The utterly unique and seemingly fearless Oriana Fallaci has died.
Charismatic, beautiful, outspoken, iconoclastic, articulate, fiery, controversial, in recent years Fallaci had been battling cancer, but she continued speaking out against Islam's violent incursions into Europe.
Fallaci never was one to pull her punches. Even though she didn't get quite as much press as the Pope for it, she was far harder on Islam.
[I will write more later on Fallaci.]
Friday, September 15, 2006
The Big Story, according to Google: the Gates of Regensburg
My home page is Google, which always contains a feature entitled "Top Stories," listing what Google considers the five biggest stories of the hour. Usually it has a variety--I've never seen it with the same story five times before. But right now it looks like this:
Fadlallah Demands Personal Apology from Pope Over Remarks on Islam
Naharnet - all 706 related »
Key excerpts: The Pope's speech
BBC News - all 706 related »
Muslims Enraged by Pope's Remarks on Spreading Islam by Violence
CNSNews.com - all 706 related »
Pontiff's quote on Islam draws criticism, anger
Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription) - all 706 related »
Pope's remarks anger Muslims
United Press International - all 706 relate
So, what's new? That Moslems are angry? That Moslems are angry at someone suggesting their religion might have some flaws? That Moslems are angry at someone suggesting their religion might have some connection with the jihadist violence certain groups of Moslems commit in its name? Or is it the fact that it's the the Pope who made the remarks in question?
[Here are some excerpts from the Pope's controversial remarks about Islam, for those who aren't familiar with what he said.]
Fadlallah Demands Personal Apology from Pope Over Remarks on Islam
Naharnet - all 706 related »
Key excerpts: The Pope's speech
BBC News - all 706 related »
Muslims Enraged by Pope's Remarks on Spreading Islam by Violence
CNSNews.com - all 706 related »
Pontiff's quote on Islam draws criticism, anger
Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription) - all 706 related »
Pope's remarks anger Muslims
United Press International - all 706 relate
So, what's new? That Moslems are angry? That Moslems are angry at someone suggesting their religion might have some flaws? That Moslems are angry at someone suggesting their religion might have some connection with the jihadist violence certain groups of Moslems commit in its name? Or is it the fact that it's the the Pope who made the remarks in question?
[Here are some excerpts from the Pope's controversial remarks about Islam, for those who aren't familiar with what he said.]
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Update: the wheels of French justice grind fine...
...and maybe not so slowly, after all.
Nidra Pollner's second report, this one focusing on the trial, sounds very, very promising:
It was a beautiful trial. It was held in an atmosphere of respect for justice...
And here is part of Richard Landes's post on the same subject:
Wow. French Republican values have scored a great first round victory today. This is the France that I fell in love with as a kid, and as a student reading Jules Michelet, and doing medieval history with intellectually vibrant people, the great souled people with wise and fair-minded institutions, and real ideals and commitment to integrity… the people of the Peace of God, and the early, heady days of the French Revolution.
Not to get too excited too soon…
Francophiles should be happy, and those who love truth and justice should be cautiously optimistic as well. The verdict will be delivered on October 19, and a few days later the second trial against the second defendant will begin--that is, if there is a second trial.
Of course, judges are notorious for their poker faces. It ain't over till the fat lady sings.
Nidra Pollner's second report, this one focusing on the trial, sounds very, very promising:
It was a beautiful trial. It was held in an atmosphere of respect for justice...
And here is part of Richard Landes's post on the same subject:
Wow. French Republican values have scored a great first round victory today. This is the France that I fell in love with as a kid, and as a student reading Jules Michelet, and doing medieval history with intellectually vibrant people, the great souled people with wise and fair-minded institutions, and real ideals and commitment to integrity… the people of the Peace of God, and the early, heady days of the French Revolution.
Not to get too excited too soon…
Francophiles should be happy, and those who love truth and justice should be cautiously optimistic as well. The verdict will be delivered on October 19, and a few days later the second trial against the second defendant will begin--that is, if there is a second trial.
Of course, judges are notorious for their poker faces. It ain't over till the fat lady sings.
Dreyfus and the France2 case: history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes
The great Mark Twain wrote, in one of his pithiest and most insightful aphorisms:
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Not all the rhymes of history are beautiful poetry, of that we can be sure. Case in point: the ongoing France2 defamation trial, which has resonance with the famous Dreyfus affair.
The current trial--or trials; there are three--is a story the MSM is virtually ignoring. So once again it falls to the blogosphere to publicize it. Nidra Pollner and Pajamas Media are attempting to emphasize the "rhyme" by channeling Emile Zola and the newspaper L'Aurore (The Dawn), respectively. Pollner's excellent first article on the case appears here.
The trial begins today. It manages to combine a number of huge issues in one seemingly small package: Palestinian fauxtography, the role of the mainstream press in promulgating it, how to distinguish between what is truth and what is propaganda, and the defamation laws of the French legal system. The overarching question, of course, is whether justice and truth will prevail.
Please read this previous post of mine and the linked Pollner article to get the details. But if that's too much for you, here's the briefest of recaps: in September of 2000, the French TV station France2 broadcast videotape allegedly showing the killing of 12-year old Mohammed al Durah by Israeli troops in a Gaza exchange of fire with Palestinians. The tape and the publicity that ensued were instrumental in inflaming international--especially European, and particularly French--public opinion against both Israel and Jews, and was heavily used by the Palestinians as justification for the bloody Second Intifada.
But it turns out the overwhelming evidence indicates the whole thing to be a hoax. What's more, France2 knew this early on, or should reasonably have known it. The station lied about other aspects of the tape as well, alleging there was even more footage--unshown because it was too graphic and upsetting--proving the death of Mohammed. But there was no such tape. In fact, the tape in question demonstrates quite the opposite: almost a half-hour of blatantly staged scenes, with only a minute of al Durah footage, the end of which catches the boy making voluntary hand gestures after he was supposedly dead.
In the sharpest of ironies, these trials are being brought by the French TV station and its employees under a law originally designed to shield individuals against defamation by the press. Philippe Karsenty, founding director of the online media watch enterprise Media-Ratings, is being sued for public defamation of the honor and reputation of an “individual"--that individual being France 2 and its employees Arlette Chabot and Charles Enderlin.
It's as though Dan Rather, acting as an individual, had sued Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs for Johnson's online debunking of the forged the National Guard memos. A French law designed to protect individuals against the power of false press accusations has turned the tables, looking-glass like, and enabled the press to sue online individuals for criticizing lies promulgated by the media itself.
Writers keep invoking the famous Dreyfus Affair, but I'm hoping the better parallel will be to the David Irving trial, in which Irving sued writer Lipstadt for defamation when she accused him of lying and Holocaust denial. He ended up the loser, with his reputation in tatters after the trial proved the truth of her charges against him.
The Irving trial was relatively brief and the verdict against Irving swift. Not so the Dreyfus case; although Dreyfus was exonerated in the end, it took twelve long years for his rehabilitation, and he endured a great deal of suffering along the way.
The Dreyfus Affair demonstrated, among other things, the power of the pen: writer Zola was instrumental in getting the case the public scrutiny that ultimately helped to release Dreyfus. The entire episode also caused a huge and lasting rift in French society and government. But Zola himself, in an example of uncanny "rhyming" with the present case, did not get off scot-free. He--much like the defendants here (and possibly under the same statute?)--was charged with libel in 1898, the same year in which he had written "J'accuse," his famous piece calling attention to the Dreyfus Affair.
What's more--and here I sincerely hope that history does not end up rhyming--Zola was found guilty, and forced to flee the country and take exile in England for a few months until granted amnesty.
There are two other famous quotations about history that spring to mind in relation to these matters. One was uttered by James Joyce's fictional character and alter ego Stephen Daedulus:
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Yes, history has its horrors. But we are part of it, and it of us, and we ignore it at our peril. We can't change it; we can only try to learn from it. Which brings us to the second quote, by George Santayana:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Of course, even those who do remember the past are often condemned to repeat it, unless enough people remember it and act wisely on its lessons. Sometimes it's difficult to know what those lessons are. Other times they seem clear, and this is one of these times.
[ADDENDUM: I just came across Richard Landes's pretrial post, in which he mentions that Dreyfus was tried under the same 1881 law that is operating in this trial.]
History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Not all the rhymes of history are beautiful poetry, of that we can be sure. Case in point: the ongoing France2 defamation trial, which has resonance with the famous Dreyfus affair.
The current trial--or trials; there are three--is a story the MSM is virtually ignoring. So once again it falls to the blogosphere to publicize it. Nidra Pollner and Pajamas Media are attempting to emphasize the "rhyme" by channeling Emile Zola and the newspaper L'Aurore (The Dawn), respectively. Pollner's excellent first article on the case appears here.
The trial begins today. It manages to combine a number of huge issues in one seemingly small package: Palestinian fauxtography, the role of the mainstream press in promulgating it, how to distinguish between what is truth and what is propaganda, and the defamation laws of the French legal system. The overarching question, of course, is whether justice and truth will prevail.
Please read this previous post of mine and the linked Pollner article to get the details. But if that's too much for you, here's the briefest of recaps: in September of 2000, the French TV station France2 broadcast videotape allegedly showing the killing of 12-year old Mohammed al Durah by Israeli troops in a Gaza exchange of fire with Palestinians. The tape and the publicity that ensued were instrumental in inflaming international--especially European, and particularly French--public opinion against both Israel and Jews, and was heavily used by the Palestinians as justification for the bloody Second Intifada.
But it turns out the overwhelming evidence indicates the whole thing to be a hoax. What's more, France2 knew this early on, or should reasonably have known it. The station lied about other aspects of the tape as well, alleging there was even more footage--unshown because it was too graphic and upsetting--proving the death of Mohammed. But there was no such tape. In fact, the tape in question demonstrates quite the opposite: almost a half-hour of blatantly staged scenes, with only a minute of al Durah footage, the end of which catches the boy making voluntary hand gestures after he was supposedly dead.
In the sharpest of ironies, these trials are being brought by the French TV station and its employees under a law originally designed to shield individuals against defamation by the press. Philippe Karsenty, founding director of the online media watch enterprise Media-Ratings, is being sued for public defamation of the honor and reputation of an “individual"--that individual being France 2 and its employees Arlette Chabot and Charles Enderlin.
It's as though Dan Rather, acting as an individual, had sued Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs for Johnson's online debunking of the forged the National Guard memos. A French law designed to protect individuals against the power of false press accusations has turned the tables, looking-glass like, and enabled the press to sue online individuals for criticizing lies promulgated by the media itself.
Writers keep invoking the famous Dreyfus Affair, but I'm hoping the better parallel will be to the David Irving trial, in which Irving sued writer Lipstadt for defamation when she accused him of lying and Holocaust denial. He ended up the loser, with his reputation in tatters after the trial proved the truth of her charges against him.
The Irving trial was relatively brief and the verdict against Irving swift. Not so the Dreyfus case; although Dreyfus was exonerated in the end, it took twelve long years for his rehabilitation, and he endured a great deal of suffering along the way.
The Dreyfus Affair demonstrated, among other things, the power of the pen: writer Zola was instrumental in getting the case the public scrutiny that ultimately helped to release Dreyfus. The entire episode also caused a huge and lasting rift in French society and government. But Zola himself, in an example of uncanny "rhyming" with the present case, did not get off scot-free. He--much like the defendants here (and possibly under the same statute?)--was charged with libel in 1898, the same year in which he had written "J'accuse," his famous piece calling attention to the Dreyfus Affair.
What's more--and here I sincerely hope that history does not end up rhyming--Zola was found guilty, and forced to flee the country and take exile in England for a few months until granted amnesty.
There are two other famous quotations about history that spring to mind in relation to these matters. One was uttered by James Joyce's fictional character and alter ego Stephen Daedulus:
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
Yes, history has its horrors. But we are part of it, and it of us, and we ignore it at our peril. We can't change it; we can only try to learn from it. Which brings us to the second quote, by George Santayana:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Of course, even those who do remember the past are often condemned to repeat it, unless enough people remember it and act wisely on its lessons. Sometimes it's difficult to know what those lessons are. Other times they seem clear, and this is one of these times.
[ADDENDUM: I just came across Richard Landes's pretrial post, in which he mentions that Dreyfus was tried under the same 1881 law that is operating in this trial.]
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
The sky of 9/11
On this past Monday, the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I noticed the sky was clear and blue. But the blue was an ordinary blue, nothing like the intense clarity of the sky five years ago. It's one of the things many people remember best about 9/11: the piercingly blue sky, so unusual in its intensity as to make the untouched photos seem Photoshopped.
I also recall that the day before 9/11, and for a day or two afterwards, the sky retained that unusual sharpness and essence of blue. I'd never seen it before, nor have I since. I wondered whether the hijackers considered it an omen, a sign that their mission had the approval of the deity.
I also seem to remember reading somewhere about what had caused the unusual sky, and an aviation term to refer to it. But now I can't find a thing about it. So, dear readers: can anyone help out with this?
I also recall that the day before 9/11, and for a day or two afterwards, the sky retained that unusual sharpness and essence of blue. I'd never seen it before, nor have I since. I wondered whether the hijackers considered it an omen, a sign that their mission had the approval of the deity.
I also seem to remember reading somewhere about what had caused the unusual sky, and an aviation term to refer to it. But now I can't find a thing about it. So, dear readers: can anyone help out with this?
Uneasy lies the head next to the head that wears a crown
I sense a theme here--two headlines spotted today in the supermarket checkout line, composing the entire front page of the tabloid the Globe:
Camilla Runs Back to Ex-Hubby
Laura Bush's Nervous Breakdown: "I can't take any more," she tells Prez
I assume "Prez" isn't Elvis Presley--last spotted, I believe, in my local Store 24.
Camilla Runs Back to Ex-Hubby
Laura Bush's Nervous Breakdown: "I can't take any more," she tells Prez
I assume "Prez" isn't Elvis Presley--last spotted, I believe, in my local Store 24.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Khatami, Cheney, whatever: misunderstanding freedom of speech
Last night I was talking to my fellow Sanity Squad members after taping this week's podcast (no, it's not online yet, but should be soon).
The session you hear is usually just the tip of the iceberg for us. As I've said before, we bloggers can talk, and after our tongues are loosened by the thirty or so minutes allotted to the taping, we usually go on--and on and on and on. And of course, we're even more fascinating--as well as sublimely humorous--with the recording device turned off, but you'll just have to take my word for it.
Last night we got into--among many other things--a post-taping discussion of Khatami's invitation to speak at Harvard. We all agreed that Harvard shouldn't have tendered the invitation; after all, why give him such an illustrious forum? I said that Harvard's argument in its defense is that all views should be heard in the marketplace of ideas, and that truth will out. We all were in agreement, however, that in that case he should at least have been invited to debate with someone on the other side. Netanyahu came to mind, or perhaps Dershowitz, but it could have been any number of people.
Of course, that wasn't done. Why not? Well, for one thing, Khatami probably would have declined the pleasure if he'd had to face an opponent. If there's one thing Khatami is about, I think we can safely say that it's not free debate in the marketplace of ideas.
