Author: Andrew Sullivan

Waters’ World

John Waters shares some of his cross-country exploits with Craig Ferguson:

Choire Sicha entertainingly dresses down the “stunt-writing industry” – books like 52 Loaves: One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust and Living Oprah: My One-Year Experiment to Walk the Walk of the Queen of Talk – but saves praise for John Waters’ new take on the genre:

John Waters is something of a living stunt, in the best possible way. A hero of both America and Americana, Waters has changed the culture of the country as much as any other living filmmaker—Errol Morris, Wes Anderson, or Paul Verhoeven. Having written a couple of memoirs, he now turns his gaze more strictly on himself in a strange stunt book, Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26). After life-stuntist extraordinaire Bill Clegg sold Waters’s idea to FSG head Jonathan Galassi in a bookish velvet-mafia inside job, it took, according to the acknowledgments, two and a half years for Waters “to write and live this adventure.”

The stunt was that Waters, who is now sixty-eight, would hitchhike from his primary home in Baltimore to his San 51l19HWlbrLFrancisco residence. On May 14, 2012, he set out on that expedition. In the end, he arrived. We learn that he is far too cranky and fussy to be doing such things!

In one way, though, Waters tears a mannequin of the stunt genre apart and spits in its face. The actual hitchhiking takes up less than the second half of the book. The first 192 pages consist of two fictional accounts: first his best-case scenario, followed by his worst-case one. These are unimpeachably lewd and Watersian (and, of course, far more entertaining than the actual dreary hitchhiking odyssey). Womb raiders, escaped convicts with priapism, a stripper who shoots up Viagra in a room of truckers gone wild, an alien abduction, and rape—oh, sure, that’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case presentation involves way more pus and goiters.

I can’t wait to see him again in Provincetown this summer, gamely biking up and down Commercial Street and still throwing one of the funkiest parties in town. He may hitchhike across America, but he always ends up here.

Iran’s Soccer Politics

Suhrith Parthasarathy looks at how association football influenced the modern history of Iran:

Drawing links between sport and the larger cultural and political ethos of a nation can often be tenuous and far-fetched. But, in Iran, when soccer returned to the hub of social life in the late 1990s, it served, as David Goldblatt wrote in his book, The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Soccer, as a “rallying point for opponents of the conservative elements in the theocracy.” Tehran’s national soccer stadium, built in 1971 and which can hold more than 100,000 people, is called “Azadi,” meaning “freedom” in Farsi. But ever since the 1979 revolution, which saw the Islamisization of the nation, women were altogether prohibited from watching soccer at Azadi. The boisterous celebrations following the team’s victory in Melbourne, therefore, served as much as a means to help break such shackles as it has to entrench a new form of expressing not only joy but also political protest in the country. Next month, when Iran plays in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, its matches will reverberate in significance well beyond the soccer pitch.

John Duerden fast forwards to today, when the sport remains just as politically significant:

Popular passion for the game is such that no leader can afford to ignore it. One of the first international figures that President Hassan Rouhani met after taking office last August was Sepp Blatter, the controversial chief of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), football’s international governing body, who backed Iran’s bid to host the 2019 Asian Cup.

If Rouhani hadn’t immediately grasped the power of the game, it was made abundantly clear soon enough. Just one week after his historic election inspired thousands to take to the streets, crowds of roughly equal size turned out to celebrate Iran’s qualification for the 2014 World Cup. By scoring political points in his meeting with Blatter, however, the new Iranian president was just following the example set by his predecessor. According to a diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “has staked a great deal of political capital in Iranian soccer … in an effort to capitalize on soccer’s popularity with constituents.”

Yet Iranians (NYT) don’t seem all that excited about the World Cup this year. That’s no coincidence:

It is more than the daunting competition and the controversies surrounding Team Melli that keep the Iranians from warming to the World Cup. The authorities have been working hard to nix any soccer related excitement.

Tehran’s cinemas have been told by the police that they are not allowed to show World Cup matches to a mixed audience of men and women, “out of respect for Islamic morals.” A plan to show Iran’s games on some of the large electronic billboards across the city was canceled, and on Wednesday, restaurant and coffee shop owners said they had been told by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture to refrain from decorating their establishments with the national flag or the colors of other countries.

