan) quote were referring to a threat which could be met through UN action; Bush's lie consisted of hyping the threat to justify a war which few policymakers outside his circle considered necessary.

2003-10-26T09:02:00.000-05:00

Vindication! The Washington Post reports today that even though Iraq "had no active program to build a weapon, produce its key materials or obtain the technology he needed for either", and that David Kay has quietly determined that "Iraq's nuclear weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign, and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use," Iraq's regime still wanted nuclear weapons. Saddam lusted after them, in fact. What greater vindication could there be for the war? As Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and George Bush repeatedly explained to the American people, the United States could not safely be left in the same world as someone with lust for nuclear weapons in his heart. Could we really risk a mushroom cloud of Saddam's lust? We dealt with it effectively, whatever the critics now say - wherever Saddam Hussein is lurking in Iraq, we can safely know that his lust for nuclear weapons has been extinguished. Some anti-American and unpatriotic commentators are probably going to harp on the negative, as if Iraq not having a nuclear weapons program somehow compromises the President's case for war (which had absolutely nothing to do with any threat Iraq might pose - he never once said the word imbanint, you know). But that only shows how desperate they are: as we've been saying all along, the best vindication of the urgent need for war would be finding no nuclear weapons, just as we predicted would happen. The critics all seem to have forgotten that the President gave dozens, maybe hundreds of speeches, where he clearly warned that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program and posed no immediate danger.

NOTE: the preceding news bulletin has been approved by the White House and by the Republican National Committee as appropriate coverage of the situation in Iraq. The Republican Seal of Approval - don't trust any news without it!

UPDATE: the preceding news report mentioned "Saddam Hussein lurking in Iraq." It is typical of how the liberal bias infects even honest media that a story about the vindication of the President's claims about the Iraqi nuclear program would be tarnished with a mention of the unknown whereabouts of the Iraqi dictator. Since his location is unknown, he could just as easily be dead, or in New Jersey. We would like to suggest to writers that in the future they avoid such misleading references. Thank you.

2003-10-26T08:44:00.000-05:00

More good news from Iraq! In a stunning demonstration of Iraq's stability, Paul Wolfowitz was treated today to a spectacular display of fireworks and good cheer. While staying in the Al Rasheed Hotel, symbol of Iraq's liberation, Wolfowitz was delighted by the spontaneous welcoming ceremony hosted by unidentified Iraqis. In his unscripted remarks, a beaming Wolfowitz said "Thank you, Iraq, thank you Iraqi people. I knew things here were good, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect such love. I'm just speechless!" Meanwhile, some anti-American and unpatriotic media outlets reported the completely baseless rumour that about 10 Americans were wounded in the celebration, which as is typical of their relentless negativism they described as an "attack" - as if 10 soldiers being hurt meant anything compared to the love of the liberated Iraqi people.

NOTE: the preceding news bulletin has been approved by the White House and by the Republican National Committee as appropriate coverage of the situation in Iraq. The Republican Seal of Approval - don't trust any news without it!

2003-10-24T12:12:00.000-04:00

Spin of the day: The Kuwait News Agency just reported that Kuwait's Foreign Minister announced a major contribution to the donor's conference, according to the headline: "Kuwait said on Friday it had earmarked 1.5 billion dollars to help in the reconstruction of Iraq." What a boost to the American efforts to secure funding promises in Madrid!

But wait - the story continues: ""Due to ties of kinship and neighborhood,Kuwait did not wait for the holding of this important conference to help our brothers in Iraq, and earmarked 1.5 billion dollars to contribute to its reconstruction," said Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Al-Sabah, while addressing the international donors conference in Madrid." Well, okay - better sooner than later, right?

But the story goes one: ""Kuwait has already spent a total of nearly one billion dollars on fuel,relief aid, medical assistance, power generators and water desalination equipment," he said." Oh. So one billion of the $1.5 billion is not, in fact, a new promise of aid - so the headline should have read "Kuwait promises $500 million to the reconstruction of Iraq." But at least that $500 million will help the Americans out, right?