Then today I came across this article by Caroline Glick that appeared in yesterday's Jerusalem Post. The subject is Khatami's invitation to speak at Harvard as compared with a visit by none other than Dick Cheney, who entered the Harvard Club through a back door to evade two hundred protesters who greeted him when he arrived to give a speech there recently.
Well, I happened to have been at the Khatami protest (forgot to bring my camera, folks, but here are Sol's shots) and although I'm not an expert at crowd estimation, I'd say there were a goodly number of protesters there, but that the number came in well under two hundred.
Ms. Glick also seems to feel that there may be more hatred for Cheney at Harvard than for Khatami. And in her article she makes the exact point the Sanity Squad was discussing in our off-the-record talk last night (could she have been overhearing us through some sort of Rovian wiretap?)--that, if Harvard's intent in inviting Khatami was to offer a free flow of ideas so that truth would emerge, it would have been good to have had an opposing side present at Khatami's speech. She agrees, however, that such an invitation would probably have put the kibosh on the whole shebang.
No, I'm not saying that every single speaker at Harvard has to have an opposing viewpoint presented at the same time. That would be ludicrous, for either side. But certainly for a speaker who represents such abhorrent polices as Khatami, it would be a good idea.
The bottom line is that there is no requirement that Harvard offer our enemies a bully pulpit, nor is there any prohibition on Harvard's doing so. It simply is a matter of the school's judgment and policy. And given the present state of relations with Iran--actually, the same state of relations we've had for virtually all the years since the Islamic revolution there in 1979--inviting Khatami to speak at Harvard is a bit like having invited Hermann Goering over to speak at Harvard during the late 30s. I haven't checked it out yet, but my guess is that it didn't happen. The Greatest Generation wasn't quite as stupid and self-destructive as we are.
One of these days I plan to write at greater length about the misconceptions many people have about freedom of speech (we'll see--I've got notes for several hundred as yet unwritten articles, so I've got my work cut out for me). But the summary version is that, when last I looked, the Bill of Rights states that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is mainly concerned with prohibiting government intrusion into the right to speak out. It's not absolute, of course; there are always restrictions, most famously that the government has a right to prohibit the shouting of "fire" in a crowded theater. But there is no requirement that any non-governmental institution invite all comers to spout off from a podium. Of course, if Harvard chooses to do so, the government can't stop it. That's why Governor Romney, as a state agent, had no ability to keep Khatami away from Harvard. Instead, he was limited to refusing to supply Khatami with state support for the trip, such as an official state escort (the Federal government provided the main security) or state VIP treatment. The only other thing Romney could do was to use his freedom of speech to harshly criticize Harvard for offering the invite.
But somehow, for some people, the guarantees of prohibition of governmental restriction on freedom of speech has somehow morphed into the thought that one must actively provide an opportunity to speak for those who oppose you or are against you. No. Let them speak on a street corner. Let them publish a leaflet and distribute it in Harvard Square. And yes, of course, if you wish to provide them with a forum in your institution, I can't stop you. But I can exercise my right to freedom of speech by criticizing you for doing so.
The argument that having someone like Khatami speak at Harvard is a good thing because it furthers discussion in the free marketplace of ideas sounds good on paper (or on the computer screen). But in reality it doesn't always work that way; it's best to use some judgment about this. Here's the much-maligned Wikipedia (how's that for the marketplace of ideas?) on the subject:
A classic argument for protecting freedom of speech as a fundamental right is that it is essential for the discovery of truth. This argument is particularly associated with the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."...
This marketplace of ideas rationale for freedom of speech has been criticized by scholars on the grounds that it is wrong to assume all ideas will enter the marketplace of ideas, and even if they do, some ideas may drown out others merely because they enjoy dissemination through superior resources.
The marketplace is also criticized for its assumption that truth will necessarily triumph over falsehood. It is visible throughout history that people may be swayed by emotion rather than reason, and even if truth ultimately prevails, enormous harm can occur in the interim.
"Dissemination through superior resources" does seem to be the very definition of giving a speech at Harvard. So, why encourage Khatami in this way? Granted, he's not Ahmadinejad (is he next on the speaker invite list?) But he's bad enough.
The session you hear is usually just the tip of the iceberg for us. As I've said before, we bloggers can talk, and after our tongues are loosened by the thirty or so minutes allotted to the taping, we usually go on--and on and on and on. And of course, we're even more fascinating--as well as sublimely humorous--with the recording device turned off, but you'll just have to take my word for it.
Last night we got into--among many other things--a post-taping discussion of Khatami's invitation to speak at Harvard. We all agreed that Harvard shouldn't have tendered the invitation; after all, why give him such an illustrious forum? I said that Harvard's argument in its defense is that all views should be heard in the marketplace of ideas, and that truth will out. We all were in agreement, however, that in that case he should at least have been invited to debate with someone on the other side. Netanyahu came to mind, or perhaps Dershowitz, but it could have been any number of people.
Of course, that wasn't done. Why not? Well, for one thing, Khatami probably would have declined the pleasure if he'd had to face an opponent. If there's one thing Khatami is about, I think we can safely say that it's not free debate in the marketplace of ideas.
Then today I came across this article by Caroline Glick that appeared in yesterday's Jerusalem Post. The subject is Khatami's invitation to speak at Harvard as compared with a visit by none other than Dick Cheney, who entered the Harvard Club through a back door to evade two hundred protesters who greeted him when he arrived to give a speech there recently.
Well, I happened to have been at the Khatami protest (forgot to bring my camera, folks, but here are Sol's shots) and although I'm not an expert at crowd estimation, I'd say there were a goodly number of protesters there, but that the number came in well under two hundred.
Ms. Glick also seems to feel that there may be more hatred for Cheney at Harvard than for Khatami. And in her article she makes the exact point the Sanity Squad was discussing in our off-the-record talk last night (could she have been overhearing us through some sort of Rovian wiretap?)--that, if Harvard's intent in inviting Khatami was to offer a free flow of ideas so that truth would emerge, it would have been good to have had an opposing side present at Khatami's speech. She agrees, however, that such an invitation would probably have put the kibosh on the whole shebang.
No, I'm not saying that every single speaker at Harvard has to have an opposing viewpoint presented at the same time. That would be ludicrous, for either side. But certainly for a speaker who represents such abhorrent polices as Khatami, it would be a good idea.
The bottom line is that there is no requirement that Harvard offer our enemies a bully pulpit, nor is there any prohibition on Harvard's doing so. It simply is a matter of the school's judgment and policy. And given the present state of relations with Iran--actually, the same state of relations we've had for virtually all the years since the Islamic revolution there in 1979--inviting Khatami to speak at Harvard is a bit like having invited Hermann Goering over to speak at Harvard during the late 30s. I haven't checked it out yet, but my guess is that it didn't happen. The Greatest Generation wasn't quite as stupid and self-destructive as we are.
One of these days I plan to write at greater length about the misconceptions many people have about freedom of speech (we'll see--I've got notes for several hundred as yet unwritten articles, so I've got my work cut out for me). But the summary version is that, when last I looked, the Bill of Rights states that Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is mainly concerned with prohibiting government intrusion into the right to speak out. It's not absolute, of course; there are always restrictions, most famously that the government has a right to prohibit the shouting of "fire" in a crowded theater. But there is no requirement that any non-governmental institution invite all comers to spout off from a podium. Of course, if Harvard chooses to do so, the government can't stop it. That's why Governor Romney, as a state agent, had no ability to keep Khatami away from Harvard. Instead, he was limited to refusing to supply Khatami with state support for the trip, such as an official state escort (the Federal government provided the main security) or state VIP treatment. The only other thing Romney could do was to use his freedom of speech to harshly criticize Harvard for offering the invite.
But somehow, for some people, the guarantees of prohibition of governmental restriction on freedom of speech has somehow morphed into the thought that one must actively provide an opportunity to speak for those who oppose you or are against you. No. Let them speak on a street corner. Let them publish a leaflet and distribute it in Harvard Square. And yes, of course, if you wish to provide them with a forum in your institution, I can't stop you. But I can exercise my right to freedom of speech by criticizing you for doing so.
The argument that having someone like Khatami speak at Harvard is a good thing because it furthers discussion in the free marketplace of ideas sounds good on paper (or on the computer screen). But in reality it doesn't always work that way; it's best to use some judgment about this. Here's the much-maligned Wikipedia (how's that for the marketplace of ideas?) on the subject:
A classic argument for protecting freedom of speech as a fundamental right is that it is essential for the discovery of truth. This argument is particularly associated with the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out."...
This marketplace of ideas rationale for freedom of speech has been criticized by scholars on the grounds that it is wrong to assume all ideas will enter the marketplace of ideas, and even if they do, some ideas may drown out others merely because they enjoy dissemination through superior resources.
The marketplace is also criticized for its assumption that truth will necessarily triumph over falsehood. It is visible throughout history that people may be swayed by emotion rather than reason, and even if truth ultimately prevails, enormous harm can occur in the interim.
"Dissemination through superior resources" does seem to be the very definition of giving a speech at Harvard. So, why encourage Khatami in this way? Granted, he's not Ahmadinejad (is he next on the speaker invite list?) But he's bad enough.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Looking at 9/11, half a decade later
Does it seem as though five years have passed since that dreadful day of the stunningly blue sky, the orange flames, the plumes of grey-black smoke?
In some ways it seems a lifetime; one looks back at before-9/11 and thinks "never such innocence again."
But the New York skyline without its two huge exclamation points no longer seems so bereft. Yes, it happened, and somehow we have assimilated that fact, although we still haven't comprehended all its consequences nor divined its deepest meaning.
But it no longer seems impossible that such a thing happened. Now it seems surprising that it came as such a shock at the time, because the general pattern and the shape of things to come should already have been clear. There was Khobar Towers. The twin Embassy blasts. The Cole.
But the clearest foreshadowing of the event that would henceforth be known only by those numbers, "9/11"--as though words were somehow inadequate to describe it--was its most direct predecessor, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That earlier attack distinguished itself in audaciousness by being the only large-scale Islamist totalitarian terrorist attack within the boundaries of the United States prior to 9/11.
And it was every bit as serious in intent. The only reason it wasn't taken as seriously as it should have been was the seemingly Keystone Cops-like incompetence of its perpetrators. They would learn from their errors, and quickly. It would take us longer to learn what we needed to know.
Another thing that makes 9/11 feel more distant in time than five years ago is the dissipation of the unity that seemed to unite us in the first few months afterwards. I say "seemed" because there were always many dissenting voices, even from the start--voices that blamed the US for the attack, or said that the Jews had stayed home that day. Voices that suggested America deserved what it got. Voices that were against attacking Afghanistan, saying we would kill millions of people in that country.
Yes, 9/11 seems a long time ago. But in other ways 9/11 seems fresh and recent--and especially so on the anniversary, when documentaries revisit the pain and open old wounds. Last night I rewatched much of "9/11," the documentary film made by the Naudet brothers as they followed a downtown Manhattan fire company on a routine call that turned out to be adjacent to the World Trade Center on that fateful day at that fateful time. The brothers captured many startling images of 9/11, but the most horrifying thing in the movie was not visual. It was auditory: the harsh percussive sounds of the leapers hitting the pavement.
Viewing how events unfolded that day and knowing what we know now, the urge is to say: "Look out! Don't go to work! Run away, fast! Don't go up those stairs!" Or to think, "If only." If only the people on the first planes had known what was in store, for example, they could have united to stop the hijackers the way those on Flight 93 did. If only the FBI and CIA had been allowed to speak to each other. If only. If only.
I recall one of the most poignant "if only's" from a documentary I saw several years ago. A female air controller was monitoring flights that day, knowing what had happened at the WTC, helpless as the plane she was tracking (I believe it was the one that eventually hit the Pentagon) dropped and disappeared off the radar screen. She said that, ever since, she's had a recurrent dream. In it, she's watching that same radar screen. The "blip" of the plane is dropping again, and her heart sinks with it. But this time, instead of being helpless, she reaches into the screen with her hand and scoops the tiny plane out, rescuing all its passengers.
Magical thinking, of course. But very human. Many who were part of the rescue effort that day think they should somehow have done even more, despite the heroism they showed.
And of course we all somehow should have done more, both then and now. The problem, both then and now, is the same: figuring out what that "more" might be. Knowing how to interpret the past and the present in order to be able to foresee the future and act to forestall tragedy.
We can do that perfectly only in our dreams, and not even in all of those. But still we must try, to the best of our ability-- because history, like life, can only be understood backwards (if at all). But it must be lived forwards.
In some ways it seems a lifetime; one looks back at before-9/11 and thinks "never such innocence again."
But the New York skyline without its two huge exclamation points no longer seems so bereft. Yes, it happened, and somehow we have assimilated that fact, although we still haven't comprehended all its consequences nor divined its deepest meaning.
But it no longer seems impossible that such a thing happened. Now it seems surprising that it came as such a shock at the time, because the general pattern and the shape of things to come should already have been clear. There was Khobar Towers. The twin Embassy blasts. The Cole.
But the clearest foreshadowing of the event that would henceforth be known only by those numbers, "9/11"--as though words were somehow inadequate to describe it--was its most direct predecessor, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. That earlier attack distinguished itself in audaciousness by being the only large-scale Islamist totalitarian terrorist attack within the boundaries of the United States prior to 9/11.
And it was every bit as serious in intent. The only reason it wasn't taken as seriously as it should have been was the seemingly Keystone Cops-like incompetence of its perpetrators. They would learn from their errors, and quickly. It would take us longer to learn what we needed to know.
Another thing that makes 9/11 feel more distant in time than five years ago is the dissipation of the unity that seemed to unite us in the first few months afterwards. I say "seemed" because there were always many dissenting voices, even from the start--voices that blamed the US for the attack, or said that the Jews had stayed home that day. Voices that suggested America deserved what it got. Voices that were against attacking Afghanistan, saying we would kill millions of people in that country.
Yes, 9/11 seems a long time ago. But in other ways 9/11 seems fresh and recent--and especially so on the anniversary, when documentaries revisit the pain and open old wounds. Last night I rewatched much of "9/11," the documentary film made by the Naudet brothers as they followed a downtown Manhattan fire company on a routine call that turned out to be adjacent to the World Trade Center on that fateful day at that fateful time. The brothers captured many startling images of 9/11, but the most horrifying thing in the movie was not visual. It was auditory: the harsh percussive sounds of the leapers hitting the pavement.
Viewing how events unfolded that day and knowing what we know now, the urge is to say: "Look out! Don't go to work! Run away, fast! Don't go up those stairs!" Or to think, "If only." If only the people on the first planes had known what was in store, for example, they could have united to stop the hijackers the way those on Flight 93 did. If only the FBI and CIA had been allowed to speak to each other. If only. If only.
I recall one of the most poignant "if only's" from a documentary I saw several years ago. A female air controller was monitoring flights that day, knowing what had happened at the WTC, helpless as the plane she was tracking (I believe it was the one that eventually hit the Pentagon) dropped and disappeared off the radar screen. She said that, ever since, she's had a recurrent dream. In it, she's watching that same radar screen. The "blip" of the plane is dropping again, and her heart sinks with it. But this time, instead of being helpless, she reaches into the screen with her hand and scoops the tiny plane out, rescuing all its passengers.
