IMAGINE ENDING WWII IN FRANCE

After landing in Normandy, the allies concluded the capture of France and announced that they will establish in it a democracy which will serve as a model for the rest of Europe. The rest of the European nations including Germans who suffer under Fascism will rise and overthrow their evil regimes. No historical parallel is ever exact but this exercise should help focus the minds of our policy makers. Does anybody believe the Nazis would not have organized an insurgency to undermine the French “occupation?”

So, please, no more WWII parallels.

It is clear that we have decided instead to fight the last war, the Cold War, which took 50 years to win but cost fewer American lives. During that time we fought a number of counter insurgency battles. We won some and lost some. In his recent testimony before the Senate ,Ken Pollack suggests the US Army alter its strategy in a manner which will better protect our Iraqi allies and end efforts to win the hearts of the Sunnis. There is no better way we could start than by protecting recruitment centers.

I read General Petraeus is finally leaving. Finally.

posted by Judith.

WEEK-END TALK SHOWS IGNORE TERROR

Hello, Andrew’s audience. It is an honor to be given the opportunity to write on his blog. Hope you’ll find some of this stuff of interest.

In a week in which bombs were exploding in Britain, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Israel and Turkey, the topics dominating the week-end talk shows were the Plame affair and the appointment of the “brilliant” John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Why deal with facts when empty speculation is so much more fun?

Following 7/7 Nick Cohen told his fellow liberal that he knows that “Fighting your government is what you know how to do and what you want to do.” So, he understood the reluctance of his peers to refocus on the totalitarian attack disrupting their lives. He, too, had little patience with the shortcomings of Bush and Blair. Indeed, pointing out the failings of the party in power is what the loyal opposition must do. How else could it convince the voters to replace it? Affirming the villainy of a foreign power merely strengthens the party in power. With very few exceptions (such as the past week), it is far more useful politically to blame your own government for the villainy of your enemies. In other words, the logic of the democratic system is to look inwards and blame political rivals for everything that goes awry. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that democracies do not fight each other?

I may be clutching at straws but in a terrible week, I found comfort in the following little item: “A snap on-line poll conducted by the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi asked respondents who was responsible for inter- Palestinian fighting. Those who said the PA were 43.3 per cent, Hamas 42.9 per cent, and Israel 13.8 per cent.” Usually, it is all the fault of Israel or the US.

The increasingly adversarial media follows the same logic even more ferociously. It does not need votes and it is not interested in the events which lead Mona Eltahawy to conclude that “there is no more “us” and “them.” It is all “we.” Why talk about the dead and the maimed when we can discuss the expected level of rancor which will accompany the confirmation hearings of John Roberts in September!
posted by Judith.

IMMORAL EQUIVALENCY

What happens when events refuse to follow the media’s preferred script? The extremist Israeli settlers are going to prove to the world that they are just as bad as Hamas. The BBC had arranged to broadcast an entire week from Gaza. But the settlers, who knew violence would alienate the Israeli populace, refused to cooperate. That did not stop the NYT editorial board. It merrily published an editorial entitled “Midsummer Mideast Madness” in which it equated the deadly Palestinian infighting which worries even the Arab press with the non-violent settlers’ efforts to show their true colors.

The truth is that Hamas must learn that elections have consequences. The primary responsibility for teaching that lesson belongs to Abbas’ government. But the Western media could help to delegitimize Hamas’ actions in the manner some of the Arab press is beginning to do: Can you believe this headline Two Palestinians killed after slaying of Israeli couple”?
posted by Judith.

IRAQI WOMEN ARE IN TROUBLE

There is no way and there should be no way to distinguish between the war on terror, democracy and women’s right. No one knows that better than the terrorists. While Islamic law is open to a wide variety of interpretations, leaving issues such as marriage, divorce and inheritance in the hands of the law as practiced by a family’s own sect or religion is more than foolhardy, it is criminal. Do remember that such laws may permit honor killing in Jordan, gang rape in Pakistan and forced divorce even in democratic India.
posted by Judith.

TERROR & EGYPTIAN POLITICS

Egypt has been trying to take careful, perhaps, inadequate steps to to democratize the electoral process by following the examples of Israel and Turkey. For the first time, the ruling party’s central and regional leadership will choose the presidential nominee in a manner similar to the way Israeli parties choose their candidates for prime minister. A promising step provided someone dares challenge Mubarak whose posters already cover Cairo.