The Foreign Minister continues: "As to the remaining sum, 500 million dollars, Kuwaitwill consult directly with our brothers in Iraq over the best way to ensure the benefit of the two brotherly peoples." You mean the money isn't even going to the new international agency created to oversee (non-American) donations?

So the headline should have read, "Kuwait promises nothing to international reconstruction efforts." But that wouldn't have been quite so catchy to American audiences, now, would it. Remember this if you start hearing people include Kuwait's $1.5 billion in their accounting of the Donor's Conference. And all of this, remember, comes directly from Kuwait's own press release....never mind critical journalism!

UPDATE: The BBC is reporting the results of the donor's conference as including a $1 billion contribution from Kuwait. What do they know that the Kuwaiti Foreign Minister does not?

2003-10-24T09:45:00.000-04:00

Use and misuse of polls:

There's more and more polling data coming out of Iraq, which is a good thing. For all the problems associated with survey research, anything which gives a real sense of public opinion is helpful. That said, too often the results are spun to support political positions.. which just means that you should always go and look at the polls themselves rather than taking anyone's interpretation (including mine) as authoritative.

With that caveat, Agence France Presse reports another poll, this one from the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies. Interviews (1620, MOE 3-4%) took place September 28-October 10 in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf, Ramadi, Fallujah, Arbil, and Sulaymaniyah (and of course location, location, location matters in these polls). Among the key findings, 67% of Iraqis "view the US-led coalition as an occupying force, while only 46% considered them such when US troops rolled into Baghdad April 9." Over the same timeframe, "those who viewed the US forces as liberators slumped from 43% to 15%." On security, 46% said "the situation had deteriorated, while only 23% said it had improved." 61% said "none of [their political leaders] were trustworthy." Approval ratings for various Iraqi figures: Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim tops the list with 58% approval, followed by Mohammed Bahr al-Ulum (57% favorable) and Ibrahim al-Jaffari (54%). Ahmed Chalabi got a whopping 26% favorable - far higher than I would have expected. Moqtada al-Sadr got 1%, lower than I would have expected. If I could get hold of the polls internals, what I'd want to know is how each person scored in areas outside his/her main constituency - i.e. what were Barzani's favorables outside of Kurdistan? Or Hakim's outside Shia areas?

UPDATE: a faithful reader (and can I just say how incredibly grateful I am that *anyone* is still reading after I took off for three weeks?) shares some doubts about this poll. I wish I knew more about the Iraqi Center, but I've never heard of it before. As for the suspicious results on Chalabi and Sadr... yup. Mighty fishy. You'd think that a pro-Chalabi outfit would do better than 26%, but that's probably about 25% higher than it should be, if you grant him 1% on the basis of his vast retinue of bodyguards and flunkies.

2003-10-24T08:32:00.000-04:00

Let's see, what's happened in the three weeks I've been away?

The administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence stunk. It stunk largely because the neocons used Chalabi's disinformation over professional intelligence agencies. This isn't news, but Sy Hersh has more details, and so does the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Donor's Conference in Madrid isn't getting many donations. This isn't news, and the failure has been forecast for so long that the administration is now spinning the far lower number as a success. Unilateralism has a price, and this is one example of that price. I'm actually surprised that more countries haven't ponied up a token amount - "here's $5 million to show our deep commitment to the future of the Middle East" - just to get on Bush's good side. The numbers aren't as important as how the money is spent, though - without security, and a stable investing environment, reconstruction is going to be much more tenuous and expensive, and the private sector will steer clear. Bremer recognizes this, to some extent, and he certainly recognizes that he needs a lot more money than he's getting.

The UN passed a unanimous resolution concerning post-war Iraq. This is interesting, and I still hope that I'll have a chance to comment on it at more length. Briefly, I have mixed feelings about it - I'm delighted to see the US getting the UN involved, since this is what I've been arguing for for many months. It's easy to be critical of the UN for caving in to American pressure, but overall I think that it's more important to get the UN back into the game and to accept the American climbdown relatively gracefully than to hold out for concessions that won't be forthcoming. And I'm glad that the French proposal to turn power over to the unelected and unrepresentative Council went nowhere. I was glad to see the creation of an independent agency to administer (non-American) funds - but the agency should have had authority over American constributions also. And despite all the above, I'm not thrilled with the text of the resolution, and I would have liked to have seen far more serious moves towards transferring real authority to the UN.