“We want to decorate our restaurant with German flags,” said one restaurant owner who asked to be identified only by his first name, Farhad. “But even that is not allowed. Fun, people gathering in large groups, such things make the authorities nervous.”

Are Steady Jobs Obsolete?

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Danielle Kurtzleben worries that the growth of on-demand service startups like TaskRabbit and Instacart points to “deeper, unsettling trends going on in the US economy”:

The New York Times’ Farhad Manjoo wrote in May that Instacart and services like it could “redefine how we think about the future of labor.” That sounds great in an era when technology replaces cashiers withself-check-out machines and automates assembly-line jobs out of existence. But the growth of TaskRabbit and other similar firms could mostly mean yet more job growth at the lower end of the spectrum. These low-skill jobs have made up the bulk of job growth over the last decade or so, as the Dallas Fed showed in a recent paper.

While jobs fall out of the middle, new jobs are created at the top and bottom. And those jobs at the bottom tend to be “nonroutine manual” jobs: those that require few skills and little problem-solving. Many of these errand jobs fit this bill perfectly, involving deliveries and other rote tasks. These new errand jobs can feature high pay — Instacart, Manjoo noted, can pay $30 an hour. But a major problem is finding steady work — no grocery run takes eight hours.

Iraq Needs A Political Solution

And Barbara Walter believes it’s a real possibility:

The key to preventing a long and bloody war in Iraq is to create disincentives for Sunnis to fight for complete control over the government. This may not be as hard as it sounds. True, the Sunnis’ number one goal is to regain full control over the government — but Sunnis understand that this is risky and costly. Their second best solution would be to gain a significant voice in government such that Sunnis could ensure that they will not be exploited by the demographically larger Shiite population. This will require a negotiated settlement with al-Maliki and his government that offers real power-sharing guarantees to the Sunni population. A negotiated settlement with moderate Sunnis has the added benefit of undercutting their support for more extreme elements. Studies by Walter 1997 and Harzell and Hodie 2003 have found that civil war combatants are significantly more likely to sign and implement peace settlements that include specific power-sharing guarantees.

But how do you convince al-Maliki to share power when he has shown no inclination to do so to date? As Marc Lynch wrote yesterday, al-Maliki has been urged to build a political accord for a half-decade, but has not done so. The key, I believe, is to make any aid or assistance to him contingent on good behavior. Once it is clear to al-Maliki that he and his army cannot defeat the Sunnis, it will also become clear to him that a deal is his best option.

Walter Russell Mead wonders if Maliki will instead turn towards Iran:

A major thrust of [Obama’s] speech is a political ultimatum to Maliki and his government: we will only help you if you get serious about an inclusive government and system in Iraq that offers real accommodation for the Sunnis.

This means Maliki has a choice. Iran is willing to bolster his government without any requiring any concessions to the Sunnis, having already dispatched two Revolutionary Guard units to protect Baghdad and the Shia holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. So for Maliki, do the advantages of American help offset the concessions he would have to make? If so, he’ll respond positively to Obama and the U.S. will get more deeply engaged in the contest. If not, he will turn to Iran and Iran’s involvement in Iraq will grow exponentially—and in effect the entire war in Syria and Iraq will turn into a war of Iranian expansion.

Peter Van Buren imagines a possible future:

The Kurds are the easy ones; they will keep on doing what they have been doing. They will fight back effectively and keep their oil flowing. They’ll see Baghdad’s influence only in the rear-view mirror.

The Sunnis will at least retain de facto control of western Iraq, maybe more. They are unlikely to be set up to govern in any formal way, but may create some sort of informal structure to collect taxes, enforce parts of the law and chase away as many Shias as they can. Violence will continue, sometimes hot and nasty, sometimes low-level score settling.

The Shias are the big variable. Maliki’s army seems in disarray, but if he only needs it to punish the Sunnis with violence it may prove up to that. Baghdad will not “fall.” The city is a Shia bastion now, and the militias will not give up their homes. A lot of blood may be spilled, but Baghdad will remain Shia-controlled and Maliki will remain in charge in some sort of limited way.

 

A Well-Oiled Warzone

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Plumer takes a look at a slippery dimension of the Iraq conflict:

Some basics: Iraq has the world’s fifth-largest proven oil reserves. But the country has only very recently begun churning out significant amounts of crude oil again (production dropped sharply during the 2003 US invasion and its bloody aftermath). By April 2014, Iraq was producing an estimated 3.3 million barrels per day — equal to about 4 percent of global supply. And the country was expected to keep ramping up production, with plans to produce at least 5 million barrels per day in the years to come.

