Category: Daniel Serwer
Hello Kurdistan!
I haven’t actually watched this video of a discussion last Friday with Namo Abulla of Kurdistan’s Al Rudaw and Tzvi Kahn of the Foreign Policy Initiative. I hope it isn’t too far off the mark. Stay tuned also for Stephen Mansfield, discussing his book, The Miracle of the Kurds:
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Charlie Hebdo
It is all too easy to think of many valid reasons to denounce the murder of 12 staff members of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. But the event should also give us pause and make us think about what is going on in the minds of the people who do such things and how to prevent them from happening in the future. It may be necessary to label the perpetrators as evil and it is certainly appropriate to call for their quick capture and fair trial. It is likewise necessary to defend the right of anyone to laugh at whomever they want. But it is not sufficient.
We may never know precisely the motives for this massacre. Even if they eventually stand trial, the perpetrators may not say much. So we’ll have to go with the flow: this looks like an act of retaliation against Charlie Hebdo for it satires of Mohammed, Islam and Sharia. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that is correct.
The passionate defense of one’s religion we should all understand. It wasn’t all that long ago that New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani was cutting off funding to the Brooklyn Museum because it displayed an artwork known as “Piss Christ” (and it was eventually attacked and destroyed, in France).* I’m with Mohammad Fadel when he notes here that Giuliani’s attitude was frighteningly hostile, even if the means he had the privilege of choosing were more genteel:
My own folks are fond of the slogan “Never again!” when it comes to people who say they want to be rid of us. And we mean it. But Jews and Catholics in the United States have a lot of levers of power to wield before it comes to murdering our assailants. Even if we are deeply offended, we know that retaliation using political, economic, moral and social instruments will be more effective than violence.
That is what some people doubt. Extremists are extreme: they believe only violence will make their point and enable them to get their way. They feel under attack and want to fight back. They don’t think they are doing evil. They think protecting their own is doing good.
Why should Muslims feel under attack? Let me count the reasons:
- They are under attack from nationalists, especially but not only in France, who view them as foreigners, alien and undesirable.
- Aspects of Western culture that we regard as normal (kissing in public, scantily clad women, drinking alcohol) are offensive to many Muslims.
- Some Western countries, including France, have tried to prohibit some Muslim practices, in particular the hijab but also the call to prayer.
- They see us as applying double standards: vigorous concern for our own victims of violence, but indifference or worse towards theirs (witness Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere).
- Muslims share the legacy associated with the Old and New Testaments, but Christians and Jews reject (or ignore) the Quran and the Prophet Mohammed.
So when Charlie Hebdo takes shots at Mohammed, Westerners see it as a joke, maybe one in poor taste, but not something to get upset about. Some Muslims see it as part of a pattern of hostility, and a few want to retaliate but lack imagination and means other than an AK-47 and a rocket launcher.
So what do we do about it? First, we hope the French police catch the perps and see that they get a fair trial and appropriate sentences in a French court. All you need to know about Guantanamo you can learn by imagining what would happen if the murderers were caught, not put on trial but jailed indefinitely and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques. The extremists would certainly gain, not lose, if that happened.
Second, we need to restrain the nativist reactions of non-Muslims, who will be calling for (and voting for) expulsions of foreigners and crackdowns on immigration. That is precisely the wrong direction to go in. I don’t expect any mainstream Muslim organization not to denounce these murders in the strongest possible terms, even if they think Charlie Hebdo went too far in its satire. It is important to make it easier, not harder, for them to stick with the majority view, in France and elsewhere, that free speech has to be protected from murderous thugs, no matter how offensive the scribblings.
Third, we need much more understanding of the Muslims who live among us. Americans think Muslims are 15% of the population. In fact they are less than 1%. In France, they are thought to be 31% of the population but are in fact 8%. I can only imagine what other distortions lie harbored in our brains. Christian/Jewish relations have improved enormously since I was called names on the playground I won’t repeat today (some of you might never have heard them). We need to commit to the same kind of improvements with the growing Muslim population in our midst, ensuring that we know what is offensive and why as well as underlining our own commitment to freedom of speech.
I’ve got no beef with Charlie Hebdo. It was doing what it was invented to do. But let’s try to make things better, not worse.
*PS: Sorry: I confused two old stories here. Piss Christ was attacked in France, but Giuliani’s complaint was about The Holy Virgin Mary, a work featuring a Black Madonna sprinkled with elephant dung and images of female genitalia. A distinction but not much difference.