Josh Marshall is having a little contest - in response to the inane "Bush never said imminent threat" claim, submit your best "Bush administration claimed that we had to go to war with Iraq right now" quote. Among the current leading candidates are statements by Rice and Bush that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," and Cheney's "Saddam has reconstituted his nuclear program." But I'm sure Josh is open to new and fresh candidates.

Don Rumsfeld leaked a memo questioning America's progress in the war on terror. Set the politics and the inside baseball aside - what really struck me was just the simplicity of the memo and its failure to engage with big questions at anything approaching a sophisticated level. Seriously, students in an undergraduate course on international security would do a better job of framing the questions. If this is really the level of discourse among the top civilians at the DOD - and, given the circumstances of the "leak" I don't necessarily believe that it is - then things are even more frightening than I thought.

The Cubs and the Red Sox lost. Hey folks... they aren't called "lovable losers" for nothing. Of course they lost. (and before you flame me, I was pulling for the Cubs. I can't stand the Yankees, and I find it simply adorable that the Florida team is named after a fish.)

Fox released a preview of Tru Calling, the new show starring Eliza Dushku, which premieres next week. From what I can tell, the show has several, shall we say, "Aardvark Friendly" premises (starting, of course, with the casting of Ms. Dushku).

That's it - I'm sure lots of other important stuff happened while I've been away, but you hardly need the aardvark for that. Hopefully blogging on a more normal schedule will resume next week.

2003-10-20T21:44:00.000-04:00

Some time around 4:00 this afternoon, I hit the defining moment of the day: I started to write up a "to do" list to make sense of everything that needs to get done... and then stopped because, I realized, I didn't have time.

Just in case anyone wonders about the lack of posts on the day I allegedly returned... aardvark comments on the UN resolution and everything else are just going to have to wait.

2003-10-20T07:55:00.000-04:00

The aardvark is back - in body, if not in mind, spirit or soul. I was barely able to even follow the news for the last week and a half... and now I'm buried under a week and half's worth of backlogged correspondence and work (not to mention jetlag, and a jetlagged little cub). So bear with me.

2003-10-13T13:00:00.000-04:00

Still on the road.

Just noticed Hesiod's coverage of the latest astroturfing scandal - a flurry of identical letters, supposedly written by soldiers in northern Iraq, published in a bunch of local newspapers under different signatures. What's funny to me is that the same letter was sent to an anti-sanctions list-serve, and it immediately struck me as odd - it went from a plausible and heartfelt description of little kids getting on with the American troops to a sudden, rather jarringly disconnected, political sermon about supporting the President which contained some rather, um, timely RNC talking points. When I saw it, I just shrugged and moved on... and forgot all about it until now. Go read Hesiod for the rest.

Go read Juan Cole's new piece in the Boston Review about the Iraqi Shia. Being on the road and all I haven't yet read it myself, but it's sure to be good and worth your time.

Oh, one last thing - is anyone out there ready yet to admit the possibility, just the possibility, that Dick Vermeil is a great coach? I mean, the lousy Chiefs suddenly look, well, almost Rams-like, and the mighty Rams look, well, kind of Chiefs-like. Nah, probably just a coincidence. Trent Green must be the difference.

2003-10-10T20:42:00.000-04:00

Even on the road, it's hard to miss Team Bush's hard sell public relations pep talks on Iraq. While I'm sure that Bush partisans are heartened by this rallying of the troops - which said troops desperately needed after the Plame affair, the Kay report (if they are honest with themselves), the creation of the new Iraq stabilization office (with its implicit recognition that things aren't going well, a thousand peppy warbloggers to the contrary), endless critical magazine covers and dropping poll numbers had been deflating even the peppiest - it is unlikely to have much effect on anyone else.