Or at least that was the idea. The recent takeover of northwestern Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has complicated those plans considerably.

True, as the map above shows, ISIS isn’t close to any of the massive oil fields in the southern regions of Iraq, which produce 75 percent of the country’s oil. And ISIS has yet to enter the Kurdish regions in the north, another major oil-producing area. But the fighting has threatened some of Iraq’s other oil infrastructure, including a pipeline that can deliver 600,000 barrels of oil per day from Kirkuk to the Turkish port city of Ceyhan. (That pipeline had been damaged by a 2013 attack and was offline receiving repairs — that work has now been halted.)

In terms of oil as well as land, Iraq’s Kurds stand to benefit from the crisis:

The Kurds have an estimated 45 billion barrels of oil and have a long planned to be exporting 400,000 barrels a day this year, but until now dividends have been limited. Kurdistan and foreign oil companies have managed to export some of the crude, transported first by truck and then tanker, despite the Baghdad government’s declaration that all their activities are illegal. But, although a big export pipeline is now complete and millions of barrels of oil have been shipped through it to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, none of these volumes has been actually sold.

Tankers containing 2 million barrels of Kurdish oil are at sea awaiting buyers, who are apprehensive while Baghdad threatens to sue anyone who purchases it. The current offensive by an al-Qaeda affiliate may be the tipping point. Disciplined Kurdish forces now control not only Kurdistan but the disputed, oil-rich region of Kirkuk, which lies just to its west. The region has been autonomous since the first Gulf War in 1991, and its army has steeled itself to defend Kurdistan against Baghdad’s forces.

Previous Dish on the economic angle of the conflict here.

Responding To Student Groans, Ctd

A reader adds a personal touch to the blog debate:

What ever happened to working your way through school? I went to college form 1985 through 1994 to get my degree, going to school in the day time and working as a hospital orderly at first, then working for an engineering firm during the day and taking classes at night. I did my first year at a JuCo and the rest at a couple of state schools. Of course, I had to give up the fun campus lifestyle – no time for fraternities and parties (well, I found time for a few). But, when I graduated, I was student-debt free.

I realize that this is not the same as spending four years at at residential college or university, but that’s the breaks. Some people get to eat filet mignon and some of us have to eat hamburger. Bottom line is, maybe it took a bit more time and effort then some have to expend, my education has served me quite well in my career, and I never had the depression that must come from leaving school with the kind of debt that so many now incur.

I understand that tuition has increased, but dammit, everyone isn’t going to get to go to the Ivy League school that dream about. The state school in my town has a non-residential program that costs $8K/year, full time. Anyone should be able to deal with that.

Who Are These ISIS Chappies, Anyway?

In a useful explainer, Margaret Hartmann provides some background on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the jihadist militant group currently overrunning Iraq:

ISIS grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2004 and became one of the most powerful Islamic extremist groups involved in the Iraq War. Shortly after al-Zarqawi was killed by U.S. forces in 2006, Al Qaeda in Iraq merged with several other insurgent groups and became known as the Islamic State of Iraq.

The group was decimated by U.S. forces, but as the last U.S. troops left in 2011, it staged a comeback. Michael Knights, the Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tells Vox that the group changed its message to focus on Sunni sectarianism, challenging the Shiite majority in Iraq. In an attempt to consolidate power, the Iraqi government persecuted Sunnis and tried to shut down Sunni militias, which “played right into their hands,” according to Knights. He says Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki “made all the ISIS propaganda real, accurate.”

Terrence McCoy profiles the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi:

Born a Sunni in 1971 in Samarra with the name Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai, he claims to be a direct descendant of the prophet Muhammad. According to a widely cited biography released by jihadists, “he is a man from a religious family. His brothers and uncles include preachers and professors of Arabic language, rhetoric and logic.” The biography and Arabic-language accounts claim he obtained a doctorate at Islamic University in Baghdad — which is presumably why several of his many aliases include the title “Dr.” Holding degrees in Islamic studies and history, he is believed to have been an Islamic preacher around the time of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The chaos of those months drove the 30-something into militancy, and he formed an armed group in eastern Iraq, one that reportedly never rose out of obscurity.

