The Skeptic الشكاك

247 Naguib Mahfouz, Rest in Peace

Issandr has a nice obituary at The Guardian‘s blog site. See also the obit in The Guardian‘s Books section. I’m still away from Egypt; I’d appreciate it if any friends reading there could save me obituaries from the Egyptian press.

[tags]Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt[/tags]

245 Flush and Blush

Live, from New York, it’s CNN’s anchorwoman having a little chat in the bathroom while President Bush is on air. Too, too good. It could have been so much better. Video here. New York Post story (their masters came up with the headline ‘Flush and Bush’) is here.

[tags]Bush, CNN, Kyra Phillips[/tags]

244 Demon Children from Hell

Is that a cop coaching the Demon Children from Hell? And I know the soldiers are there to make sure things don’t get out of hand, but considering they’re not doing anything to clear the Demon Children from Hell out of the area, their presence seems to serve only to intimidate the women of the village.

What the hell am I talking about?

h/t Alb Sayed ??? ??? (who, by the way, has been particularly good lately).

[tags]Tel Rumeida, Settlers[/tags]

243 Iranian Crackdown Continues

I can understand why my friends in Cairo like Iran’s diminutive president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, so much. He sticks it to The Man. Hilariously, he’s just challenged George Bush to a debate. It’s the same impulse that made Saddam Hussein a hero among many people who think President Hosni Mubarak is a tyrant.

But my friends, really.
Shirin Ebadi‘s problems have rightly received a lot of attention. They’re the tip of the iceberg. On Aug. 29, Advar News reported that security forces arrested engineer Jamal Zaherpur, a student activist, in Tehran the earlier that day. Zaherpur is the former secretary of Khajeh Nasir University’s Islamic Students Association and a member of the Organization for Fostering Unity. In the past few days, Iranian security services also arrested students Abdolfazl Jahandar and Kheryollah Derakhshandi. Advar News reports that none of the three’s families have heard anything about the detainees’ whereabouts.

And on Aug. 28, the Iranian Student News Agency reported that a Tehran court sentenced reformist journalist Issa Saharkhiz to four years in prison and, in the words of Judiciary official Hossein Hosseinian, “a five-year ban from press activities.” Hosseinian also said the Judiciary is revoking the licenses of his newspaper, Akhbar Eqtesadi (Economic News), and his monthly, Aftab (Sunshine). Both publications have been suspended since February.

On July 30, Iranian student activist Akbar Mohammadi died in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, where Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi also died soon after she was sentenced for photographing the prison. Mohammadi was originally sentenced to death in 1999 for participating in student protests at Tehran University. In 2001, his sentence was commuted to 15 years.

So yeah, cheer Ahmadinejad all you like. Do it at a protest if that’s more fun. And then cheer Mubarak’s security forces for detaining you for only a month and for refraining from killing you in custody.

[tags]Iran[/tags]

242 Post-War Minefields

There’s the actual minefield Israel left in southern Lebanon the last time it invaded. There are the cluster-bombs it left this time. But right now, the political minefield seems to be the trickiest to navigate. One misstep, everyone seems to agree, and this entire situation could explode again.

Kofi Annan today called on Israel to remove one such mine, the blockade of Lebanon, and on Hizballah to remove another, the continued detention of the Israeli soldiers whose capture started this whole mess.

“We need to deal with the lifting of the embargo—sea, land and air — which for the Lebanese is a humiliation,” Annan said at the end of his two-day trip to Lebanon. “And of course the (Lebanese) government needs measures to assure, ensure that the entrances [to] the country—sea, land and air—are secure.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni responded that “the naval blockade is to prevent rearmament of Hizballah. The moment when the international community, Germany, Denmark and the others, will reinforce the arms embargo from the sea side, it will be the moment when we can open it,” she told a news conference in Copenhagen. And while Arab NGOs called for Israel’s suspension from the United Nations, Livni called for a new Security Council resolution aimed at preventing Hizballah from re-arming.

Israeli soldiers and sailors need to withdraw to the border, not so much because the blockade is “a humiliation,” though it is, but because their presence is a provocation. The more contact they have with Hizballah, the more chance someone’s trigger-finger will “accidentally” slip.

Likewise, Hizballah: The Armed Group should be integrated into the Lebanese army. That means giving up their status as armed free-agents on the Lebanese scene. Hizballah: The Political Party is such a success there’s no reason for them to fear being a party like any other party or going through the normal channels for making decisions on Lebanon’s behalf. Their aims or outlook may not jibe perfectly with the rest of Lebanese society’s. But that’s what parties are for: to represent the interests of segments of societies.