Magical thinking, of course. But very human. Many who were part of the rescue effort that day think they should somehow have done even more, despite the heroism they showed.
And of course we all somehow should have done more, both then and now. The problem, both then and now, is the same: figuring out what that "more" might be. Knowing how to interpret the past and the present in order to be able to foresee the future and act to forestall tragedy.
We can do that perfectly only in our dreams, and not even in all of those. But still we must try, to the best of our ability-- because history, like life, can only be understood backwards (if at all). But it must be lived forwards.
Assignment 9/11: Glenn Wilkinson, firefighter, father
I signed up with the 2996 Project, a tribute to the victims of 9/11. The idea was to get 2996 bloggers to volunteer, and to have each write a post devoted to one person who was killed by Islamist totalitarian terrorists on that day.
Name assignments were random, and I drew 46-year-old Glenn Wilkinson, one of the firefighters who answered the call to go to the burning World Trade Center to try to save lives, and who ended up losing their own.
Remembering the wonderful NY Times series "Portraits of Grief" that featured short, moving biographies of the victims, I searched at that website for Wilkinson. To my surprise, there was nothing about him. I had thought all the victims had been included, but it turns out that the Times only covered 1800.
There was, however, a little information about Wilkinson in a short article from Newsday, featuring a photo of Glenn, his wife Margaret, and their three children, taken a few years before 9/11. The picture doesn't say everything there is to say about Wilkinson's life, of course. But I realized it still said an awful lot, and maybe it even shows the essence of his life. Because the two things that seem to have been most important to Wilkinson are there: firefighting and family.
Back when I was getting my degree in marriage and family therapy, I once did a project on how family photographs can reveal family dynamics. And now, as I looked at the photo, I couldn't help but notice Wilkinson's beaming face, his firefighter's uniform, his evident pride in his brood, and the warmth and ease of the interactions between them. Yes, the little girl looks a little shy, but see how her father stands protectively and encouragingly over her.
Here's the entire text of the Newsday article:
Fire Lt. Glenn Wilkinson had just ordered his company, Brooklyn's Engine 238, out of the lobby of the crumbling World Trade Center's Tower Two Tuesday morning when he took a roll call and discovered someone was missing.
"He gave a mayday and he ordered his company to move to a safe location and he returned to the building," Wilkinson's widow, Margaret, recalled yesterday. "And he didn't make it back."
The body of the 46-year-old Bayport resident and father of three - a 14-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department - was recovered early Wednesday, ending a day of uncertainty for Margaret, whose first fears watching the news on television that morning were only for other victims and for the horrors her husband would have to bring home with him.
"My thoughts were, 'They are from Brooklyn, they can't possibly be in the midst of it,'" she said Friday, standing in a house full of family and neighbors who had come to bring food and run errands and keep the three Wilkinson children from thinking too much about what had just happened to their family.
Margaret Mackey Wilkinson, a teacher's assistant in special education at Blue Point Avenue Elementary School, worked all day Tuesday and came home to an answering machine with 16 messages on it. "I skipped and skipped and skipped through them hoping to hear his voice," she said. There were no messages from him.
But there will be plenty of memories of bike rides and basketball and father-daughter dances to comfort Wilkinson's children, Kelsie, 13, Craig, 12, and Kevin, 8, as they grow. Wilkinson jogged regularly and the boys had recently started to join him on his runs, his wife recalled. When he came home at night, he'd be summoned to the bedroom of straight-A student Kelsie and be on the rug helping her work out math problems.
"He was very, very loving," Margaret said. "The thing he loved best in life was being a dad."
You can see it in the photo, and hear it in his wife's words.
And I think he must have loved his job, even though it was hard, very hard. That last day, it must have been exceptionally hard. But firefighters do that--they go against every instinct built into us to run, screaming, as fast as we can, away from burning buildings, not into them. And not only do they go into burning buildings, they go--as Wilkinson did--back into burning buildings, to save those as yet unaccounted for.
Wilkinson was only one of the 343 active and 3 retired firefighters who died on 9/11, by far the single most dreadful day in the history of a profession that has known its share of mass death and tragedy. Prior to 9/11, the highest death toll of firefighters in New York in a single incident had been twelve. And the total number of firefighters lost on 9/11 was greater than the total number of New York City firefighters who'd died on the job since WWII.
I recall hearing the news of the shockingly high number of firefighter deaths late in the afternoon of 9/11, after a day of ever-escalating horror. Even then, after we'd heard so much, the numbers seemed unbearable. It was unimaginable that so many firefighters had died at once; and yet it was sadly, and most terribly, true.
I wrote that Wilkinson was "only one" of the firefighters who died. But there's really no "only" about it. Each and every one of them was a hero--an overused word, but an appropriate one in this case--a hero not only on that day, but on every day they came to work.
Name assignments were random, and I drew 46-year-old Glenn Wilkinson, one of the firefighters who answered the call to go to the burning World Trade Center to try to save lives, and who ended up losing their own.
Remembering the wonderful NY Times series "Portraits of Grief" that featured short, moving biographies of the victims, I searched at that website for Wilkinson. To my surprise, there was nothing about him. I had thought all the victims had been included, but it turns out that the Times only covered 1800.
There was, however, a little information about Wilkinson in a short article from Newsday, featuring a photo of Glenn, his wife Margaret, and their three children, taken a few years before 9/11. The picture doesn't say everything there is to say about Wilkinson's life, of course. But I realized it still said an awful lot, and maybe it even shows the essence of his life. Because the two things that seem to have been most important to Wilkinson are there: firefighting and family.
Back when I was getting my degree in marriage and family therapy, I once did a project on how family photographs can reveal family dynamics. And now, as I looked at the photo, I couldn't help but notice Wilkinson's beaming face, his firefighter's uniform, his evident pride in his brood, and the warmth and ease of the interactions between them. Yes, the little girl looks a little shy, but see how her father stands protectively and encouragingly over her.
Here's the entire text of the Newsday article:
Fire Lt. Glenn Wilkinson had just ordered his company, Brooklyn's Engine 238, out of the lobby of the crumbling World Trade Center's Tower Two Tuesday morning when he took a roll call and discovered someone was missing.
"He gave a mayday and he ordered his company to move to a safe location and he returned to the building," Wilkinson's widow, Margaret, recalled yesterday. "And he didn't make it back."
The body of the 46-year-old Bayport resident and father of three - a 14-year veteran of the New York City Fire Department - was recovered early Wednesday, ending a day of uncertainty for Margaret, whose first fears watching the news on television that morning were only for other victims and for the horrors her husband would have to bring home with him.
"My thoughts were, 'They are from Brooklyn, they can't possibly be in the midst of it,'" she said Friday, standing in a house full of family and neighbors who had come to bring food and run errands and keep the three Wilkinson children from thinking too much about what had just happened to their family.
Margaret Mackey Wilkinson, a teacher's assistant in special education at Blue Point Avenue Elementary School, worked all day Tuesday and came home to an answering machine with 16 messages on it. "I skipped and skipped and skipped through them hoping to hear his voice," she said. There were no messages from him.
But there will be plenty of memories of bike rides and basketball and father-daughter dances to comfort Wilkinson's children, Kelsie, 13, Craig, 12, and Kevin, 8, as they grow. Wilkinson jogged regularly and the boys had recently started to join him on his runs, his wife recalled. When he came home at night, he'd be summoned to the bedroom of straight-A student Kelsie and be on the rug helping her work out math problems.
"He was very, very loving," Margaret said. "The thing he loved best in life was being a dad."
You can see it in the photo, and hear it in his wife's words.
And I think he must have loved his job, even though it was hard, very hard. That last day, it must have been exceptionally hard. But firefighters do that--they go against every instinct built into us to run, screaming, as fast as we can, away from burning buildings, not into them. And not only do they go into burning buildings, they go--as Wilkinson did--back into burning buildings, to save those as yet unaccounted for.
Wilkinson was only one of the 343 active and 3 retired firefighters who died on 9/11, by far the single most dreadful day in the history of a profession that has known its share of mass death and tragedy. Prior to 9/11, the highest death toll of firefighters in New York in a single incident had been twelve. And the total number of firefighters lost on 9/11 was greater than the total number of New York City firefighters who'd died on the job since WWII.
I recall hearing the news of the shockingly high number of firefighter deaths late in the afternoon of 9/11, after a day of ever-escalating horror. Even then, after we'd heard so much, the numbers seemed unbearable. It was unimaginable that so many firefighters had died at once; and yet it was sadly, and most terribly, true.
I wrote that Wilkinson was "only one" of the firefighters who died. But there's really no "only" about it. Each and every one of them was a hero--an overused word, but an appropriate one in this case--a hero not only on that day, but on every day they came to work.
9/11: the watershed
[On this fifth anniversary of 9/11, I am reposting the following. It is part of my "A mind is a difficult thing to change" series, and deals with the events of 9/11 and my reaction to them.]
INTRODUCTION
Although I've written in my "About Me" section that I was "mugged by reality on 9/11," that's really just a convenient and probably misleading shorthand description of a much more complex reaction, one that began that instant but emerged only slowly, over a period of several years. It's probably still in the process of evolving and changing.
But the beginning wasn't slow. Not at all.
It began in an instant, the instant I heard about the 9/11 attacks. Like most of you, I remember exactly where I was at the time and how I learned the news. My story isn't a particularly dramatic one. I don't tell it for that reason. I tell it to learn more about the process by which a mind is changed--sometimes, as in this case, through a sudden and dramatic event that sparks intense feelings and begins a cognitive process by which a person tries to make some sort of sense of that overwhelming event and those chaotic feelings.
9/11
I was having trouble sleeping that night. I don't know why--I wasn't in pain, I didn't have a stomach ache, nor was I anxious about anything in particular. But I lay awake in bed for hours in a sort of unfocused but nevertheless unpleasant and restless agitation, until I finally fell into a fitful sleep from about 5 AM to 8 AM, and then woke up again.
I was visiting with friends, so I wasn't in my regular bed. My work didn't force me to get up early, so I tried to relax and sleep a bit more. But the strange wakefulness continued, and at about 10:15 I finally gave up and went downstairs.
My friend was at her job, but her husband John works at home in a basement office. Since he was nowhere to be seen, I figured he was down there working at his computer. I grabbed a yogurt for breakfast, and I was engaged in eating it a few minutes later when John appeared in the kitchen.
John is one of the calmest people I know, almost preternaturally so. I've never heard him raise his voice, and never even seen him look agitated, despite the vagaries of raising two teenagers and assorted pets. Nor did he appear particularly distressed that day. He seemed to be looking through some piles on the countertops for something--a pen? some notepaper?--when I caught his attention and started to ask some casual question.
John stopped shuffling through the stacks, and gave me a look I can only characterize as quizzical. He seemed to be studying me. And what he said next are words that are burned into my brain, a phrase I never want to hear again, not ever: "You don't know what happened, do you?"
I write it as a question, but it didn't really have a rising inflection at the end. It was more of a statement, an expression of intense wonderment that anyone could be so ignorant of something so obvious. It was as though he'd said "You don't know the sky is blue, do you?"
No, I guess I didn't know what had happened, I said, and waited for him to tell me.
What did I suppose it might be? I had already sensed, somehow, that it was nothing good. But in the split second of innocence I had left to think about it, I might have thought John was about to say that there had been an auto accident, a bus collision, or a fire, an upsetting but ordinary and generic tragedy of some sort or another.
But instead, John's calm words came out in one long run-on sentence, although their content was anything but calm, or calming.
"Two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center, and the towers have fallen, and then another plane crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth one is missing, and a few others are missing, too" (the final destination of Flight 93 was unknown as yet, and a mistaken report had been issued that there were further planes still unaccounted for).
If John had told me that Martians had landed in Central Park, or that an asteroid was on a doomsday course towards earth and we had only a few hours to live, I could not have been more surprised. My body reacted instantly, before my mind did--my legs felt shaky, my mouth went dry, and something inside my gut was shaking, also.
I knew immediately and intuitively that a watershed event had occurred. I didn't know the exact parameters of it, nor any details of the direction in which we were headed, but I knew that this moment felt like a break with everything that had gone before. Assumptions I hadn't even known I'd held were dead in a single instant, as though their life supports had been cut. I didn't know what would replace them.
What were the main assumptions that had died in that instant for me? They had to do with a sense of basic long-term safety. Some utterly fearful thing that had seemed contained before, although vaguely threatening, had now burst from its constraints. It was like being plunged into something dark and ancient that had also suddenly been grafted onto modern technology and jet planes--Huns or Mongols or Genghis Khan or Vlad the Impaler or Hector being dragged behind Achilles' chariot--a thousand swirling vague but horrific impressions from an ancient history I'd never paid all that much attention to before.
I remembered having read articles within the last couple of years that had told of terrorist plans and threats, but managing to successfully surpress my rising fear and reassuring myself that no, it wouldn't actually happen; it was just talk and boasting bravado. The nuclear nightmares of my youth now came to mind: the fallout shelters, the bomb drills, the suspicion that I wouldn't live to grow up. I had suppressed those, too, especially in recent years when the fall of the Soviet Union had removed what had once been the likeliest source of the conflagration. It now felt like one of those horror movies where the heroine is chased by someone out to do her harm and then she gets home, feels safe, closes the door and breathes a sigh of relief--and then the murderer leaps out of the closet, where he'd been hiding all the time.
But all these thoughts and images weren't fully formed, they were a jumbled set of apprehensions that hit me almost simultaneously with John's news. In the next instant, I had a sudden vision of the two WTC towers toppling over and falling into the other buildings in downtown New York, crushing them as in some ghastly game of giant dominos. So the first question I asked John when I could get my suddenly dry mouth to function was, "How did the towers fall? Did they fall over and smash other buildings?
John didn't know the answer. The reason he didn't know was that the family television set had recently been unplugged and stored away, deemed too distracting for the kids, who'd been having some trouble in school lately. This meant that John had no visuals, and so he couldn't answer my question.
And then John left to get his daughter, and I was left alone with my thoughts.
I had always been glad I'd been born after World War II because I had a sense that the stress of those horrific war years would have taken a terrible toll on me. I had often wondered whether I could have handled such a lengthy time of deep uncertainty about whether the forces of good or evil (not that I really thought in those terms ordinarily, but WWII did seem to present a stark choice of that type) would triumph. I wondered about the sense of impending doom and personal danger that a worldwide war with so many casualties would have entailed, especially in those early years when it wasn't going very well for the Allies.
I'd known war, of course--most particularly, Vietnam. But as much as that war had affected me personally by affecting those I loved, and as much as I'd been upset by all the killing and struggle, the actual fighting had been far away "over there," and in a relatively small area of the globe.
From the very first moment that John had told me the news of 9/11, there had been no real doubt in my mind that the attacks had been the work of terrorists. There had also been no doubt that this was something very different from what had gone before.
But why was that difference so clear? After all, there had been terrorist attacks before that had killed hundreds of people at a time. There had even been a previous attack on the World Trade Center, and I had known that the intent of the terrorists back then had been to bring the building down. So, why this feeling of something utterly new?