I've been struck at how remarkably weak the campaign has been, despite the airy self-confidence and tough talk. I've already mentioned at some length the silliness of Andrew Sullivan's attempts to read the Kay report as vindicating the war - and the very fact that so many warbloggers have embraced and linked to his weak musings on this is itself suggestive of their desperation. I've also been more struck than usual by the rapid recycling of arguments... yes folks, we all got the RNC memo that the President never used "imminent" and "threat" within three words of each other, so you can stop breathlessly repeating it now. If you really want to believe that Team Bush didn't say that we had to act now so that the smoking gun wouldn't be a mushroom cloud, go ahead and believe it.

But Dick Cheney at Heritage - that was the pure stuff. And what stuff it was - 85 mile an hour fastballs right down the middle of the plate, just daring hitters to deal with that heat. Critics of the war just wanted to leave the country defenseless against a dire threat! Critics who called for multilateral cooperation insisted on a unanimous international community, which means that even a single country which disagreed with the US could veto it! Saddam may not have had WMD, but he wanted them! The UN achieved nothing in its years of inspections! Saddam was evil, and Osama is evil, so obviously they are part of the same big evil, even if I'm not going to say that Saddam was involved in 9/11 again because I got in trouble last time!

I wish that I was exaggerating this stuff. Dana Milbank in the Post did the honors and stepped up to the plate by pointing out the, um, shortcomings of Cheney's speech. But any one of you could have done the same.

Alas. Intermittent computer access is up. Back onto the road for this weary aardvark.

2003-10-08T07:57:00.000-04:00

Second quick hit before leaving town:
Great moments in projection (defined as "attributing one's own faults to one's adversary"), Andrew Sullivan version: "The casus belli was not proof of Saddam's existing weapons, but proof of his refusal to cooperate fully with U.N. inspectors or account fully for his WMD research. Nothing we have discovered after the war has debunked or undermined any of these reasons. ...But the anti-war left sees a real advantage in stripping down the claims in people's receding memories to ones that were not made but which can now be debunked. It's propaganda, to which the media in particular seems alarmingly prone to parroting."

Sullivan is attempting to fundamentally revise the historical record, while accusing his enemies of doing the same. A lot of like-minded hawks, feeling more and more besieged, are embracing this new line of defense against reality. The casus belli was the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which the UN could not or would not find, which threatened the United States and its allies both directly and indirectly, and which might end up in the hands of al-Qaeda. This was made abundantly clear in statement after statement by the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, the National Security Adviser, and an endless parade of conservative and neoconservative talking heads - most of whom now seem to assume that Lexis-Nexis doesn't exist.

Refusal to comply completely with the UN and not accounting fully for past WMD programs were certainly significant reasons for concern, and constituted a strong case for working patiently at the UN to build a multilateral coalition to enforce compliance. But this is not the case that was made by the Bush or Blair administrations, nor is it the case that convinced Americans of war. What convinced people was the construction of an urgent, existential threat which could not wait on diplomacy, and which required nothing less than war, not tomorrow but today. Taking a few quotes out of a Presidential speech, devoid of context, won't convince anyone except those who already believe and need some sign to buttress their faith.

Indeed, given the near-complete contempt which Bush showed for the UN in the runup to war, and in which the UN is still held by the neocons who drove the war, I find it nothing short of remarkable that their fallback position - after their original arguments and expectations about Iraq's WMD proved wrong... make no mistake about this, historical revisionism aside - is an appeal to the UN's authority. This is gratifying, and I hope that they build on this newfound respect for the sanctity of the UN.

2003-10-08T07:44:00.000-04:00

Two quick hits before I head out of town.

First: I was quite taken with this paragraph in the Times story about what now appears to be an American failure to get a new UN resolution. The context, of course, is that the US is arguing against the French et al proposal for a more rapid transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis with a leading UN role in the transitional phase:

"Indeed, many American officials say that if the United States tried to set up the existing Iraqi Governing Council — handpicked by the American-led occupation authority last summer — the attacks on American forces and Iraqi targets would only intensify. "The Governing Council is not seen as legitimate by the Iraqi people," said the administration official. "They're not ready to take power." Among other things, various officials say, the Governing Council is dominated by former exile groups installed by the occupation but widely disliked by many Iraqis."