The opacity of his background, analysts say, suggests a broader truth of rising militant Islamists. “The mystery surrounding Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — at the level of his personality, his movements, or even his relatives, his family, and those close to him — came as a result of what happened to previous leaders, who were killed after their movements were detected,” wrote Mushreq Abbas in al-Monitor. He is the “invisible jihadist,” according to Le Monde.

The CFR follows the money:

Supporters in the region, including those based in Jordan, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, are believed to have provided the bulk of past funding. Iran has also financed AQI, crossing sectarian lines, as Tehran saw an opportunity to challenge the U.S. military presence in the region, according to the U.S. Treasury and documents confiscated in 2006 from Iranian Revolutionary Guards operatives in northern Iraq. In early 2014, Iran offered to join the United States in offering aid to the Iraqi government to counter al-Qaida gains in Anbar province.

The bulk of AQI’s financing, experts say, comes from sources such as smuggling, extortion, and other crime. AQI has relied in recent years on funding and manpower from internal recruits [PDF]. In Mosul, an important AQI stronghold, the group extorts taxes from businesses small and large, netting upwards of $8 million a month, according to some estimates.

Jacob Siegel emphasizes how ISIS relies on allies of convenience in Iraq:

The standoff in Iraq isn’t between a single militant group and the government. There is a broad coalition of Sunni groups—both nationalist and Islamist—who had been plotting against Iraq’s Shia government for years before ISIS’s rise provided the chance to strike. ISIS and its partners are unnatural allies. Maintaining their unity was the key to their early success, and is the only way they can hold the ground they have taken, but that incentive may prove to be weaker than the force of their natural hostilities.

“ISIS control in Mosul is contingent on political alliances they have made with the Baathists and the tribal groups,” said Brian Fishman, a fellow at the New America Foundation, who has been following ISIS since the group’s early days during the Iraq war. “This alliance marching on Baghdad is not a natural one,” Fishman added. “We can understand how it was put together in opposition to the government but what exactly is holding it together, and how sturdy it is, is an open question,” he said.

Michael Weiss also plays up these alliances in a detailed analysis of the group’s strategy:

How did ISIS manage to accomplish so much in a year? Contrary to some media representations, it has had some help in the form of other tenuous Sunni allies, including Jaysh Rijal al-Tariqah al-Naqshabandia, a Ba’ath insurgency that couches its war against Maliki in tribal terms; and Ansar al-Islam, another Sunni Islamist group. The true nature and extent of other actors’ involvement in this conflict has yet to be fully uncovered, but already it seems clear that ISIS is drawing on local support bases. A kind of shadow Awakening is now in evidence, with Sunni tribes, Islamists, and dead-enders of the ancien regime all in league against Iraq’s new Shiite strongman. But what is also clear is that in Syria ISIS has managed to do what other rebel groups have not: effectively if harshly administer municipal facilities, says Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a Belgian analyst of Syrian jihadis. …

ISIS also appears to be drawing on classical “Desert Power” Arab military doctrine that dates back to the 7th century. “The Bedouin army could go out into the Syrian desert and they could strike either the Mediterranean region or the Euphrates valley or what is now Israel-Palestine,” says Col. Joel Rayburn, who served as a strategic analyst for the US military in Iraq. “They could strike at any of the areas on the edge of that desert, as though the desert were an inland sea that they could cross at will. Think of the Jazira [the territory encompassing eastern Syria and western/central Iraq] as the new desert. ISIS can go out there and project Desert Power into the river valleys and settled areas.”

Previous Dish on at ISIS’s strategy and objectives here.

How Did We Not See This Coming?

Shane Harris explains why the US government was caught off guard by Iraq’s sudden implosion:

The CIA maintains a presence at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, but the agency has largely stopped running networks of spies inside the country since U.S. forces left Iraq in December 2011, current and former U.S. officials said. That’s in part because the military’s secretive Joint Special Operations Command had actually taken the lead on hunting down Iraq’s militants. With the JSOC commandos gone, the intelligence agencies have been forced to try to track groups like ISIS through satellite imagery and communications intercepts — methods that have proven practically useless because the militants relay messages using human couriers, rather than phone and email conversations, and move around in such small groups that they easily blend into the civilian population.