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This really did cheer me a bit
via @laurenist:
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The Israel we need is not the one we’ve got
Yoram Peri, an Israeli patriot who has fought in three wars for his country and now directs the University of Maryland’s new Institute for Israel Studies, gave a post-service talk Friday night at our local synagogue. His family has lived in Palestine and Israel since the 1860s. What he had to say about the collapse of the Israel/Palestine peace talks and Israel’s politics may interest readers. Here is what I remember of his impassioned presentation.*
Contrary to what has been reported, Yoram understands that Mahmoud Abbas was prepared to make major concessions in the US-sponsored negotiations. Palestine would be demilitarized. Eighty per cent of the Jewish population living beyond the wall would remain in placed. Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem would not be disturbed. Israeli troops would remain in the Jordan River valley for five years and then be replaced by American troops for another five years. Israel would decide how many displaced and refugee Palestinians would be able to return to Israel proper.
Abbas was asking in return that Israel specify within a few months exactly where the border would lie (presumably based on swaps for land in the West Bank kept by Israel). Jerusalem would be Palestine’s capital. If Yoram mentioned other important Palestinian requirements, I am not remembering them.
Netanyahu rejected this offer. His coalition has too many hardline settler supporters to allow him to accept. Nor is he himself interested in making peace. He is more comfortable talking about the Holocaust.
But when Abbas made a strong statement on the Holocaust to mark Yom HaShoah, Netanyahu rejected it as public relations. Likewise, Netanyahu has complained for years that Abbas can’t deliver on peace with Israel because the Palestinian Authority he leads does not control Gaza. Now that Hamas, which does control Gaza, has pledged to join a Palestinian Authority government consisting of “technical” ministers, Netanyahu says he won’t negotiate because then the Palestinian government will include terrorists.
Yoram thinks Hamas, as part of a unity government, will have to accept the “Quartet” (US, Russia, EU and UN) conditions for participation in the peace talks: mutual recognition, acceptance of previous agreements, and ending violence as a means of attaining goals. Abbas has also said as much. If Hamas does accept these conditions, why wouldn’t Israel negotiate with it? Yoram suggests there is no harm in talking with them to see what is possible.
Israel’s reluctance to accept a good deal with the Palestinians is rooted in the evolution of its politics. The weight of the ultra religious has increased enormously. And what the ultra religious want has also changed. Whereas traditionally Jews are prohibited from praying on the Temple Mount (they pray only at the Wailing Wall at its base), some ultra religious militants are demanding not only to pray there but also to destroy the Dome of the Rock mosque and rebuild the ancient temple. Only a few years ago, only fringe lunatics held such views. Now they are entering mainstream discourse.
Israel officially accepts only Jewish orthodoxy as legitimate. There are few reform synagogues. Most of Israel’s Jews are either orthodox or secular. They know nothing of the more liberal Reform Judaism practiced in the United States. What is needed is a reverse birthright program: one that brings young Israelis to the United States to learn about modern Jewish practices.
Ultimately, Yoram suggests the problem for Israel is the one John Kerry made recent reference to: if it holds on to the West Bank, it cannot remain both democratic and Jewish. The demography will require it to deny equal rights to the Arabs who live there, thus eventually meriting the appellation “apartheid.” This is an opinion many Israeli leaders have expressed, so it is hard to understand why it caused such a furor recently in the US.
Israel faces a difficult future. A third intifada is a possibility, though the Palestinians seem weary of the violence associated with the first two. A nonviolent one is possible, a well-informed Arab journalist told me recently, but only after dissolving the Palestinian Authority, so it would not be faced with the difficulty of repressing the rebellion. Yoram suggested the BDS (boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions) movement will grow. Israel will increasingly stand alone against a world that regards it as extreme and uncompromising. Rather than being a beacon of hope, it will be isolated in a hostile environment.
Asked about the future of Israel’s Arabs, Yoram suggested that its national anthem “Hatikvah” (the Hope) could be amended to be more inclusive. This is the current version:
As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And forward to the East
To Zion, an eye looks
Our hope will not be lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
I have my doubts any amendment will satisfy Israel’s more than 20% Arab citizens, but the Israel that would at least give it a try would also be one that signed up for the deal Mahmoud Abbas was offering. That unfortunately is not the Israel we’ve got. But it is the Israel we need.
*Virtually all of what Yoram said about what the Palestinians were prepared to agree has now been published, based on American sources: Inside the talks’ failure: US officials open up.