This suprised me because I, of course, completely agree with "many American officials" on this point. The IGC is completely illegitimate, full of exiles who are widely despised, and all that. What's weird is to hear the American government making the aardvark's argument for him. Well, okay, thanks.

For more on the IGC's haplessness, don't miss Juan Cole's take on the Council's unanimous decision to refuse Turkish troops. If the US goes ahead and welcomes them anyway, it's hard to imagine a more poignant demonstration of the Council's insignificance.

Second:

2003-10-05T08:05:00.000-04:00

The aardvark will be going on hiatus for two weeks because shortly after getting over this infernal strep snout (really, it's quite awful.... imagine trying to get all those yummy termites down an inflamed and painful snout...), I'm going on the road with only intermittent computer access. I'll try to update from time to time, but can't guarantee anything. Normal posting should resume around October 20. Be sure to come back then, okay?

2003-10-04T11:07:00.000-04:00

A reader writes that I don't deal with Sullivan's enthusiasm about the Kay report with the seriousness it deserves. Here's the Aardvark's response, after he got over the giggling at the thought that anyone might actually take Sullivan seriously:

"The problem is that both the President and Sullivan are engaging in classic misdirection. The Iraq hawks such as Sullivan made a lot of claims with great confidence, and repeated them often, and rather viciously smeared and belittled everyone who disagreed. Those claims have now been proven false. Sullivan does not want to confront that. Hence, not much of a serious debate to have. What is worth discussing is that the war was based on clear claims, which if true could command support for a preventive war: that Iraq had a WMD program that threatened the US, that inspectors had failed to meet that threat, and thus war was necessary - if not now, then after the mushroom cloud. Kay's report is clear. There was no WMD program which posed such a threat, and the inspectors had successfully contained the threat. Lowering the bar retroactively is fine politically (dishonest, but to be expected), but it's important to not forget the claims made at the time."

2003-10-04T06:16:00.000-04:00

Andrew Sullivan on the Kay Report: "Having read the report carefully, I'd say that the administration is vindicated in every single respect of that argument. This war wasn't just moral; it wasn't just prudent; it was justified on the very terms the administration laid out. And we don't know the half of it yet."

In other news, Brewers win World Series! Brewers win! No, don't bother clicking on the link - that's what the story says, I tell you. Okay, well, who are you going to believe, me or the liberal media? Of course the newspaper says that the Brewers didnt' even make the playoffs, but what would you expect from a liberal media deeply committed to the Brewers failure? They won't be able to hide truth for long, though. Once the Milwaukee fans come pouring into the streets, drinking beer and throwing bratwurst, even the liberal media will have to admit the truth. For now, you and I and all true Americans know the truth. Brewers, we salute you.

I suppose that this is one approach to the Kay report, what I guess we now have to call the Fox News Approach - simply lie, distort, or remain willfully self-deluded, confident in the fact that others will happily share your delusion. Reality is nothing but opinion, a report that says "we found no WMD" becomes one that says "we found WMD," and as long as you keep saying so then it must be true. So there you go, FoxBloggers - there's the talking points!

2003-10-03T14:23:00.000-04:00

Sick as a sick dog that's sick, today. Blech. But in the dog bites man category entry today, we have this, via everybody. People for whom Fox News is the main source of information are alarmingly ignorant; they are by far the most likely to believe untrue things about the Iraq war (that the US has discovered clear evidence of ties between Saddam and al-Qaeda, that the US has found significant amounts of Iraqi WMD, and that the rest of the world largely supported the war). I actually suspect there are some cause and effect issues here, or selection biases - ignorant people, or else people who already believe these things, may have chosen to watch Fox rather than Fox necessarily making them ignorant. Whatever.

UPDATE: Gosh darn it, here I am sick and Blogger goes and eats half my post. Let's try again.

I'm sure the wingnuts are all set to blast this survey as an example of liberal bias. But before they go there, they should be careful. The survey did not ask about political leaning, only about viewing habits. And the survey didn't ask about opinions, only about facts - this is a knowledge survey, with right or wrong answers. Saddam may really have links with al-Qaeda, and Iraq may really have WMD, but that isn't what the survey asked. It asked whether the US had found proof, and the answer to that is, with no qualifications, no. Full stop.