The second change is the decision to legitimatize what some like to call a “post-islamist party” like Turkey’s ruling party or as Cairo Magazine reports “Not your grandma’s Islamists. It includes a Copts. An Egyptian friend writes that the new party may be worth watching “because Ayman Nour’s party is so Western secular liberal in tone and style that it will be unlikely to resonate outside of elite circles (although the rough treatment Ayman has received over the past year certainly has boosted his image and image of his party.)”

The big question is how will the recent bombing affect the upcoming elections? If Debka is right, Mubarak’s winter residence was one of the targets. Either way, Mubarak’s Egypt is faced with a two front challenge:

It is challenged peacefully by its own civil society and political opposition that have launched a growing campaign to retire Mubarak after his 24 years of rule, and prevent him from passing on the presidency to his son. The state is also challenged violently by a brazen, self-assertive new generation of Egyptian terrorists allied to Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network, who attack the symbols of the Egyptian state head-on.

It is time for him to go and it is time for the US coalition to go on the offensive. At the very least, incitement must be banned, terrorist groups like Hamas or Hizballa should no longer be permitted to march in the streets wearing uniforms and national borders should no longer shield escaping terrorists.

posted by Judith.

CLINTON REWRITES HISTORY IN BOSNIA

A couple of days ago I was watching Clinton tell a BBC reporter that his administration stopped Al Qaeda from establishing a base in Bosnia. In the same vein, his UN representative and Secretary of State wannabe Richard Holbrooke
wrote that “we would probably have had to pursue Operation Enduring Freedom not only in Afghanistan but also in the deep ravines and dangerous hills of central Bosnia, where a shadowy organization we now know as al Qaeda was putting down roots that were removed by NATO after Dayton.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Dayton accords did indeed require the eviction of the “foreign fighters” but Izetbegovic (whose indictment as a war criminal was made public only after his death) ignored that condition with the same impunity Arafat ignored the Oslo agreements demanding the dismantling of Hamas. Consequently, when Bernard-Henri Levy visited Bosnia he found Taliban-run villages and it was from Bosnia that the so called charities financed the Al Qaeda operations.

Srebeniza was an atrocity worth stopping. But so is remembering that Clinton’s way of fighting terror was appeasement and the protection, strengthening and promotion of the “moderate Arab governments” or, more accurately, repressive Sunni autocracies.

It was that policy that the Bush administration discarded after 9/11 to the chagrin of many so-called realists from both parties. Both the insurgency and the inter-Western arguments about the Iraq war (as opposed to the war in Afghanistan) have their roots in that change of strategy. Afghanistan, after all, remains a Sunni country. For the Islamist, of course, both are lost territories.

posted by Judith.

FROM THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER TO “MUNICH”

Finally, I am far from reassured by Spielberg spokesman Marvin Levy’s
assertion that “While people think this (the movie about terror in the 1972 Munich Olympics ) is based on ‘Vengeance,’ I’m telling you that there were also memoirs from involved parties from both sides.” Given my name (my husband is a distant relative of Leon Klinghoffer), I cannot but remember the sympathetic and understanding treatment with which opera treated the Palestinian terrorists who threw an old man in a wheel chair into the sea.

Has Spielberg learned nothing yet?

posted by Judith.

FOUR GUEST BLOGGERS

The news from the war makes my regular summer break untimely, but, hey, my niece and nephew are arriving soon for a vacation with their uncle and I have a book to write. This year, though, I won’t be leaving the site empty. I’m particularly relieved that next week, as news from the war front continues to perplex and concern, I’ve persuaded one of my favorite – but lesser known – bloggers on the Middle East to guest-blog for a week. She’s Judith Apter Klinghoffer, a senior research associate in the department of Political Science at Rutgers University. I regularly check in on her blog at the History New Network. She is the co-author of “International Citizens’ Tribunals: Mobilizing Public Opinion to Advance Human Rights” and the author of “Vietnam, Jews and the Middle East: Unintended Consequences.” She’ll be blogging all of next week in this space. I may occasionally drop by for a quick post, but otherwise, she’s running the show; and the focus will be on the war. Please be courteous to our guest. Reserve your hate-mail for me.