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Dayton reexamined
I wrote this piece some months ago for a Swedish publication, Axess. They have just published it, in Swedish:
“Dayton.” The word has come to signify the end of the seemingly intractable violence in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. The narrative surrounding it is powerful: after everyone else had tried and failed, an American diplomat took the warring parties off to an isolated air force base in Ohio, where he bent them to his will and ended the war. Richard Holbrooke left no doubt in his book To End a War that the critical moment was when he convinced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept peace with the Federation (Bosniak and Croat) forces arrayed against him and the army of Republika Srpska. The story of how the Americans packed their bags and made Milosevic believe that they were getting ready to leave Dayton is classic. This was the triumph of American will, and guile.
The “Dayton” narrative is powerful but inaccurate and misleading. It has never accorded with what I actually experienced at Dayton during the first ten days of the talks, when I negotiated with German diplomat Michael Steiner the first agreement reached there. Now forgotten, it strengthened the predominantly Bosniak/Croat Federation, which at the time was winning the war in Bosnia. During my stay in Dayton, Holbrooke spent most of his time cajoling the Serbs into freeing an American journalist (David Rohde) who had gotten himself caught in Pale. He talked far more to Slobodan Milosevic than to anyone else and was clearly charmed. Captivated might be more accurate. Read more
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Final SIGIR report is deficient
Gary Vogler, former senior oil consultant to US Forces Iraq, writes:
Sunday, 17 March marked the 10th anniversary of the Jay Garner-led ORHA team departure from the Pentagon to Kuwait, and then onto Baghdad. As Jay’s Oil Advisor, I was part of that initial group that met at the Pentagon parking lot on a Sunday morning for the flight to Kuwait. Little did I know that my home for 75 months over the next nine years would be in Iraq working on oil sector reconstruction.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq’s (SIGIR) final report, recently released, left a lot to be desired in terms of contemporary truths and lessons learned. Our experience and success in the oil sector was a lot better than he and his report portrayed.
As a member of the initial team of oil advisors in Iraq, I witnessed that the US Army’s Corps of Engineers partnered with the Iraqis to start Iraq’s oil flowing on April 23, 2003 in the important Rumaila oil field, several months ahead of pre-war plans and 14 days after the fall of Baghdad.
This momentum was maintained until the US Forces departed in 2011. Iraq’s oil has never stopped flowing and Iraq’s total oil revenues are approaching the $450 billion level since 2003 with projections to pass the $1 trillion mark by the end of 2016.
2012 oil revenues represent a 1200% increase over 2003 revenues-almost three times more than Apple Computer’s stock growth over the same time. Iraq’s production eclipsed the 3 million barrel a day level last summer for the first time since 1979.
Recently opened new export facilities in southern Iraq are currently operating at half capacity, but still ship about 0.9 million barrels a day. This equates to $36 billion a year of revenues at current prices and will increase to over $70 billion when phase 1 reaches the design’s full capacity of 1.8 million barrels per day. Phase 2 of the project is designed to add another 1.8 million barrels a day within the next 2 years. Just for a volumes comparison, ExxonMobil’s global oil liquids production in 2011 averaged 2.3 million barrels a day.
At the start up ceremony last year, Oil Minister Luaibi identified the project as not only the most important oil project, but also the most important infrastructure project completed in decades. I agree – international oil executives told me that they knew of no other single oil project that will impact global oil supply more over the next ten years.
Most importantly, the SIGIR report misses the fact that the US military and civilian oil advisors under the leadership of Americans like Generals Petraeus, Odierno and Austin were able to leverage the last $2 million of US oil reconstruction funds, in partnership with the Iraqis, to seed the construct of this multi-billion dollar export facility. Iraqi oil revenues have paid for the rest.
The project started in early 2007, just after General Petraeus took command of Multi National Forces Iraq. It quickly became one of the military’s top priority infrastructure projects, scheduled for recurring detailed briefs to the Commanding General until the 2011 departure of US Forces. This high level American military leadership focus was the key push and sometimes the only push behind the project. A reliable export channel for Iraq’s oil was appropriately considered an Iraqi national security issue by our military.
SIGIR touts their final report – “Learning From Iraq provides the most comprehensive picture of the reconstruction program yet produced”. From the perspective of the oil sector reconstruction effort, the SIGIR report is deficient. It fails to even discuss the US military’s contribution to Iraq’s most important infrastructure project in decades. The following US military units played significant roles: Corps of Engineers Gulf Region Division, Coalition Navy, Energy Fusion Cell, Civil Affairs Cmd, US Division South and the US Forces J9 Staff.
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