In other words, the Fox viewers who answered yes to those questions are not saying they prefer George Bush to Ted Kennedy, they are saying that the Brewers won the World Series last year and that they really enjoyed the season premiere of Buffy last week. (As if.)

One other thought. I remember quite a bit of conservative (and, to be fair non-conservative) teeth-knashing and pious pontificating over surveys revealing that large numbers of Arabs and Muslims continued to doubt bin Laden's responsibility for 9/11 long after Americans (other than Laurie Mylorie) had been convinced. This was taken as evidence of Muslim backwardness, irrationality, stupidity, ignorance, failure to adapt to modernity, and much else. Would the pundits who made those arguments now care to interpret the findings of this survey?

2003-10-02T19:48:00.000-04:00

David Kay makes it official: no WMD in Iraq. This has been coming for so long that a lot of people will shrug this off as no big deal. But some of us remember listening to (and being lectured by) conservative critics of first UNSCOM then UNMOVIC for years about how we knew, we absolutely knew, that Saddam had WMD and the failure to find them was simply evidence of the inspectors' collective incompetence. And more of us remember the Bush administration's rhetoric in the runup to the war, which was overwhelmingly about the threat posed by Iraq's WMD and the inability of the UN to meet that threat.

Let's cut the conservative blather and smokescreens on this, okay? They were wrong. David Kay was their guy, he had every chance to find the WMD, he couldn't, and they have nobody to shift the blame onto anymore. The professional arms control community and the academics and analysts who put their confidence in the UN teams were right. That's the significance of the Kay report, full stop.

This matters, and matters a lot, not only for arguments about the war, but also for the future of national security policy, and international security arrangements. So before rushing into the next round of political warfare, let's all take a deep breath and give this the serious recognition that it deserves.

2003-10-02T16:45:00.000-04:00

Don't miss this long overdue takedown of Laurie Mylroie's old collaborator, Judith Miller.

Among its main points:
"But Miller is not a neutral, nor an objective journalist. This can be acceptable, if you're a great reporter, "but she ain't, and that's why she's a propagandist," stated one old Times hand to me. Never mind that what Miller has done over time seriously violates several Times' policies under their code of conduct for news and editorial departments. One has only to read the long editors' note on the Wen Ho Lee case, whose principal author was Bill Keller (now the executive editor). Keller cautioned against over-reliance on partisan sources; and laid out what further measures could have been taken, and were not."

The article points out Miller's close neocon ties and her speeches in support of the war - where was the conservative outrage over a New York Times reporter taking openly political stands on the very issue that she's covering? - but that's not the main point of the criticism. More importantly for a journalist, "Times' editors have maintained that Miller has given the paper many "exclusives," and still deny that many of them were seriously flawed. But when her work is examined systematically, it is frequently found to be simply wrong on the facts. " And the piece gives a couple of examples to that effect - but any one of you faithful readers could no doubt provide your own.

And, for those Raines-bashers out there, here's the coup de grace: "There is a widespread perception among staff that her work has brought dishonor on the newspaper. The perception that she's protected at the top is widespread, and the reluctance of editors to penalize her adds to that, one of my sources said. ... One of the deans of political writers at the Times tells me: "It makes no sense [but] the only thing I can think of for that clap-trap going into the paper without adequate reporting safeguards -- maybe sniffing the Raines?" Once reporter Steve Engelberg (he is said to have spent a good portion of his time keeping Miller honest) left the three-dimensional investigative team of Engelberg, William Broad, and Miller, "she had a free ride under Howell and Boyd to do what she wanted. They protected her...."

C'mon Sullivan, c'mon Kaus - where's the outrage?

2003-10-02T15:12:00.000-04:00

Al-Quds al-Arabi, the flagship paper of the more radical end of the new Arabism, responds to the Djerejian task force's report, or at least the New York Times story on the report, in its lead editorial today. As you might expect, the paper takes a dim view of the arguments for more "American propaganda" in the region - and expresses its surprise at the amount which the US already spends on "propaganda" in the Arab and Islamic world.