On July 10, Hizballah’s refusal to disarm looked untenable. After they showed themselves to be the only group willing or able to mount any kind of defense against an Israeli invasion, it looks less so, particularly when even The Economist is arguing that Nasrallah won. The presence of U.N. troops on Lebanese soil can, and has, been portrayed as unwelcome outside interference from a body controlled by the United States. They’re not going to disarm Hizballah in any case. They’re there as a palliative to make Israel feel better about this stupid fiasco. So what? Let both Hizballah and Israel declare victory. So long as everyone gets to save face and go home, it doesn’t really matter. The sad truth is that last month’s destruction served no purpose. Wars rarely do.

“It’s only a tragedy if someone learns something from it,” a curmudgeonly coworker once told me as I waxed weepy about some awful event years ago. Will anyone learn anything from this? Or will we chalk this up as more senseless destruction and wasted lives? Hizballah has an opportunity to take the high road, go fully mainstream, and appear magnanimous in the process. The best thing the rest of the world could do would be to clear the path.

[tags]Lebanon, Israel, Annan[/tags]

241 Aoun the Opportunist

Lebanon’s convoluted recent history and confessional politics breed complex public personalities. But opposition leader Gen. Michel Aoun—a Maronite, anti-Syrian, anti-Israeli, renegade military commander turned factional warlord, prime minister, exile, and, since February, ally of Syrian-backed Hizballah—is complex even by Lebanese standards. Speaking to reporters as Kofi Annan was finding a frosty reception from Hizballah supporters in Beirut, Aoun yesterday urged Lebanon’s Cabinet to resign because of its response to the Israeli invasion.

“We hope … a very peaceful change takes place, preserving stability in the country. If this change does not happen in such a way, there are other ways to escalate from now on,” he said.

What’s he up to?

Is this just the righteous indignation of the man who mustered a battalion to defend the presidential palace in the 1982 invasion—and so gained the distinction of mounting the Lebanese army’s only attempt to defend the country?

Is Hizballah’s well-oiled PR machine in gear, trying to make sure this news cycle isn’t all about Kofi Annan’s scolding, as the coincidence of the organized, anti-Annan protests and Aoun’s press conference might suggest?

Or is this only a cheap attempt to exploit Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s weak handling of the war—crying instead of defending the country—in a bid for power?

I don’t know how unhappy the Lebanese are with Siniora’s response to the war. But Siniora’s and Olmert’s governments may yet fall as a result of this war. In this sense, their fates are bound up together. I would imagine an Aoun-Hizballah coalition would hasten Olmert’s demise. It would also risk hastening the cease-fire’s demise.

And Aoun’s threat to resort to violence is troubling no matter what he had in mind. The opportunism bothers me only a little. We’re all used to being led by loathsome opportunists. It’s the recklessness that bothers me. When so many people are working so hard to make sure the cease-fire holds (sending money and troops to rebuild and police the South, trying to work out a lasting political solution) it seems particularly irresponsible to use loose threats of violence for domestic political gain.

[tags]Lebanon, Aoun, Annan[/tags]

239 Rebuilding Lebanon

Credit: Carlos Latuff

237 Bring out Your Dead

Melting polar ice caps or changing migratory patterns of birds a little too abstract?? How does Black Death grab you?

[tags]plague, environment, global warming[/tags]

236 Damned French…

There they go, mucking up the Middle East again. Haven’t they done enough in Iraq?

The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial writers are masters of the art. Take today’s clever, well-written example: “Mission Unaccomplished.” It sounds great. It’s a pleasure to read. The facts are all correct. And it makes many good points. Here’s how it begins:

Most U.N. resolutions don’t have the shelf-life of a gallon of milk, which isn’t always a bad thing. But in the case of Resolution 1701 — the cease-fire agreement for Lebanon and Israel adopted unanimously this month by the Security Council — things seem to be going sour even faster than that. And that is cause for serious unease.

Amen, brother! Who could disagree?

And then it gets funny. According to the Journal, France (which is not breaking the cease-fire in Lebanon) bears more responsibility for “things going sour” than Israel (which is). And isn’t it strange how things passively go sour, as if there were no agent to human affairs beyond Mother Nature? Here’s why France is to blame:

1. France has only offered 200 troops;
2. Resolution 1701 is vague on who will disarm Hizballah and no one seems anxious to try;
3. Resolution 1701 doesn’t say who will enforce the arms embargo on Hizballah.