Each prior terrorist attack had contained elements that had allowed me to soothe and distance myself from it, and to minimize the terrorists' intent. Most of the attacks had been overseas, or on military personnel, or both. Or, if the attack had been in this country and on civilians (both were certainly true of the previous WTC bombing), the terrorists had seemed almost comically inept and bumbling. Each attack had been horrible, but the presence of one or more of these elements had kept knowledge of what was really going on at bay.
Those planes that had crashed into the towers and toppled them on 9/11 also had smashed the nearly impenetrable wall of my previous denial. These attacks had been audacious. I could not ignore the fact that the intent of the terrorists was to be as lethal and malicious as humanly possible. The change in the scope and scale of the project made it seem as though they did indeed want to kill us all, indiscriminately, and it gave their motives even less grounding in any sort of rational thought that I could fathom, or any real strategic end. The creativity of the attacks (and I do not use that word admiringly, but the attacks were indeed an instance of thinking outside the box) made it seem that anything was possible, and that the form of future attacks could not be anticipated or even guessed at. The attacks had imitated an action/adventure movie far too well, the type of thing that had always seemed way too improbable to be true. But now it had actually happened, and the terrorists seemed to have become almost slickly competent in the split-second timing and execution of the attacks.
After John had left the house, I did a few practical things. I called my family in New York, who were all safe, though very shaken (my sister-in-law had witnessed the second crash from her balcony, and their small yard was covered with ash and papers). I managed to get to a television set and watch the videotapes, and it was then that I learned that the towers had fallen neatly, collapsing onto themselves like a planned demolition.
And then I did something impractical. I went to the ocean and sat on the rocks. It was the loveliest day imaginable. I had been alive for over fifty years at the time, and I cannot recall weather and a sky quite like that before. It added to the utter unreality of the day and my feelings. The sky was so blue as to be almost piercing, with a clarity and sharpness that seemed other-worldly. It made it feel as though the heavens themselves were speaking to us; but what were they saying?
All this clarity and purity was enhanced by the fact that there wasn't an airplane in the sky. There were boats of all types on the bluest of oceans, the sun beamed down and made the waves sparkle, and it all seemed to have a preciousness and a beauty that came with something that might soon be irretrievably lost.
I thought there might be more attacks, bigger attacks, and soon. So I might as well enjoy the sky. I wondered whether I should go ahead with a house purchase I was about to make. I wondered whether it mattered. But most of all, I wondered why the attacks had happened.
I'd studied human behavior for a good many years, but I can honestly say there was a tremendous and unfathomable mystery here. I had always been a curious person, but the amount of time and effort I had spent studying world history or political movements had been relatively minor. I'd been more interested in literature and art, psychology and science.
Now, and quite suddenly, I wanted to learn what had happened, why, and what we might need to do about it. In fact, I felt driven to study these things, in the way that a person suddenly faced with the diagnosis of a terminal illness might want to learn everything possible about that disease, even if they'd had no interest whatsoever in it before. Samuel Johnson has written that the prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully. A terrorist attack on this scale had focused the mind wonderfully, too. That was, perhaps, its only benefit.
Even on that very first day, as I sat on the rocks overlooking the beautiful ocean that I loved so much, I thought we had entered a new era, one which would probably go on for most of my lifetime however much longer I might live. The fight would be long and hard, and there would be many many deaths before it was over. Perhaps it would result in the end of civilization as we knew it--yes, my thoughts went that far on that day. This war would encompass most of the globe. I had no idea how it would work out, but I knew that we were in for the fight of our lives.
The legal actions of the past--the puny trial after the first World Trade Center attack, for example--no longer seemed like an effective response. It seemed, in retrospect, to have been almost laughably naive. The situation didn't even seem amenable to a conventional war. Something new would have to be invented, and fast. And it would have to be global. It would have to have great depth and breadth, and it would probably last for decades or even longer.
So for me the day began with an emotional intensity--a stunning shock that very quickly was matched by a cognitive intensity as well. It now seemed to be no less than a matter of life and death to learn, as best I could, what was going on. I knew it wasn't up to me to solve this; I had no power and no influence in the world. But still something drove me, with a force that was almost relentless, to pursue knowledge and understanding about this event. The pursuit of this knowledge no longer seemed discretionary or abstract, it seemed both necessary and deeply, newly personal.
INTRODUCTION
Although I've written in my "About Me" section that I was "mugged by reality on 9/11," that's really just a convenient and probably misleading shorthand description of a much more complex reaction, one that began that instant but emerged only slowly, over a period of several years. It's probably still in the process of evolving and changing.
But the beginning wasn't slow. Not at all.
It began in an instant, the instant I heard about the 9/11 attacks. Like most of you, I remember exactly where I was at the time and how I learned the news. My story isn't a particularly dramatic one. I don't tell it for that reason. I tell it to learn more about the process by which a mind is changed--sometimes, as in this case, through a sudden and dramatic event that sparks intense feelings and begins a cognitive process by which a person tries to make some sort of sense of that overwhelming event and those chaotic feelings.
9/11
I was having trouble sleeping that night. I don't know why--I wasn't in pain, I didn't have a stomach ache, nor was I anxious about anything in particular. But I lay awake in bed for hours in a sort of unfocused but nevertheless unpleasant and restless agitation, until I finally fell into a fitful sleep from about 5 AM to 8 AM, and then woke up again.
I was visiting with friends, so I wasn't in my regular bed. My work didn't force me to get up early, so I tried to relax and sleep a bit more. But the strange wakefulness continued, and at about 10:15 I finally gave up and went downstairs.
My friend was at her job, but her husband John works at home in a basement office. Since he was nowhere to be seen, I figured he was down there working at his computer. I grabbed a yogurt for breakfast, and I was engaged in eating it a few minutes later when John appeared in the kitchen.
John is one of the calmest people I know, almost preternaturally so. I've never heard him raise his voice, and never even seen him look agitated, despite the vagaries of raising two teenagers and assorted pets. Nor did he appear particularly distressed that day. He seemed to be looking through some piles on the countertops for something--a pen? some notepaper?--when I caught his attention and started to ask some casual question.
John stopped shuffling through the stacks, and gave me a look I can only characterize as quizzical. He seemed to be studying me. And what he said next are words that are burned into my brain, a phrase I never want to hear again, not ever: "You don't know what happened, do you?"
I write it as a question, but it didn't really have a rising inflection at the end. It was more of a statement, an expression of intense wonderment that anyone could be so ignorant of something so obvious. It was as though he'd said "You don't know the sky is blue, do you?"
No, I guess I didn't know what had happened, I said, and waited for him to tell me.
What did I suppose it might be? I had already sensed, somehow, that it was nothing good. But in the split second of innocence I had left to think about it, I might have thought John was about to say that there had been an auto accident, a bus collision, or a fire, an upsetting but ordinary and generic tragedy of some sort or another.
But instead, John's calm words came out in one long run-on sentence, although their content was anything but calm, or calming.
"Two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center, and the towers have fallen, and then another plane crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth one is missing, and a few others are missing, too" (the final destination of Flight 93 was unknown as yet, and a mistaken report had been issued that there were further planes still unaccounted for).
If John had told me that Martians had landed in Central Park, or that an asteroid was on a doomsday course towards earth and we had only a few hours to live, I could not have been more surprised. My body reacted instantly, before my mind did--my legs felt shaky, my mouth went dry, and something inside my gut was shaking, also.
I knew immediately and intuitively that a watershed event had occurred. I didn't know the exact parameters of it, nor any details of the direction in which we were headed, but I knew that this moment felt like a break with everything that had gone before. Assumptions I hadn't even known I'd held were dead in a single instant, as though their life supports had been cut. I didn't know what would replace them.
What were the main assumptions that had died in that instant for me? They had to do with a sense of basic long-term safety. Some utterly fearful thing that had seemed contained before, although vaguely threatening, had now burst from its constraints. It was like being plunged into something dark and ancient that had also suddenly been grafted onto modern technology and jet planes--Huns or Mongols or Genghis Khan or Vlad the Impaler or Hector being dragged behind Achilles' chariot--a thousand swirling vague but horrific impressions from an ancient history I'd never paid all that much attention to before.
I remembered having read articles within the last couple of years that had told of terrorist plans and threats, but managing to successfully surpress my rising fear and reassuring myself that no, it wouldn't actually happen; it was just talk and boasting bravado. The nuclear nightmares of my youth now came to mind: the fallout shelters, the bomb drills, the suspicion that I wouldn't live to grow up. I had suppressed those, too, especially in recent years when the fall of the Soviet Union had removed what had once been the likeliest source of the conflagration. It now felt like one of those horror movies where the heroine is chased by someone out to do her harm and then she gets home, feels safe, closes the door and breathes a sigh of relief--and then the murderer leaps out of the closet, where he'd been hiding all the time.
But all these thoughts and images weren't fully formed, they were a jumbled set of apprehensions that hit me almost simultaneously with John's news. In the next instant, I had a sudden vision of the two WTC towers toppling over and falling into the other buildings in downtown New York, crushing them as in some ghastly game of giant dominos. So the first question I asked John when I could get my suddenly dry mouth to function was, "How did the towers fall? Did they fall over and smash other buildings?
John didn't know the answer. The reason he didn't know was that the family television set had recently been unplugged and stored away, deemed too distracting for the kids, who'd been having some trouble in school lately. This meant that John had no visuals, and so he couldn't answer my question.
And then John left to get his daughter, and I was left alone with my thoughts.
I had always been glad I'd been born after World War II because I had a sense that the stress of those horrific war years would have taken a terrible toll on me. I had often wondered whether I could have handled such a lengthy time of deep uncertainty about whether the forces of good or evil (not that I really thought in those terms ordinarily, but WWII did seem to present a stark choice of that type) would triumph. I wondered about the sense of impending doom and personal danger that a worldwide war with so many casualties would have entailed, especially in those early years when it wasn't going very well for the Allies.
I'd known war, of course--most particularly, Vietnam. But as much as that war had affected me personally by affecting those I loved, and as much as I'd been upset by all the killing and struggle, the actual fighting had been far away "over there," and in a relatively small area of the globe.
From the very first moment that John had told me the news of 9/11, there had been no real doubt in my mind that the attacks had been the work of terrorists. There had also been no doubt that this was something very different from what had gone before.
But why was that difference so clear? After all, there had been terrorist attacks before that had killed hundreds of people at a time. There had even been a previous attack on the World Trade Center, and I had known that the intent of the terrorists back then had been to bring the building down. So, why this feeling of something utterly new?
Each prior terrorist attack had contained elements that had allowed me to soothe and distance myself from it, and to minimize the terrorists' intent. Most of the attacks had been overseas, or on military personnel, or both. Or, if the attack had been in this country and on civilians (both were certainly true of the previous WTC bombing), the terrorists had seemed almost comically inept and bumbling. Each attack had been horrible, but the presence of one or more of these elements had kept knowledge of what was really going on at bay.
Those planes that had crashed into the towers and toppled them on 9/11 also had smashed the nearly impenetrable wall of my previous denial. These attacks had been audacious. I could not ignore the fact that the intent of the terrorists was to be as lethal and malicious as humanly possible. The change in the scope and scale of the project made it seem as though they did indeed want to kill us all, indiscriminately, and it gave their motives even less grounding in any sort of rational thought that I could fathom, or any real strategic end. The creativity of the attacks (and I do not use that word admiringly, but the attacks were indeed an instance of thinking outside the box) made it seem that anything was possible, and that the form of future attacks could not be anticipated or even guessed at. The attacks had imitated an action/adventure movie far too well, the type of thing that had always seemed way too improbable to be true. But now it had actually happened, and the terrorists seemed to have become almost slickly competent in the split-second timing and execution of the attacks.
After John had left the house, I did a few practical things. I called my family in New York, who were all safe, though very shaken (my sister-in-law had witnessed the second crash from her balcony, and their small yard was covered with ash and papers). I managed to get to a television set and watch the videotapes, and it was then that I learned that the towers had fallen neatly, collapsing onto themselves like a planned demolition.
And then I did something impractical. I went to the ocean and sat on the rocks. It was the loveliest day imaginable. I had been alive for over fifty years at the time, and I cannot recall weather and a sky quite like that before. It added to the utter unreality of the day and my feelings. The sky was so blue as to be almost piercing, with a clarity and sharpness that seemed other-worldly. It made it feel as though the heavens themselves were speaking to us; but what were they saying?
All this clarity and purity was enhanced by the fact that there wasn't an airplane in the sky. There were boats of all types on the bluest of oceans, the sun beamed down and made the waves sparkle, and it all seemed to have a preciousness and a beauty that came with something that might soon be irretrievably lost.
I thought there might be more attacks, bigger attacks, and soon. So I might as well enjoy the sky. I wondered whether I should go ahead with a house purchase I was about to make. I wondered whether it mattered. But most of all, I wondered why the attacks had happened.
I'd studied human behavior for a good many years, but I can honestly say there was a tremendous and unfathomable mystery here. I had always been a curious person, but the amount of time and effort I had spent studying world history or political movements had been relatively minor. I'd been more interested in literature and art, psychology and science.
Now, and quite suddenly, I wanted to learn what had happened, why, and what we might need to do about it. In fact, I felt driven to study these things, in the way that a person suddenly faced with the diagnosis of a terminal illness might want to learn everything possible about that disease, even if they'd had no interest whatsoever in it before. Samuel Johnson has written that the prospect of being hanged focuses the mind wonderfully. A terrorist attack on this scale had focused the mind wonderfully, too. That was, perhaps, its only benefit.
Even on that very first day, as I sat on the rocks overlooking the beautiful ocean that I loved so much, I thought we had entered a new era, one which would probably go on for most of my lifetime however much longer I might live. The fight would be long and hard, and there would be many many deaths before it was over. Perhaps it would result in the end of civilization as we knew it--yes, my thoughts went that far on that day. This war would encompass most of the globe. I had no idea how it would work out, but I knew that we were in for the fight of our lives.
The legal actions of the past--the puny trial after the first World Trade Center attack, for example--no longer seemed like an effective response. It seemed, in retrospect, to have been almost laughably naive. The situation didn't even seem amenable to a conventional war. Something new would have to be invented, and fast. And it would have to be global. It would have to have great depth and breadth, and it would probably last for decades or even longer.
So for me the day began with an emotional intensity--a stunning shock that very quickly was matched by a cognitive intensity as well. It now seemed to be no less than a matter of life and death to learn, as best I could, what was going on. I knew it wasn't up to me to solve this; I had no power and no influence in the world. But still something drove me, with a force that was almost relentless, to pursue knowledge and understanding about this event. The pursuit of this knowledge no longer seemed discretionary or abstract, it seemed both necessary and deeply, newly personal.
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Chemistry lessons: a thing of beauty is a joy forever
When I was in junior high school there was a huge poster of the Periodic Table of the Elements that hung in the science classroom in front of a little-used blackboard spanning the right side of the room, next to where I sat.
I'm not sure whether anybody in the junior high learned what the chart was about--we certainly didn't. But it was a grim reminder of what awaited us in high school, when we'd be required to take Chemistry and Physics and Geometry and Trigonometry and a bunch of other subjects that sounded Hard, and sounded like An Awful Lot of Work.