Here's the key grafs of the editorial: "This recognition [of the weakness of US public diplomacy] is the weakest point in the report, because it ignores the basis of the [Arab and Islamic] hostility and the real reasons that lead to it, which are reasons that can not be dealth with through propaganda or media campaigns, but which require fundamental strategic changes in American political and economic policies towards Arabs and Muslims and their issues. Arabs and Muslims do not hate the American people, it is American foreign policy which arouses their outrage... and which imposes repressive and corrupt and dictatorial regimes upon them. No matter how much money the US spends on .... public relations... or newspapers or media... it won't succeed in convincing Arabs and Muslims to support Israeli aggression or that American occupation of Iraq is the best model for the Iraqi people or for the region. The problem is with policies, not with the style of the propaganda, and a successful media requires credibility. The American policies in the region do not have credibility, and indeed are accused of hypocrisy."

Much of this editorial response is predictable, of course, but what's interesting is that the actual text of the report - contrary to expectations - actually says many of the same things. The report does recognize the centrality of policies to the problem, and explicitly calls for integrating policy and public diplomacy. The report does argue that public relations won't be enough, and it does argue that the problem is not one of American culture or the American people.

So here's a suggestion: make sure that Abd al-Bari Atwan and the editorial board of al-Quds al-Arabi receives a full, Arabic language version of the report (they could read it in English, no doubt, but don't you think that the translation would be respectful?), and that someone (the committee? someone from the State Department?) offers to meet with them to discuss it. How could this hurt? It might even help.

2003-10-02T10:49:00.000-04:00

Some of you might recall that one of the reasons given by the Iraqi Governing Council for temporarily banning al-Jazeera and al-Arabiyya was their alleged ethnic incitement, which one member explained was because of their use of the term 'Sunni Triangle.' Well, time to ban the New York Times - an oped today contains the following sentence: "American infantry platoons in the Sunni Triangle should incorporate the growing Iraqi police force into foot patrols operating interdependently."

Oh, and yesterday, the LA Times published this inflammatory sentence: "There are daily attacks on U.S. soldiers in the Sunni Triangle, and supporters of Hussein are believed to be operating in the region."

On September 24, the Christian Science Monitor published an entire article under this headline: "Iraq's restive 'Sunni Triangle'"

It isn't just the print media, either. On September 18, CNN reported: "There was another attack on American soldiers in Iraq today. A convoy came under fire in a fierce gun battle in the Sunni Triangle area."

Maybe it's a liberal media thing? Whoops... on September 25, Fox News gave this report: "It is part of the Sunni triangle where the resistance has been the most intense."

Better ban them all.

2003-10-01T16:59:00.000-04:00

Don't miss this interesting piece in TAP about the struggles of the Iraqi media and the perennial tension between promoting freedom and pursuing self-interest. No time to say much more about this now, just that it's interesting.

2003-10-01T12:49:00.000-04:00

Well, I have to admit being pleasantly surprised by the Advisory Task Force's report. It almost looks like this was a committee which could not live up to what they were expected to deliver - that the reality they confronted forced them to write a very different report from the one which must have been anticipated. The whole thing, in fact, sounds very much like this Foreign Affairs article to which I've linked several times. Maybe those guys read it too?

Arab participants in the dialogues, you'll recall, complained bitterly at not being allowed to discuss concrete policy issues, a criticism which I've reported here and echoed. The task force itself clearly chafed against the mandate of not discussing policy, and the report states several times that policy can't be severed from the communications effort. The report acknowledges that "surveys show much of the resentment toward America comes from our policies," especially with regard to Israel (p.13). While respecting its mandate - public diplomacy, not foreign policy - the report states bluntly that policies have to be seen as part of the problem. The report clearly and effectively rejects the argument that the anti-American sentiment is rooted in culture - which surveys find to be quite popular. Indeed, it points out that American policies and values are not always in agreement, that US support for repressive regimes might be necessary on policy grounds but badly undermines American credibility.