THE FOLLOWING THREE: I’ll fully introduce the next three guest bloggers when their turn comes. But expect a really diverse and talented crowd. The week of August 1, The New Republic’s star writer, Frank Foer, will be blogging; the week of August 8, Dan Savage, editor of the Stranger and author of several books and the legendary sex advice column, Savage Love, will be stirring things up; he’ll be followed by Walter Kirn, one of the best novelists and critics of his generation. I’m really grateful to these newcomers to blogging for daring to take the plunge for a week or so. I told each of them that they should not in any way feel constrained to agree with me on anything; as when I edited The New Republic, my basic philosophy is the more diverse and interesting the arguments the better, regardless of ideology. I may drop by from time to time to post something pressing, but I’ll be back full-time August 22.

EMAIL OF THE DAY

“While I agree with you that the Vatican’s ban on ordaining women stems from different theological arguments than the threatened ban on ordaining gay men, there is, I think, a link rooted in John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. In this way of thinking, men and women are seen as equal but ‘complementary,’ in that each sex brings distinctive qualities to social interaction that are strongly tied to physical sex: here is how it’s expressed in then-cardinal Ratzinger’s May 31, 2004 ‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World’:

‘Furthermore, the importance and the meaning of sexual difference, as a reality deeply inscribed in man and woman, needs to be noted. ‘Sexuality characterizes man and woman not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and spiritual, making its mark on each of their expressions. It cannot be reduced to a pure and insignificant biological fact, but rather ‘is a fundamental component of personality, one of its modes of being, of manifestation, of communicating with others, of feeling, of expressing and of living human love’. This capacity to love – reflection and image of God who is Love – is disclosed in the spousal character of the body, in which the masculinity or femininity of the person is expressed.’

For example, Ratzinger says women notably have a ‘capacity for the other,’ linked to the female role of giving birth. He argued that women make an important, even essential, contribution to human social institutions exactly because of these distinctively feminine qualities. He then goes on to say that denying women ordination does not violate this principle, because such a role does not belong to the ‘genius of women,’ because women are brides, not bridegrooms. In sum, in this way of thinking, sex determines social roles, and people ought to behave in ways that reflect their biological nature.

Early in this document, Ratzinger decries any attempt to question the strong duality, including the rise of the use of the term gender (which is culturally determined,) rather than sex, and says that such a stance ‘has in reality inspired ideologies which, for example, call into question the family, in its natural two-parent structure of mother and father, and make homosexuality and heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new model of polymorphous sexuality.’

A long build-up to a short connection: John Paul’s Theology of the Body is part of a trend on the part of the magisterium to underscore the importance of the sex of the human person in determining social roles. This teaching is seen as a bulwark against any blurring of sexual lines, such as in homosexuality, and also serves to justify the continued exclusion of women from priestly ministry. So why can’t gay men be priests? Because instead of giving up their natural role as husband and father for ecclesiastical fatherhood, they give up only a disordered drive to behave as though anatomical complementarity did not determine social roles. In short, it’s the old notion that male homosexuality is repugnant because gay men assume the sexual role of women, (or at least are unclear as to their own properly masculine role,) now dressed up in fancy phenomenological philosophy.

The question that is never raised in the magisterial teaching on these questions, however, is that raised by you and some of your correspondents: what about vocation? In examining a candidate for priestly ministry, why is sex or sexual orientation more important than the call of God to service in the Church? In this, I think gay priests and women called to priesthood – and all Catholics who believes that it is the Holy Spirit who makes priests, not sex or orientation – should stand together on this one.”

AND STILL THEY COME

This is how the world turns? A religious death cult bombing city after city from Baghdad to Egypt to London? John Burns’ analysis from Iraq makes for even grimmer reading.

GUARDIAN MELTDOWN: Clive Davis follows developments.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “There is no more ‘us’ and ‘them’ It is all ‘we’. When London, Beirut and Sharm el-Sheikh are all attacked in less than 48 hours, there is no more Muslim or Christian or Jew. There is no more believer or infidel. There is no more East or West When the dead in Sharm el-Sheikh included Britons, Dutch, Egyptians, French, Kuwaitis, Spaniards, and Qataris, it is all we and we are all in this together. For just one example of how small the world has become and how nowhere is immune from terrorism anymore, look no further than London policeman Charlie Ives who survived the bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh. He was on holiday in the Egyptian resort after dealing with the aftermath of the July 7 London bombings.” – Mona Eltahawy, in Asharq Alawsat.