I wasn't looking forward to the experience. In my more bored moments in class (and I had quite a few of them), I would glance at that chart on the wall and idly ponder its arcane mysteries. It looked like a more old-fashioned and slightly yellowing version of this:
That chart was the sort of thing that made me nearly sick to my stomach whenever I looked at it, something like slide rules and drawings of the innards of the internal combustion engine, and the long rows of monotonous monochromatic law books in my father's office.
But then time passed--as time often does--and I found myself a junior in high school, sitting in chemistry class, finally and reluctantly about to penetrate the secrets of the Periodic Table. The teacher, a small, elderly (oh, he must have been at least fifty), enthusiastic, spry man, explained it to us.
I sat in awe as I took in what he was saying. That chart may have looked boring, but it demonstrated something so absolutely astounding that I could hardly believe it was true. The world of the elements at the atomic level was spectacularly orderly, with such grandeur, power, and rightness that I could only think of one term for it, and that was "beautiful."
I did very well in chemistry, and even thought of majoring in it in college, although in the end I stuck to psychology and anthropology. But I never forgot the lesson of the Periodic Table (actually, it taught many lessons, although some of them I did forget). But the one I remembered was that appearances can be deceptive, and that what lies beneath a bland and stark exterior can be a world of magic.
And now (via Pajamas Media), I've finally discovered a Periodic Table worth its salt--or, rather, its sodium chloride. Take a look at this, a Periodic Table nearly as lovely as the elemental wonders it illustrates:
If you follow the link to the poster at its source, you can click on parts of it to enlarge them and see more of the detail. And then you might say with Keats:
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
I'm not sure whether anybody in the junior high learned what the chart was about--we certainly didn't. But it was a grim reminder of what awaited us in high school, when we'd be required to take Chemistry and Physics and Geometry and Trigonometry and a bunch of other subjects that sounded Hard, and sounded like An Awful Lot of Work.
I wasn't looking forward to the experience. In my more bored moments in class (and I had quite a few of them), I would glance at that chart on the wall and idly ponder its arcane mysteries. It looked like a more old-fashioned and slightly yellowing version of this:
That chart was the sort of thing that made me nearly sick to my stomach whenever I looked at it, something like slide rules and drawings of the innards of the internal combustion engine, and the long rows of monotonous monochromatic law books in my father's office.
But then time passed--as time often does--and I found myself a junior in high school, sitting in chemistry class, finally and reluctantly about to penetrate the secrets of the Periodic Table. The teacher, a small, elderly (oh, he must have been at least fifty), enthusiastic, spry man, explained it to us.
I sat in awe as I took in what he was saying. That chart may have looked boring, but it demonstrated something so absolutely astounding that I could hardly believe it was true. The world of the elements at the atomic level was spectacularly orderly, with such grandeur, power, and rightness that I could only think of one term for it, and that was "beautiful."
I did very well in chemistry, and even thought of majoring in it in college, although in the end I stuck to psychology and anthropology. But I never forgot the lesson of the Periodic Table (actually, it taught many lessons, although some of them I did forget). But the one I remembered was that appearances can be deceptive, and that what lies beneath a bland and stark exterior can be a world of magic.
And now (via Pajamas Media), I've finally discovered a Periodic Table worth its salt--or, rather, its sodium chloride. Take a look at this, a Periodic Table nearly as lovely as the elemental wonders it illustrates:
If you follow the link to the poster at its source, you can click on parts of it to enlarge them and see more of the detail. And then you might say with Keats:
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
The Rover Conventions
Commenter "Sergey" has contributed a wonderful piece of folk wisdom about international law and its enforceability:
In old Russia there was a proverbial Yiddish saying on usefulness of formalities of law in dealing with those who do not respect law: "Scribe mit a Hund a Dogovor" (sign a treaty with a dog so it would not bite you).
Yes, indeed. Dip Rover's paw in the ink and have him sign on the dotted line, and I'm sure everything will be just fine.
In old Russia there was a proverbial Yiddish saying on usefulness of formalities of law in dealing with those who do not respect law: "Scribe mit a Hund a Dogovor" (sign a treaty with a dog so it would not bite you).
Yes, indeed. Dip Rover's paw in the ink and have him sign on the dotted line, and I'm sure everything will be just fine.
Friday, September 08, 2006
For those of you who like to follow the sport of troll morphing...
...it turns out that our new friend "Stephen Britton," a far more polite version of his predecessors Stevie/Yahmir/Suzy/anon, is almost certainly one and the same.
J'accuse: a case of libel, the blood libel, and the French press
There's a case about to begin in France that--according to blogger Richard Landes--could rival the Dreyfus case in importance.
I've written previously about the underpinnings of the present case: the misleading media coverage of the alleged death of 12-year old Mohammed al Durah. Those of you who read Augean Stables and Second Draft are probably quite familiar with the fact that a deception was most likely perpetrated by the French media in broadcasting the story to the world.
But now there are new wrinkles to the tale.
If anyone isn't familiar with the original incident, here's a quick summary: in late September of 2000, the boy Mohammed al Durah and his father were taking cover from an exchange of gunfire between Palestinian and Israeli forces in Gaza. Mohammed was either (take your pick, depending on the source) purposely gunned downed by the Israelis, or "caught in the crossfire" and accidently killed by them, according to Talal abu Rahmeh, a Palestinian cameraman who filmed the only video that exists of the supposed death scene; French correspondent Charles Enderlin; and the TV station for which they both worked, France2.
The incendiary footage of al Durah and his father was beamed all over the world. It was viewed with rage and condemnation of Israel, especially in predominantly Moslem and Arab countries as well as in Europe. The al Durah incident and photos of it were prominently visible in propaganda justifying the bloody and horrific Second Intifada against Israel, with its repeated terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, including many children.
But subsequent research and revelations have led those who have investigated the incident to the almost inescapable conclusion that the facts were not only not quite as reported (for example, the direction of the shots were such that Israeli forces could not have been responsible for hitting al Durah), but what is far worse--that it was bogus from start to finish. That is, that it was staged. The Second Draft site has a great deal of information on this subject; take a look for yourself.
Why am I bringing this up now? The first reason is that media misrepresentation in the recent war in Lebanon has highlighted possibly widespread media complicity in promulgating misinformation and propaganda favoring the Arab/Palestinian position in the Middle East. The al Durah case is an example from six years ago that makes one wonder just how long this has been going on, and how successful it has been in shaping anti-Israel opinions (the answer to both questions appears to be: very).
The second is the aforementioned trial about to begin in France over the al Durah case. The operative French law is one that was passed in 1881, aimed at protecting the press from defamation that "strikes at the honor and consideration (reputation) of 'the individual or institution in question.'"
And who is France2 suing for defamation? Three French citizens who used their websites to publish internet critiques of the station's coverage of the al Durah affair. As far as I can tell, this is the equivalent of the television station suing a blogger such as myself (who, fortunately, lives in the US rather than France) for pointing out that the France2 emperor has no clothes in this matter.
The hubris of France2 is astounding. What's more, they might actually win, according to Landes, despite the fact that anyone viewing the video on which they based the al Durah story can only conclude that France2's journalistic standards in airing the footage were abysmal and deplorable.
If one reviews the history of the coverage of al Durah by France2 with an open mind, it becomes clear that the TV station should be the defendant in a defamation trial, not the plaintiff. The truth appears to be that France2 has not just been duped, but that it has lied, especially in the persons of cameraman Tamal and Charles Enderlin, who asserted that they had respectively taken (Tamal) and personally viewed (Enderlin) twenty-seven minutes of corraboratory video showing the death throes of al Durah, footage that cannot be produced and that in fact never existed.
What does exist? A mere fifty-nine seconds of video, embedded in more minutes of other obviously staged material, filmed by a single Palestinian stringer (Tamal), and showing not al Durah's death throes, but his voluntary movements after he had supposedly been killed by a strangely bloodless shot in the stomach. Take a look at the footage (click to download "Death of an Icon") and see what you think. The egregiousness of the Big Lie must really be seen to be believed (or, rather, disbelieved).
Why does this matter? Al Durah has become both an icon and a rallying cry, a modern and non-Christian twist on an ancient deception, the blood libel. Both the old stories and the new are propaganda used for the same purposes, to ignite anti-Jewish feeling--or its modern-day incarnations, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish feeling. The repercussions have been vast, especially in Europe, in which both anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment has risen since 2000, the year of the al Durah incident.
I find the very existence of the French law under which this lawsuit is being brought to be astounding. Why would the media, of all things, need a special stature to protect itself against criticism? Moreover, why is the media so accepting of evidence that anyone with a grain of critical thought would view as suspicious? And why are these fakes so badly done?
The latter question gnaws at me, as it did when the Rathergate memos were exposed as fakes. It wasn't just that they were fakes, it's that they were patently obvious fakes. The inescapable conclusion is that the media on which we rely so heavily to shape our view of the world is either stupid or lying. There's no other possibility, and both alternatives are almost equally horrendous in their consequences.
My other supposition is that we only have uncovered these particular fakes because they are so very obvious. But we can't assume that all the fakes that have been perpetrated on us over the years have been so poorly executed. Are there in fact many others that have passed muster because they are technically far more competently done?
For example, in the case of Rathergate, what if the forgers had actually gotten hold of an old typewriter from the proper era (duh--not so difficult to do, after all)? Would we have ever known such a document was fake? And, with al Durah, what if they'd actually staged these scenes more carefully? It seems to me that it wouldn't have been so very difficult to have done so; moviemakers do it all the time, do they not?
Even so--even with the amateurish and slipshod nature of these forgeries--they still worked, for a while, and still work for many viewers. Al Durah has worked much better and longer than the memos. I fear that, in the future, the perpetrators of such fictions will become more skillful, having learned their lesson from these cases.
There is some cause for cautious--very cautious--optimism, however. I agree with Landes that if the present case in France receives wide coverage, and if the video of al Durah is ever released to the public and receives wide dissemination, it could be a turning point. I like to think that, with repetition (including new incidents such as Reutergate), distrust of media coverage in the area will reach some sort of critical mass. Then, if that happens, even if a lie continues to get halfway round the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, maybe that lie won't be so easily believed.
I've written previously about the underpinnings of the present case: the misleading media coverage of the alleged death of 12-year old Mohammed al Durah. Those of you who read Augean Stables and Second Draft are probably quite familiar with the fact that a deception was most likely perpetrated by the French media in broadcasting the story to the world.
But now there are new wrinkles to the tale.
If anyone isn't familiar with the original incident, here's a quick summary: in late September of 2000, the boy Mohammed al Durah and his father were taking cover from an exchange of gunfire between Palestinian and Israeli forces in Gaza. Mohammed was either (take your pick, depending on the source) purposely gunned downed by the Israelis, or "caught in the crossfire" and accidently killed by them, according to Talal abu Rahmeh, a Palestinian cameraman who filmed the only video that exists of the supposed death scene; French correspondent Charles Enderlin; and the TV station for which they both worked, France2.
The incendiary footage of al Durah and his father was beamed all over the world. It was viewed with rage and condemnation of Israel, especially in predominantly Moslem and Arab countries as well as in Europe. The al Durah incident and photos of it were prominently visible in propaganda justifying the bloody and horrific Second Intifada against Israel, with its repeated terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, including many children.
But subsequent research and revelations have led those who have investigated the incident to the almost inescapable conclusion that the facts were not only not quite as reported (for example, the direction of the shots were such that Israeli forces could not have been responsible for hitting al Durah), but what is far worse--that it was bogus from start to finish. That is, that it was staged. The Second Draft site has a great deal of information on this subject; take a look for yourself.
Why am I bringing this up now? The first reason is that media misrepresentation in the recent war in Lebanon has highlighted possibly widespread media complicity in promulgating misinformation and propaganda favoring the Arab/Palestinian position in the Middle East. The al Durah case is an example from six years ago that makes one wonder just how long this has been going on, and how successful it has been in shaping anti-Israel opinions (the answer to both questions appears to be: very).
The second is the aforementioned trial about to begin in France over the al Durah case. The operative French law is one that was passed in 1881, aimed at protecting the press from defamation that "strikes at the honor and consideration (reputation) of 'the individual or institution in question.'"
And who is France2 suing for defamation? Three French citizens who used their websites to publish internet critiques of the station's coverage of the al Durah affair. As far as I can tell, this is the equivalent of the television station suing a blogger such as myself (who, fortunately, lives in the US rather than France) for pointing out that the France2 emperor has no clothes in this matter.
The hubris of France2 is astounding. What's more, they might actually win, according to Landes, despite the fact that anyone viewing the video on which they based the al Durah story can only conclude that France2's journalistic standards in airing the footage were abysmal and deplorable.
If one reviews the history of the coverage of al Durah by France2 with an open mind, it becomes clear that the TV station should be the defendant in a defamation trial, not the plaintiff. The truth appears to be that France2 has not just been duped, but that it has lied, especially in the persons of cameraman Tamal and Charles Enderlin, who asserted that they had respectively taken (Tamal) and personally viewed (Enderlin) twenty-seven minutes of corraboratory video showing the death throes of al Durah, footage that cannot be produced and that in fact never existed.
What does exist? A mere fifty-nine seconds of video, embedded in more minutes of other obviously staged material, filmed by a single Palestinian stringer (Tamal), and showing not al Durah's death throes, but his voluntary movements after he had supposedly been killed by a strangely bloodless shot in the stomach. Take a look at the footage (click to download "Death of an Icon") and see what you think. The egregiousness of the Big Lie must really be seen to be believed (or, rather, disbelieved).
Why does this matter? Al Durah has become both an icon and a rallying cry, a modern and non-Christian twist on an ancient deception, the blood libel. Both the old stories and the new are propaganda used for the same purposes, to ignite anti-Jewish feeling--or its modern-day incarnations, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish feeling. The repercussions have been vast, especially in Europe, in which both anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiment has risen since 2000, the year of the al Durah incident.
I find the very existence of the French law under which this lawsuit is being brought to be astounding. Why would the media, of all things, need a special stature to protect itself against criticism? Moreover, why is the media so accepting of evidence that anyone with a grain of critical thought would view as suspicious? And why are these fakes so badly done?
The latter question gnaws at me, as it did when the Rathergate memos were exposed as fakes. It wasn't just that they were fakes, it's that they were patently obvious fakes. The inescapable conclusion is that the media on which we rely so heavily to shape our view of the world is either stupid or lying. There's no other possibility, and both alternatives are almost equally horrendous in their consequences.
My other supposition is that we only have uncovered these particular fakes because they are so very obvious. But we can't assume that all the fakes that have been perpetrated on us over the years have been so poorly executed. Are there in fact many others that have passed muster because they are technically far more competently done?
For example, in the case of Rathergate, what if the forgers had actually gotten hold of an old typewriter from the proper era (duh--not so difficult to do, after all)? Would we have ever known such a document was fake? And, with al Durah, what if they'd actually staged these scenes more carefully? It seems to me that it wouldn't have been so very difficult to have done so; moviemakers do it all the time, do they not?
Even so--even with the amateurish and slipshod nature of these forgeries--they still worked, for a while, and still work for many viewers. Al Durah has worked much better and longer than the memos. I fear that, in the future, the perpetrators of such fictions will become more skillful, having learned their lesson from these cases.