In conclusion:

All of this explains Israel’s increasing frustration with the cease-fire. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert bought into the agreement based on what now appear to have been insincere pledges that European troops would dominate the U.N. force. Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is displaying his trademark even-handedness by denouncing Israel for trying to enforce the arms embargo while staying silent on the failure of everyone else to enforce it.

“All of this” (there’s not much) may explain “Israel’s increasing frustration with the cease-fire” (what a lovely euphemism, by the way, for repeated violation of the cease-fire). But it does not excuse it.

And might not the dawning realization in Israel that the war was an ill-conceived, mismanaged fiasco that achieved none of its ends (to paraphrase one Israeli reservist I saw interviewed on CNN today) do a better job of explaining Israeli “frustration with the cease-fire?”

Full editorial follows after the break: More…

235 Dangerous Provocations

The Lebanese defense minister is right to conclude that the cease-fire in Lebanon must hold at all costs, despite Israel’s commando raid near Baalbek yesterday. Defense Minister Elias Murr warned this morning that anyone retaliating for Israel’s breach of the cease-fire would be tried for treason before a military tribunal. It would be nice to see the Israelis issue similar warnings about breaking the cease-fire. It might help repair the impression that Security Council Resolution 1701 is toothless. True, Israel’s leaders have their own problems now. But it would still be satisfying to see those who approved the raid in Baalbek put on trial for aiding Hizballah.

Meanwhile, the Middle East’s other superpower, Iran, is posturing again. I don’t think that Iran’s aggressive behavior can be explained wholly as a response to the Bush administration’s bellicose rhetoric on (and real-world encirclement of) Iran. But the Iranians listen to the debate in Washington. They hear otherwise intelligent and arguably influential people arguing such insane courses of action as nuclear strikes against Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, which in turn must influence their decisions.

It works both ways. Events in Iran influence the debate in Washington. Every new Iranian missile test undermines efforts to argue for a sane Iran policy in the United States (apologies for the wacky link—it’s hard to find the full-text of that letter) and strengthens the hands of the Strangelovian psychos.

Washington’s chickenhawks are wrong on Iran. I fail to understand how they can think Iran would simply surrender after a U.S. “pre-emptive strike” and everyone would live happily ever after. I’m amazed that they fail to see the violence this would spark in the region or the terrible blow it would deal to the pro-democracy movement in Iran. The appeasers, those who say Iran must be offered incentives to give up their nukes, are also wrong. Iran’s leaders are playing with dangerous emotions (and instruments of torture) at home and are playing a desperate, high-stakes game with their country’s future abroad. International rewards for this behavior will only strengthen their hand and will not persuade them to give up their nuclear ambitions.

An international push for a regional treaty for a nuclear-free Middle East, on the other hand, would leave Iran’s nuclear hawks prisoners of their own rhetoric and would make the world safer. Those who argue for U.S. military action in Iran say it is “the least-bad option,” that they’re more afraid an Iranian nuke would touch off a regional nuclear arms race than they are of a wave of Iranian-sponsored attacks in the region and abroad, an oil shock, or outright war. They imagine, for example, that Egypt would want a nuke to balance Iran’s and posit that this would be worse for the world than anything an Iran attacked could muster. They willfully ignore the fact that the arms race is already on, that Iran claims it needs a deterrent to match that of its enemies, Israel and the United States.

I’ll grant that there’s a slim possibility Egypt might say “me too” if Iran got the bomb. But I don’t see why Egypt should suddenly want the bomb in response to an Iranian nuke when the nukes on its border—nukes held by a country that recently occupied Egyptian territory and even more recently showed it was perfectly happy to bomb the stuffing out of a neighbor— haven’t yet inspired it to pursue a nuclear program.

Any successful attempt to avert a nuclear arms race in the Middle East must address the Middle East, not just Iran. This would be more difficult than offering bribes or dropping a few bombs, but the results would be better.

Lastly, and also in the category of dangerous provocations: the murder of 15 Iraqi Shia pilgrims, and the injury of 200 more, in Baghdad today. What can anyone say about Iraq anymore? After three years, the daily Iraq carnage reports blend together. Two hundred pilgrims were injured in Baghdad today, and in Cincinnati, Bristol, or Buenos Aires, a dog bit a man.

[tags]Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Iraq[/tags]

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