The report sketches quite bluntly the collapse of international support for the United States, and links this both to American security and to American policy interests more broadly defined. It points out that "often we are simply not present to explain the context and content of national policies and values" - a point that I've made a number of times. The report warns that "Arab and Muslim public opinion can not be cavalierly dismissed," and - even more importantly, that "spin and manipulated public relations and propaganda are not the answer... Sugar coating and fast talking are no solutions, nor is absenting ourselves (from public debates)." For all the difficulties, the report argues, "America can achieve dramatic results with a consistent, strategic, well-managed, and properly funded approach to public diplomacy, one that credibly reflects US values, promotes the positive thrust of US policies, and takes seriously the needs and aspirations of Arabs and Muslims." It goes on: "we have failed to listen and failed to persuade. We have not taken the time to understand our audience, and we have not bothered to help them understand us."

The report emphasizes that television - satellite television - is the most important media right now for addressing the Arab and Muslim world, and that the absence of American perspectives from stations like Al Jazeera has badly hurt the US ability to explain its policies. The report desribes "one of our worst nightmares in the bodonvilles of Casablanca, where homes lacked plumbing but had hand wired satellite-TV dishes." They also recognize that Arabs are already bombarded with American sitcoms and TV shows, and American culture more generally; that isn't the problem.

The report also details the glaring inadequacy of the funding and personnel assigned to public diplomacy. The LA Times story on the task force gives a shocking detail, sourced to one member of the committee (Chris Ross, no doubt, since he said the same thing to Congress last year) - in the whole State Department, there are only 54 fluent Arabic speakers and only 5 fluent enough to go on TV - which believe me requires a whole different level of fluency. It calls for much, much more funding, but also for integrating the public diplomacy operation into the center of the foreign policy process, which really would be a radical change.

The report savages (by committee report standards) both Radio Sawa and the new proposed satellite television station. Radio Sawa, it points out, has never offered any evidence that it has any effect on political attitudes, despite a budget nearly half as large as that of the entire State Department Public Diplomacy International Information Programs. On the proposed Middle East Television Network, they report great skepticism from the Arab interlocutors, both with an American station and with any government-funded station. At a cost of $100 million - 40% more than the entire public diplomacy budget currently, the report suggests the need to carefully consider whether the low probability of a high payoff is really worth it.

There's a lot more in there, and I highly recommend it. What a pity - here I was all set to write a devastating takedown, and instead I find myself pretty pleased with it. But now the question shifts - how will the report be received? Will its recommendations be taken seriously? Will they be implemented? Will its authors be smeared as anti-American, or as naive liberal academics?

2003-10-01T10:21:00.000-04:00

The Task Force headed by Ed Djerejian with the mandate of coming up with solutions to the problems of America's unpopularity in the Muslim world - basically, to fix US public diplomacy - is issuing its report today. Press conference in about 15 minutes, after which the report should be available. I'll comment on it - time allowing - at some length, I would imagine. For now, you can read about it in the New York Times or the LA Times.

I've had some unkind things to say about this task force over the last few months, but - as I wrote a few days ago - this is in large part born out of frustration at a missed opportunity, not out of a dismissal of the idea or the composition of the task force itself. I want the task force to come up with good ideas, which can be implemented and can make a difference. Given the current awareness of the problem in Congress, the media, the Pentagon, and elsewhere, this is really the best, if not the only, chance there will be to make meaningful changes. So I'll reserve judgement until I actually read the report, in the hope that the criticisms they were receiving as they went along actually made a difference in the final product.

UPDATE: the report, "Changing Minds, Winning Peace" is now up on the State Department site.

2003-09-30T17:17:00.000-04:00

Totally useless plug of the day...but it's my blog so I can do it if I want to. Eric Alterman does it all the time, right?

Scott Miller's late lamented Loud Family, the greatest band that you've never heard, has a new DVD coming out in a few weeks, a rock documentary of the band's last tour. It is only available online at 125 Records. While you're there, you can pick up any of the Loud Family's extraordinary albums - I recommend, well, all of them, except maybe The Tape of Only Linda. But trust me: if you haven't heard Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, then your life is just not complete (click here for Aeordeliria, my personal favorite song); same goes for the first four tracks on Interbabe Concern (here's a long version of Don't Respond) and Such Little Nonbelievers and Screwed Over By Stylish Introverts from that album. Check out Why We Don't Live in Mauritania from Days to Days, too.