There is some cause for cautious--very cautious--optimism, however. I agree with Landes that if the present case in France receives wide coverage, and if the video of al Durah is ever released to the public and receives wide dissemination, it could be a turning point. I like to think that, with repetition (including new incidents such as Reutergate), distrust of media coverage in the area will reach some sort of critical mass. Then, if that happens, even if a lie continues to get halfway round the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, maybe that lie won't be so easily believed.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
The Dread Pirate Bin Laden
More on the subject of fear:
Dean Esmay, a fan of "The Princess Bride," points out that the Dread Pirate Roberts of that movie was an actual historical figure.
Pirates have become almost comical these days, good for a laugh in a children's movie, not to mention a classic costume for Halloween. That's about it.
But in their day they were much-feared, and rightly so. This piece (also reached through a post linked by Dean) offers a discussion of the history of piracy and of laws against it, and suggests applying the concept to terrorists.
Pirates were once state-sponsored, hidden agents for nations to wage war against each other. Then piracy degenerated still further, into free-form nihilism:
...[latter-day pirates] struck indiscriminately in ferocious revenge against the societies that they felt had condemned them. Often these disenchanted sailors cast their piratical careers in revolutionary terms. The 18th-century English legal scholar William Blackstone defined a pirate as someone who has "reduced himself afresh to the savage state of nature by declaring war against all mankind,"...Perhaps the most telling statement of the pirates' motives comes from a pirate named Black Sam Bellamy. To a captured merchant captain, he boasted, "I am a free prince, and have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a 100 sail of ships and an army of 100,000 men in the field."
The laws against piracy rest on:
...the concept of universal jurisdiction. The crime of piracy is considered a breach of jus cogens, a conventional peremptory international norm from which states may not derogate. Those committing thefts on the high seas, inhibiting trade, and endangering maritime communication are considered by sovereign states to be hostis humani generis (enemies of humanity).
In the mid-19th century, the nations of Europe had finally stopped using piracy to further their own ends and got together to help weaken its hold on the world. A similar unity among the world's nations right now against the current enemies of humanity might relegate terrorists of the future to characters in children's movies, and to colorful costumes at Halloween. Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen: terrorists still serve the interests of many countries, who use them as convenient surrogates and hidden agents.
Dean Esmay, a fan of "The Princess Bride," points out that the Dread Pirate Roberts of that movie was an actual historical figure.
Pirates have become almost comical these days, good for a laugh in a children's movie, not to mention a classic costume for Halloween. That's about it.
But in their day they were much-feared, and rightly so. This piece (also reached through a post linked by Dean) offers a discussion of the history of piracy and of laws against it, and suggests applying the concept to terrorists.
Pirates were once state-sponsored, hidden agents for nations to wage war against each other. Then piracy degenerated still further, into free-form nihilism:
...[latter-day pirates] struck indiscriminately in ferocious revenge against the societies that they felt had condemned them. Often these disenchanted sailors cast their piratical careers in revolutionary terms. The 18th-century English legal scholar William Blackstone defined a pirate as someone who has "reduced himself afresh to the savage state of nature by declaring war against all mankind,"...Perhaps the most telling statement of the pirates' motives comes from a pirate named Black Sam Bellamy. To a captured merchant captain, he boasted, "I am a free prince, and have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a 100 sail of ships and an army of 100,000 men in the field."
The laws against piracy rest on:
...the concept of universal jurisdiction. The crime of piracy is considered a breach of jus cogens, a conventional peremptory international norm from which states may not derogate. Those committing thefts on the high seas, inhibiting trade, and endangering maritime communication are considered by sovereign states to be hostis humani generis (enemies of humanity).
In the mid-19th century, the nations of Europe had finally stopped using piracy to further their own ends and got together to help weaken its hold on the world. A similar unity among the world's nations right now against the current enemies of humanity might relegate terrorists of the future to characters in children's movies, and to colorful costumes at Halloween. Unfortunately, that's not likely to happen: terrorists still serve the interests of many countries, who use them as convenient surrogates and hidden agents.
Fraidy cats and fear itself: Left and Right
There's been a longstanding meme on the Left about the Right, one I've written about before. It's a twist on the old schoolyard taunt, "Fraidy, cat, fraidy cat!"
The allegation is that the Right is motivated by fear--and unrealistic and wildly exaggerated fear, at that. My esteemed colleague Shrinkwrapped has written a recent and excellent piece on the subject.
Funny; when I look about me on the Right, I don't see a whole lot of fear. Anger, perhaps, both at the Left and at the Islamist totalitarian enemy. But on the whole, the Right seems to me to be realistically facing and evaluating the threat before us, taking the enemy at its word about what it intends to do, and trying to learn the lessons of history. The Right wishes to take action against that enemy rather than wait in passive denial, wring its hands in fear, or pursue the false hope of appeasement.
One can disagree with the methods and approach of the Right without disagreeing about the degree of threat represented by the enemy. The Left, however, in choosing the "fraidy cat" argument, appears to be thinking along the following lines (excerpt from that previous post of mine about fear):
The legacy of Vietnam is that the left has a lingering mindset that considers national security concerns to almost always be mere excuses for government spying...The left, and many liberals, seem to feel that the raising of security issues in these situations is almost always bogus--a sort of screen, used by a proto-totalitarian government to cover its own misuse of power, with the goal of getting away with domestic spying on its enemies, and the further consolidation of its own power. If this is the conception, then national security concerns must be downplayed in almost all cases, and the role of fear as motivation for those concerns exaggerated instead.
I see the Right as motivated by realism about the goals of Islamist totalitarianism, and this leads to calls for action to block the enemy before the threat it represents becomes even greater, and the possibility of even more devastation looms larger.
But even if we are willing to grant, for the sake of argument, the Left's charge that the main motivation on the Right is fear, we can say two things. The first is that in facing an enemy bent on one's destruction and willing to purposely kill as many innocents as possible with all the weapons at its disposal, some element of fear (as in "apprehension of a danger") is certainly warranted. The real question is whether the fear is realistic or whether it is exaggerated, and whether the person is paralyzed by that fear, or whether he/she takes appropriate action to forestall the feared consequences.
The left has its own fears, of course, and they are potent motivators, as well. As previously stated, they fear abuse of power by our own government in the pursuit of national security more than any foreign threat. To parse it even more finely, sometimes it seems that they fear abuse of power by a Republican executive branch more than anything; back in the days of FDR they liked a powerful federal government well enough, when it was run by a Democrat.
Speaking of FDR, it was he who famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The context in which he made that statement is interesting; take a look at his First Inaugural Address, delivered in March of 1933, when the nation faced the Great Depression, the subject matter of FDR's speech.
FDR does indeed say, "The only think we have to fear is fear itself" (and, by the way, listen to the audio; what a speaker he was!). But this is the message in which his quote was embedded:
...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory...In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties [he follows with a long list of the problems the nation faced at the time]...Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Then, as now, the danger of fear is not really fear itself. It is, as FDR stated [emphasis mine], "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts."
I submit that those words define the stance of the Left today far more than that of the Right--in fearing, for example, warrantless NSA wiretapping of calls with terrorist foreign nationals more than the consequences of not using reasonable tools in our arsenal in order to fight an implacable and vicious enemy (and see here if you wish to revisit the complexities of the legal arguments concerning these wiretappings).
And I agree, along with FDR, that "only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment." I happen to think the Left fits the definition of "foolish optimist" in denying the dark realities of the present-day Islamist totalitarian threat. The Left, of course, thinks people such as myself to be foolish optimists in denying the dark realities of the threats posed by the would-be dictators Bush and Rove, and that we are timid and cowering fraidy cats in assuming that people such as Ahmadinejad mean exactly and precisely what they say.
[NOTE: And speaking of fear...]
The allegation is that the Right is motivated by fear--and unrealistic and wildly exaggerated fear, at that. My esteemed colleague Shrinkwrapped has written a recent and excellent piece on the subject.
Funny; when I look about me on the Right, I don't see a whole lot of fear. Anger, perhaps, both at the Left and at the Islamist totalitarian enemy. But on the whole, the Right seems to me to be realistically facing and evaluating the threat before us, taking the enemy at its word about what it intends to do, and trying to learn the lessons of history. The Right wishes to take action against that enemy rather than wait in passive denial, wring its hands in fear, or pursue the false hope of appeasement.
One can disagree with the methods and approach of the Right without disagreeing about the degree of threat represented by the enemy. The Left, however, in choosing the "fraidy cat" argument, appears to be thinking along the following lines (excerpt from that previous post of mine about fear):
The legacy of Vietnam is that the left has a lingering mindset that considers national security concerns to almost always be mere excuses for government spying...The left, and many liberals, seem to feel that the raising of security issues in these situations is almost always bogus--a sort of screen, used by a proto-totalitarian government to cover its own misuse of power, with the goal of getting away with domestic spying on its enemies, and the further consolidation of its own power. If this is the conception, then national security concerns must be downplayed in almost all cases, and the role of fear as motivation for those concerns exaggerated instead.
I see the Right as motivated by realism about the goals of Islamist totalitarianism, and this leads to calls for action to block the enemy before the threat it represents becomes even greater, and the possibility of even more devastation looms larger.
But even if we are willing to grant, for the sake of argument, the Left's charge that the main motivation on the Right is fear, we can say two things. The first is that in facing an enemy bent on one's destruction and willing to purposely kill as many innocents as possible with all the weapons at its disposal, some element of fear (as in "apprehension of a danger") is certainly warranted. The real question is whether the fear is realistic or whether it is exaggerated, and whether the person is paralyzed by that fear, or whether he/she takes appropriate action to forestall the feared consequences.
The left has its own fears, of course, and they are potent motivators, as well. As previously stated, they fear abuse of power by our own government in the pursuit of national security more than any foreign threat. To parse it even more finely, sometimes it seems that they fear abuse of power by a Republican executive branch more than anything; back in the days of FDR they liked a powerful federal government well enough, when it was run by a Democrat.
Speaking of FDR, it was he who famously said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The context in which he made that statement is interesting; take a look at his First Inaugural Address, delivered in March of 1933, when the nation faced the Great Depression, the subject matter of FDR's speech.
FDR does indeed say, "The only think we have to fear is fear itself" (and, by the way, listen to the audio; what a speaker he was!). But this is the message in which his quote was embedded:
...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory...In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties [he follows with a long list of the problems the nation faced at the time]...Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Then, as now, the danger of fear is not really fear itself. It is, as FDR stated [emphasis mine], "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts."
I submit that those words define the stance of the Left today far more than that of the Right--in fearing, for example, warrantless NSA wiretapping of calls with terrorist foreign nationals more than the consequences of not using reasonable tools in our arsenal in order to fight an implacable and vicious enemy (and see here if you wish to revisit the complexities of the legal arguments concerning these wiretappings).
And I agree, along with FDR, that "only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment." I happen to think the Left fits the definition of "foolish optimist" in denying the dark realities of the present-day Islamist totalitarian threat. The Left, of course, thinks people such as myself to be foolish optimists in denying the dark realities of the threats posed by the would-be dictators Bush and Rove, and that we are timid and cowering fraidy cats in assuming that people such as Ahmadinejad mean exactly and precisely what they say.
[NOTE: And speaking of fear...]
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Bloggers and vacations
The Wall Street Journal is on to the not-so-well-kept secret of bloggers, which is that is that they tend to have some degree of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The ubiquity of the internet, laptops, and the like means that bloggers need never be very far away from their connections. Now, "connection" is a word with a double meaning, of course: it can refer to being hooked up to the Web, or simply to being hooked, as in "addicted."
Yes, some would argue that blogging is an addiction--perhaps what's referred to as a Positive Addiction, but an addiction nonetheless.
The WSJ article highlights the very special dilemma facing bloggers who want to take some time off:
In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.
According to the WSJ, even the biggest bloggers seem to mull over--or perhaps obsess over--the problem.
But me? No. Not moi. Not addicted, not at all. No siree. I have no difficulty whatsoever in resolving this issue. When I'm on vacation--and I've taken rather lengthy ones each of the two summers I've been blogging--I continue to post. But I take a middle road and lighten my load considerably. I won't bore you with the secrets of how I do it, but I've managed to keep up the blog without ruining my vacations. At least so far.
The truth is that bloggers depend on addictions, both in themselves and in others. After all, aren't we trying to form an addiction in our readers--an addiction to reading our blogs? Maybe a better word would be "habit"--makes us all feel better.
And, just to show how very unaddicted I am, I'm now going out to enjoy some of that thing known as "real life." Till later...
The ubiquity of the internet, laptops, and the like means that bloggers need never be very far away from their connections. Now, "connection" is a word with a double meaning, of course: it can refer to being hooked up to the Web, or simply to being hooked, as in "addicted."
Yes, some would argue that blogging is an addiction--perhaps what's referred to as a Positive Addiction, but an addiction nonetheless.
The WSJ article highlights the very special dilemma facing bloggers who want to take some time off:
In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.
According to the WSJ, even the biggest bloggers seem to mull over--or perhaps obsess over--the problem.
But me? No. Not moi. Not addicted, not at all. No siree. I have no difficulty whatsoever in resolving this issue. When I'm on vacation--and I've taken rather lengthy ones each of the two summers I've been blogging--I continue to post. But I take a middle road and lighten my load considerably. I won't bore you with the secrets of how I do it, but I've managed to keep up the blog without ruining my vacations. At least so far.
The truth is that bloggers depend on addictions, both in themselves and in others. After all, aren't we trying to form an addiction in our readers--an addiction to reading our blogs? Maybe a better word would be "habit"--makes us all feel better.
And, just to show how very unaddicted I am, I'm now going out to enjoy some of that thing known as "real life." Till later...
More shameless self-promotion: Sanity Squad podcast
The latest Sanity Squad podcast is up at the Politics Central site at Pajamas Media.
There are still a few technical kinks--every now and then, Shrinkwrapped's voice goes all metallic and he gets stuck in a strange time warp. But I think you'll find the group interesting and entertaining--although not as entertaining as you might have found them had the technical guy not decided that my joke about France was way lame, and edited it out.
What joke about France? Well, after Siggy challenges us all to name a nation under the sway of tyranny that isn't a third-world country, I respond with, "France?"
Come to think of it, maybe the technical guy was right.
There are still a few technical kinks--every now and then, Shrinkwrapped's voice goes all metallic and he gets stuck in a strange time warp. But I think you'll find the group interesting and entertaining--although not as entertaining as you might have found them had the technical guy not decided that my joke about France was way lame, and edited it out.
What joke about France? Well, after Siggy challenges us all to name a nation under the sway of tyranny that isn't a third-world country, I respond with, "France?"
Come to think of it, maybe the technical guy was right.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Conversations on conversion
Alexandra is incensed at Bill Maher for making light of forced conversion to Islam.
Maher isn't one of my favorites (surprise, surprise, you say), and I don't really tend to follow his shows. But in a comedy routine (video here; starts at minute two), Maher said:
New rule: If converting to Islam is all it takes to get the terrorists off our backs, then all I have to say is, “Lalalalalalala! [ulalates loudly]”...Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Bill, if we convert to Islam, doesn’t that mean the terrorists have won?” Well, sort of, but it’s a win-win, because they get to declare victory, and we get to take hair gel on the plane. Plus, we’re not really converting to Islam. We’re just telling our enemies what they want to hear, and trying to convince them we’re something we’re really not...And, it’s so simple to convert this way. You know, if you want to convert to Judaism, it’s a huge hassle. You’ve got to find a Rabbi, study the Torah, get circumcised, go to dental school. But, Mohammed made joining his team easy: two line pledge, and you’re in.
Maher loves to be controversial, and this rant is no exception. He goes on to add that conversion doesn't matter because Americans are Christians in name only and don't fulfill most of the obligations of Christianity, and that one religious fanatic is much the same as another.
To treat Maher's charges with a seriousness they perhaps don't deserve, he ignores the fact that imperfection in religious observance (charity, for example, and other kindly acts) is the rule for humanity across the board, not just in the case of Americans. He also ignores the major differences between fanatical Christians and fanatical Moslems and fanatical Jews, especially in their attitudes towards conversion, but in many other respects, as well.
Most of us can agree with Maher, however, that allowing religious fanatics of any stripe to be in charge of government would be a bad thing. The disagreement arises in the definition of "fanatic." Some, no doubt, believe that all Zionists are by definition religious fanatics. Some, no doubt, feel that the entire anti-abortion crowd--not just those who murder abortionists--are religious fanatics.
I happen to believe that not all religious fanatics are the same. And I think the evidence is clear that present-day Islamist fanatics are louder, more numerous, more powerful in their own countries, more willing to use coercion to force beliefs and practices on others, and more intent on killing very large numbers of people in their desire for religious hegemony.
That attitude towards religious hegemony--and the best means to go about achieving it, if desired--is another huge distinction between the three Abrahamic religions. Even though he's not trying to be serious, Maher touches on a very fundamental and important difference among the religions as far as conversion goes, and it's not a tangential one. The distinction goes to the heart of what each religion is in modern times--how it sees itself, its message, and its mission in the world.
Judaism makes conversion difficult for a reason. Islam makes it extremely easy for a reason. Christianity occupies a middle ground for a reason (the issues and history are far more complex than can be dealt with in this post, so the following is, quite naturally, a simplification).
Judaism has a "live and let live" attitude towards other religions. Here's a statement of the Jewish point of view:
Judaism, unlike say Christianity and Islam, is not a proselytising religion. Because it teaches that the righteous of all nations shall enter the gates of heaven, it does not have any compelling urge to rescue non-Jews from hell and damnation. There is a requirement in Jewish law to ensure the sincerity of a potential convert. Essentially, [the religious authorities] want to be sure that the convert knows what he is getting into, and that he is doing it for sincerely religious reasons.
Christianity is a proselytising religion. In modern times it does so through nonviolent means--persuasion, preaching, missionary work--although in the past coercion was sometimes involved. The idea behind both the nonviolent and the violent conversions was that Christianity was the only way to salvation, and thus it was incumbent on Christians to spread the faith.
The same is true of Islam. Islam's early tradition is one of jihad through martial conquest, giving defeated peoples "of the Book" (Christians, Jews) a choice: conversion, dhimmitude, or death. The choice for infidels was simpler: conversion or death. This was done despite verses in the Koran framing religious choice as something that should not be coerced. As in much of Islam, there are other contradictory hadiths--for example, the Verse of the Sword--that seem to prescribe forced conversion.
There is no question that Islam is a religion with a mainstream--not a fringe--belief that everyone on earth should ultimately become Moslem. In fact, it considers conversion to be a misnomer; the proper word might be reversion, since it is also believes that everyone on earth is actually born a Moslem. Islam is also the only religion of which I'm aware that considers death the punishment for renouncing the religion.
As a group that has been subjected to forced conversions for centuries--both at the hands of Christians and from Moslems--Jews have long pondered the dilemma of the reluctant potential convert. Should one resist to the death? Or is a far more serious version of Bill Maher's suggestion ("We're not really converting to Islam") acceptable: pretended conversion, allowing the convert to live and to practice Judaism in secret, hoping at some future date to become openly Jewish once again?
The great Jewish rabbi-philosopher Maimonides pondered the issue in the twelfth century, writing his "Epistle on Forced Conversion." Maimonides had an extremely personal interest in the topic, since he himself had been forced to convert to Islam in Spain in order to save his life, after which he fled that country, ending up in Egypt and returning to the practice of Judaism. His answer is that it is best to leave the area, if possible, rather than to convert, but that conversion is acceptable and forgivable in order to save one's life, especially if the intent is to practice secretly and/or to ultimately emigrate and practice the religion openly once again.
Some who are not religious may find it hard to understand what all the fuss about forced conversion is. But most probably realize that forced conversion is an affront to freedom of belief and practice, which includes the freedom to not believe and to not practice. And even Maher, in his lucid moments--and I'm sure he has a few--would agree that any religious group bent on forcibly and aggressively imposing both its belief system and its practices on others is one that must be vigorously fought against and defeated. Conversion at the point of a sword--or a gun--is the unmistakable marker of such a religious group. And such conversion seems to be the exclusive province of Islamist totalitarians these days.
Maher isn't one of my favorites (surprise, surprise, you say), and I don't really tend to follow his shows. But in a comedy routine (video here; starts at minute two), Maher said:
New rule: If converting to Islam is all it takes to get the terrorists off our backs, then all I have to say is, “Lalalalalalala! [ulalates loudly]”...Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Bill, if we convert to Islam, doesn’t that mean the terrorists have won?” Well, sort of, but it’s a win-win, because they get to declare victory, and we get to take hair gel on the plane. Plus, we’re not really converting to Islam. We’re just telling our enemies what they want to hear, and trying to convince them we’re something we’re really not...And, it’s so simple to convert this way. You know, if you want to convert to Judaism, it’s a huge hassle. You’ve got to find a Rabbi, study the Torah, get circumcised, go to dental school. But, Mohammed made joining his team easy: two line pledge, and you’re in.
Maher loves to be controversial, and this rant is no exception. He goes on to add that conversion doesn't matter because Americans are Christians in name only and don't fulfill most of the obligations of Christianity, and that one religious fanatic is much the same as another.
To treat Maher's charges with a seriousness they perhaps don't deserve, he ignores the fact that imperfection in religious observance (charity, for example, and other kindly acts) is the rule for humanity across the board, not just in the case of Americans. He also ignores the major differences between fanatical Christians and fanatical Moslems and fanatical Jews, especially in their attitudes towards conversion, but in many other respects, as well.
Most of us can agree with Maher, however, that allowing religious fanatics of any stripe to be in charge of government would be a bad thing. The disagreement arises in the definition of "fanatic." Some, no doubt, believe that all Zionists are by definition religious fanatics. Some, no doubt, feel that the entire anti-abortion crowd--not just those who murder abortionists--are religious fanatics.
I happen to believe that not all religious fanatics are the same. And I think the evidence is clear that present-day Islamist fanatics are louder, more numerous, more powerful in their own countries, more willing to use coercion to force beliefs and practices on others, and more intent on killing very large numbers of people in their desire for religious hegemony.
That attitude towards religious hegemony--and the best means to go about achieving it, if desired--is another huge distinction between the three Abrahamic religions. Even though he's not trying to be serious, Maher touches on a very fundamental and important difference among the religions as far as conversion goes, and it's not a tangential one. The distinction goes to the heart of what each religion is in modern times--how it sees itself, its message, and its mission in the world.
Judaism makes conversion difficult for a reason. Islam makes it extremely easy for a reason. Christianity occupies a middle ground for a reason (the issues and history are far more complex than can be dealt with in this post, so the following is, quite naturally, a simplification).
Judaism has a "live and let live" attitude towards other religions. Here's a statement of the Jewish point of view:
Judaism, unlike say Christianity and Islam, is not a proselytising religion. Because it teaches that the righteous of all nations shall enter the gates of heaven, it does not have any compelling urge to rescue non-Jews from hell and damnation. There is a requirement in Jewish law to ensure the sincerity of a potential convert. Essentially, [the religious authorities] want to be sure that the convert knows what he is getting into, and that he is doing it for sincerely religious reasons.
Christianity is a proselytising religion. In modern times it does so through nonviolent means--persuasion, preaching, missionary work--although in the past coercion was sometimes involved. The idea behind both the nonviolent and the violent conversions was that Christianity was the only way to salvation, and thus it was incumbent on Christians to spread the faith.
The same is true of Islam. Islam's early tradition is one of jihad through martial conquest, giving defeated peoples "of the Book" (Christians, Jews) a choice: conversion, dhimmitude, or death. The choice for infidels was simpler: conversion or death. This was done despite verses in the Koran framing religious choice as something that should not be coerced. As in much of Islam, there are other contradictory hadiths--for example, the Verse of the Sword--that seem to prescribe forced conversion.
There is no question that Islam is a religion with a mainstream--not a fringe--belief that everyone on earth should ultimately become Moslem. In fact, it considers conversion to be a misnomer; the proper word might be reversion, since it is also believes that everyone on earth is actually born a Moslem. Islam is also the only religion of which I'm aware that considers death the punishment for renouncing the religion.
As a group that has been subjected to forced conversions for centuries--both at the hands of Christians and from Moslems--Jews have long pondered the dilemma of the reluctant potential convert. Should one resist to the death? Or is a far more serious version of Bill Maher's suggestion ("We're not really converting to Islam") acceptable: pretended conversion, allowing the convert to live and to practice Judaism in secret, hoping at some future date to become openly Jewish once again?
The great Jewish rabbi-philosopher Maimonides pondered the issue in the twelfth century, writing his "Epistle on Forced Conversion." Maimonides had an extremely personal interest in the topic, since he himself had been forced to convert to Islam in Spain in order to save his life, after which he fled that country, ending up in Egypt and returning to the practice of Judaism. His answer is that it is best to leave the area, if possible, rather than to convert, but that conversion is acceptable and forgivable in order to save one's life, especially if the intent is to practice secretly and/or to ultimately emigrate and practice the religion openly once again.
Some who are not religious may find it hard to understand what all the fuss about forced conversion is. But most probably realize that forced conversion is an affront to freedom of belief and practice, which includes the freedom to not believe and to not practice. And even Maher, in his lucid moments--and I'm sure he has a few--would agree that any religious group bent on forcibly and aggressively imposing both its belief system and its practices on others is one that must be vigorously fought against and defeated. Conversion at the point of a sword--or a gun--is the unmistakable marker of such a religious group. And such conversion seems to be the exclusive province of Islamist totalitarians these days.
Watch for it
Airing this September 10-11, the five-year anniversary of 9/11, this ABC miniseries sounds awfully good.
[ADDENDUM: A caveat about the historical accuracy of a certain scene involving the Clinton administration. Perhaps there's a bit of Oliver Stonism creeping in?]
[ADDENDUM: A caveat about the historical accuracy of a certain scene involving the Clinton administration. Perhaps there's a bit of Oliver Stonism creeping in?]
Can't get enough of the voice of neo-neocon?: audio from down under
I'm the guest interviewee on this podcast from Shire Network News, found at Blogmatrix. You can download through iTunes, or just download it directly from the Blogmatrix site, here.
The interview with me starts about a third of the way into the podcast. My voice can't compete with the mellifluous British tones of Brian of London, who begins the podcast, nor can it measure up to the dulcet harmonies of Tom Paine, my Australian interviewer (love those accents, guys!). But on this podcast my voice comes the closest so far to sounding like my actual self. And the topic I'm talking about is one near and dear to my heart--my "change." And, if you want to hear me at least attempting to make a few jokes, there's a moment or two when I do just that.
Blogmatrix specializes in podcasts, and often injects humor into the proceedings. You might want to take a look at some of their previous efforts, as well.
The interview with me starts about a third of the way into the podcast. My voice can't compete with the mellifluous British tones of Brian of London, who begins the podcast, nor can it measure up to the dulcet harmonies of Tom Paine, my Australian interviewer (love those accents, guys!). But on this podcast my voice comes the closest so far to sounding like my actual self. And the topic I'm talking about is one near and dear to my heart--my "change." And, if you want to hear me at least attempting to make a few jokes, there's a moment or two when I do just that.
Blogmatrix specializes in podcasts, and often injects humor into the proceedings. You might want to take a look at some of their previous efforts, as well.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Traveling without divisions, you don't get no respect
Iran and Ahmadinejad have once again demonstrated the great and awesome power of the UN and their fear of its sanctions, in Iran's continued defiance of the UN's call for limitations on its nuclear program. Although Kofi Annan made a special trip to Iran to discuss these matters, the Iranian leader might very well have paraphrased Stalin (instead of the historical tyrant he usually prefers to channel, Hitler) and asked: how many divisions does Kofi Annan have?
The answer? Quite a few, but unfortunately they lack the ability to fight, being either unarmed or lightly armed and only allowed to fire in self-defense. And the UN's proposed sanctions, hardly frightening in and of themselves, are likely to be blocked by Iran's buddies Russia and China, as Iran is well aware.
As for Annan himself, he well might paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield and say: I don't get no respect, despite (or perhaps because) of Iran's praise for his visit as "good, suitable, and positive." In other words: powerless, meaningless, and suiting Iran's aims to place a cooperative face on its nuclear ambitions.
Annan made a small gesture of relative defiance by criticizing Iran's nose-thumbing announcement of a conference devoted to the fact that the Holocaust was an "exaggeration," as well as the mounting of an exhibit in Teheran of cartoons mocking said Holocaust (or, rather, un-Holocaust).
Annan's statement of the Holocaust's historical reality is okay as far as it goes, which isn't all that far. It illustrates the tepid nature of the UN response--or the diplomatic response in general--when faced with evil. Annan is typical of those groups in trying to reason with the unreasonable, and to plead with the inhumane. Such reasoning and pleas are doomed to fall on deaf ears.
The answer? Quite a few, but unfortunately they lack the ability to fight, being either unarmed or lightly armed and only allowed to fire in self-defense. And the UN's proposed sanctions, hardly frightening in and of themselves, are likely to be blocked by Iran's buddies Russia and China, as Iran is well aware.
As for Annan himself, he well might paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield and say: I don't get no respect, despite (or perhaps because) of Iran's praise for his visit as "good, suitable, and positive." In other words: powerless, meaningless, and suiting Iran's aims to place a cooperative face on its nuclear ambitions.
Annan made a small gesture of relative defiance by criticizing Iran's nose-thumbing announcement of a conference devoted to the fact that the Holocaust was an "exaggeration," as well as the mounting of an exhibit in Teheran of cartoons mocking said Holocaust (or, rather, un-Holocaust).
Annan's statement of the Holocaust's historical reality is okay as far as it goes, which isn't all that far. It illustrates the tepid nature of the UN response--or the diplomatic response in general--when faced with evil. Annan is typical of those groups in trying to reason with the unreasonable, and to plead with the inhumane. Such reasoning and pleas are doomed to fall on deaf ears.
Noah's eyes: still point in the turning world
If you're having a slow Labor Day, take a look at this (hat tip: Pajamas Media): a young man named Noah takes a photo of himself every day for six years (yes, count 'em--or rather, maybe you'd better just take his word for it).
Ah, Noah, despite your relative youth and my relative age, I can empathize. What am I talking about? Why, the hair, of course! Every day a different experience--every hour a different experience. Those of us with strongly wavy hair that has a mind of its own can understand; others probably cannot.
The variety of directions in which Noah's hair chooses to go is not matched by any variety in his own moods, however. Never I have seen so little change of expression in my life. And his eyes--how does he do that? They appear to remain focused on a single point throughout the over two thousand photos.
Ah, Noah, despite your relative youth and my relative age, I can empathize. What am I talking about? Why, the hair, of course! Every day a different experience--every hour a different experience. Those of us with strongly wavy hair that has a mind of its own can understand; others probably cannot.
The variety of directions in which Noah's hair chooses to go is not matched by any variety in his own moods, however. Never I have seen so little change of expression in my life. And his eyes--how does he do that? They appear to remain focused on a single point throughout the over two thousand photos.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Almost-fall garden interlude
When I moved to my present house I inherited a perennial garden.
That wasn't my main concern. Just having a marginally affordable place to live was the important thing, because I managed to buy my house in a seller's market (and I bet that, whenever I move, it will be a buyer's market. Ah, well.)
The garden was an unintended responsibility, one I wasn't sure I could meet. Actually, although the house is fairly small, there were three gardens--one in front, the sun garden; a terraced rock one on the side and one in the back, both shade gardens. I had to do a lot of reading and learning about growing flowers to rise to the occasion and do right by those gardens, since I knew virtually nothing on the subject when I first moved here.
But I think, all things considering, I've done rather well. Some plants died and I replaced them with others. Some thrived. I moved things around. I learned that what looks good in June or July can look crummy and bloomless in August. I learned my favorite garden joke, which I've written before but will repeat once more, with feeling:
Q: What's the definition of a perennial?
A: It's a plant that comes back every year, if it had lived.
It's not always easy to get the garden to look good in September. But I will restrain my innate modesty to say that I think mine isn't all that shabby right now. And, getting an even tighter grip on that innate modesty, I'm going to post a couple of photos of the front garden, taken just yesterday, when it wasn't pouring rain, unlike today:
That wasn't my main concern. Just having a marginally affordable place to live was the important thing, because I managed to buy my house in a seller's market (and I bet that, whenever I move, it will be a buyer's market. Ah, well.)
The garden was an unintended responsibility, one I wasn't sure I could meet. Actually, although the house is fairly small, there were three gardens--one in front, the sun garden; a terraced rock one on the side and one in the back, both shade gardens. I had to do a lot of reading and learning about growing flowers to rise to the occasion and do right by those gardens, since I knew virtually nothing on the subject when I first moved here.
But I think, all things considering, I've done rather well. Some plants died and I replaced them with others. Some thrived. I moved things around. I learned that what looks good in June or July can look crummy and bloomless in August. I learned my favorite garden joke, which I've written before but will repeat once more, with feeling:
Q: What's the definition of a perennial?
A: It's a plant that comes back every year, if it had lived.
It's not always easy to get the garden to look good in September. But I will restrain my innate modesty to say that I think mine isn't all that shabby right now. And, getting an even tighter grip on that innate modesty, I'm going to post a couple of photos of the front garden, taken just yesterday, when it wasn't pouring rain, unlike today:
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Beslan: second anniversary
It's the second anniversary of one of the worst terrorist acts in history, the Beslan kidnapping and massacre.
I wrote this post one year ago, on the first anniversary. Nothing much has changed since then. The sorrow of the parents who lost children has probably not eased much, although it has gotten a little older.
The main thrust of most articles written on this second anniversary (and there are relatively few, especially outside of Russia) focus on the rage the families feel at the Russian authorities for what is perceived as their negligent handling of the incident. This feeling has been fueled by a new and controversial report by a member of the State Duma, Yury Savelyev, who disagrees with the official findings that the first shots fired in the final confrontation were set off by the terrorists. He writes that the initial blasts came from the Russian authorities.
It's impossible from this vantage point to even begin to evaluate who might be correct. Some accuse Savelyev of distorting the facts for political gain (sound familiar)? Whatever the truth might be, his report--and other articles about the anniversary--are definitely part of a trend that I've noticed before under similar circumstances, which is this: when terrorists attack, people often seem to direct the bulk of their anger at their own authorities, blaming them for failure to protect.
In this case, my guess is that the Russian authorities are indeed guilty of some sort of contributory negligence. Perhaps they didn't fire at the school first, despite what Savelyev has said. But they may indeed have messed up in some way or other, perhaps even in several different ways.
But any negligence on their part is contributory only. There's no question this was a terrorist attack of extreme and unusual coldbloodedness. The guilt and responsibility lie squarely with the terrorists themselves. They were the ones who chose a target with a predominance of children among the victims, they were the ones who subjected those children and others to great suffering both before and during their deaths, and they were the ones who had a chance to view that suffering and yet still did not relent (even shooting some of the children in the back as they fled the final conflagration).
But most of those terrorists--except one--are now dead. They are out of reach; the Russian authorities are not. It's a normal human reaction to blame those close at hand, especially if they are perceived as having had a duty to protect and as having failed that duty.
But history only plays once; we don't have an alternate universe in which the Russian military and police get another opportunity to do something different, something more effective, something that preserved more lives. Was there any chance of a more successful outcome, given the ferocity of the hostage-takers? I personally don't think so, but I have no way of knowing. Neither does anyone else.
Many people in Russia criticize the fact that the terrorists were not stopped somewhere on the way to their target. This is similar to criticisms mounted in this country towards the CIA and FBI for not noticing and stopping the 9/11 hijackers long before they did their nefarious business.
A group calling itself the Mothers of Beslan speaks out:
"We are convinced that the difficult last two years have not brought us to the truth about the Beslan tragedy but to the covering up of the truth."
That lack of trust means that even the trial of Nurpashi Kulayev, who officials say was the only hostage-taker not to die during the fighting, failed to bring closure to victims and their relatives.
"One person cannot be responsible for the deaths of more than 300. Those who allowed the fighters to travel unhindered to Beslan along federal roads should sit in his place. And those who allowed the bloody ending," said Valery Karlov, who lost his father.
That last quote says a great deal. There is only one person left alive from among the perpetrators, hardly enough to bear the brunt of all the rage and grief the families--and much of Russia--still feel. The authorities, however, are alive and kicking, as well as numerous.
And no doubt there are plenty of reasons to blame them, as their response was far from perfect, as are most human responses to an unforeseen and unprecedented crisis. The basic human need to believe that, if the police and military and government had done their job correctly, no one need have died, is compounded by a traditional (and probably justified) distrust of the Russian government. Any official report from that source is already seen as a whitewash.
But we can all agree that Beslan was one of the saddest episodes yet in the annals of terrorism, and that many of the rescuers distinguished themselves that day. There are some poignant photos, for remembrance at this website .
I wrote this post one year ago, on the first anniversary. Nothing much has changed since then. The sorrow of the parents who lost children has probably not eased much, although it has gotten a little older.
The main thrust of most articles written on this second anniversary (and there are relatively few, especially outside of Russia) focus on the rage the families feel at the Russian authorities for what is perceived as their negligent handling of the incident. This feeling has been fueled by a new and controversial report by a member of the State Duma, Yury Savelyev, who disagrees with the official findings that the first shots fired in the final confrontation were set off by the terrorists. He writes that the initial blasts came from the Russian authorities.
It's impossible from this vantage point to even begin to evaluate who might be correct. Some accuse Savelyev of distorting the facts for political gain (sound familiar)? Whatever the truth might be, his report--and other articles about the anniversary--are definitely part of a trend that I've noticed before under similar circumstances, which is this: when terrorists attack, people often seem to direct the bulk of their anger at their own authorities, blaming them for failure to protect.
In this case, my guess is that the Russian authorities are indeed guilty of some sort of contributory negligence. Perhaps they didn't fire at the school first, despite what Savelyev has said. But they may indeed have messed up in some way or other, perhaps even in several different ways.
But any negligence on their part is contributory only. There's no question this was a terrorist attack of extreme and unusual coldbloodedness. The guilt and responsibility lie squarely with the terrorists themselves. They were the ones who chose a target with a predominance of children among the victims, they were the ones who subjected those children and others to great suffering both before and during their deaths, and they were the ones who had a chance to view that suffering and yet still did not relent (even shooting some of the children in the back as they fled the final conflagration).
But most of those terrorists--except one--are now dead. They are out of reach; the Russian authorities are not. It's a normal human reaction to blame those close at hand, especially if they are perceived as having had a duty to protect and as having failed that duty.
But history only plays once; we don't have an alternate universe in which the Russian military and police get another opportunity to do something different, something more effective, something that preserved more lives. Was there any chance of a more successful outcome, given the ferocity of the hostage-takers? I personally don't think so, but I have no way of knowing. Neither does anyone else.
Many people in Russia criticize the fact that the terrorists were not stopped somewhere on the way to their target. This is similar to criticisms mounted in this country towards the CIA and FBI for not noticing and stopping the 9/11 hijackers long before they did their nefarious business.
A group calling itself the Mothers of Beslan speaks out:
"We are convinced that the difficult last two years have not brought us to the truth about the Beslan tragedy but to the covering up of the truth."
That lack of trust means that even the trial of Nurpashi Kulayev, who officials say was the only hostage-taker not to die during the fighting, failed to bring closure to victims and their relatives.
"One person cannot be responsible for the deaths of more than 300. Those who allowed the fighters to travel unhindered to Beslan along federal roads should sit in his place. And those who allowed the bloody ending," said Valery Karlov, who lost his father.
That last quote says a great deal. There is only one person left alive from among the perpetrators, hardly enough to bear the brunt of all the rage and grief the families--and much of Russia--still feel. The authorities, however, are alive and kicking, as well as numerous.
And no doubt there are plenty of reasons to blame them, as their response was far from perfect, as are most human responses to an unforeseen and unprecedented crisis. The basic human need to believe that, if the police and military and government had done their job correctly, no one need have died, is compounded by a traditional (and probably justified) distrust of the Russian government. Any official report from that source is already seen as a whitewash.
But we can all agree that Beslan was one of the saddest episodes yet in the annals of terrorism, and that many of the rescuers distinguished themselves that day. There are some poignant photos, for remembrance at this website .
Friday, September 01, 2006
A trip back in time: Jimmy Carter and the Iranian Revolution (Part III)
[Parts I and II.]
For anyone who was alive at the time and old enough to pay attention to the news, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Jimmy Carter and the Iranian Revolution is the hostage crisis that occurred less than a year after the installment of the Khomeini regime. We watched, impotently, as America was brought to its knees by a bunch of anti-American Iranian kidnappers and a US President who seemed powerless to do anything about them. And the incident wasn't a short one, either, lasting a Biblical-sounding 444 days.
Carter did do a few things about the crisis, it's true. He froze Iranian assets in the US and halted oil imports, as well as trying diplomacy. In desperation, about six months into the mess, he approved a half-baked and doomed rescue attempt that ended in tragedy and more humiliation for the US (see here for my post about this incident). In the final ignominy for Jimmy (but a relief for the nation), the hostages were freed on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration.
Here's more about Carter's reasoning and the strategies behind it during the hostage crisis:
As winter turned to spring, and negotiations failed to produce a deal, frustrated Americans demanded stronger action. "No one can know how much pressure there was on Jimmy to do something," Rosalynn Carter recalled. "I would go out and campaign and come back and say, 'Why don't you do something?' And he said, 'What would you want me to do?' I said, 'Mine the harbors.' He said, 'Okay, suppose I mine the harbors, and they decide to take one hostage out every day and kill him. What am I going to do then?'"
Based on that evidence, I'd prefer Rosalynn to have been in charge. Carter's mindset was zero tolerance for even the possibility of a hostage being killed. His basic orientation was pacifist, and the hostage crisis revealed him to the world as an ineffectual and timid leader. By extrapolation, his role implied that the United States was the same. And, for the moment at least, it was.
It's easy to pay attention to dramatic events such as the hostage crisis, which thrust themselves into nearly everyone's consciousness in a way that could hardly be ignored. It's much easier, however, to ignore the more subtle, far less widely-covered events that led up to the Shah's downfall and Khomeini's rise, events in which President Carter played a large role as well.
Perhaps, as I wrote yesterday, no policy of the Shah's in his final years in power could have stopped the steamroller of discontent with his policies and the increasing support for the mullahs. After all, the Iranians knew what they disliked about the Shah, and there was something with which everyone could find fault. The Shah was brought down by an unholy and bizarre alliance, a trio made of three groups with beliefs that utterly contradicted those of the other two-- civil libertarians, socialists, and totalitarian Islamists. Each group had reasons to dislike the Shah, and each of them calculated that they'd be the only ones left standing in the end. But there was room for only one winner, and that turned out to be the mullahs.
So maybe Carter's pre-Revolutionary policies towards the Shah weren't all that important in bringing about the latter's downfall. Or maybe they were. What were those policies?
First, a bit of background. The Shah had been a staunch ally of the US for his lengthy reign (see this for some background. Yes, it's Wikipedia, but it seems fairly straightforward and quite detailed). A particularly complex (and controversial) event in US-Iranian relations involved the Shah's cooperation with the Eisenhower administration in a 1953 coup (or, to be technical, a counter-coup) against Mossadegh, the elected Prime Minister of Iran who was suspected at the time of being a Communist sympathizer .
The Shah lived in what's known as a "rough neighborhood." This meant that, in order to implement the modernization of Iran, he felt he needed to be harsh in dealing with the opposition. Jimmy Carter was dedicated to the cause of spreading human rights throughout the world, and he decided to put pressure to bear on the Shah to expand civil liberties and relax his policies towards those in his country who were against him.
Carter threatened the Shah with cutting arms shipments, and in response:
The Shah...released 357 political prisoners in February, 1977. But lifting the lid of repression even slightly encouraged the Shah's opponents. An organization of writers and publishers called for freedom of thought, and 64 lawyers called for the abolition of military tribunals. Merchants wrote letters requesting more freedom from government controls. Some people took to the streets, perhaps less fearful of being shot to death, and they clashed with police. A group of 120 lawyers joined together to publicize SAVAK torture and to monitor prison conditions. Dissident academics formed a group called the National Organization of University Teachers, and they joined students in demanding academic freedom. Political dissidents started disseminating more openly their semi-clandestine publications.
As events spiraled out of control, there were demonstrations throughout Iran. Police reacted harshly, and many protestors were killed, which led to more demonstrations and more deaths, which led to--well, you get the idea.
A genie of dissent had been unleashed--a valid one, because there was much to protest. But as things escalated, and the Shah eventually lost the support of the army and the police (a turning point), few seemed to be prescient enough to predict what forces would replace his regime--not what was hoped for, but what was likely to do so. There were only three choices, and two of them--the mullahs and the Marxists--could reasonably be expected to be far more repressive than the Shah.
Jimmy Carter was probably sincere in wishing that his pressure on the Shah would lead to greater civil liberties, not fewer. But if so, it was one of the gravest miscalculations in history. Be careful what you wish for.
On New Years Eve of 1977:
President Carter toasted the Shah at a state dinner in Tehran, calling him "an island of stability' in the troubled Middle East....Did the Carter administration "lose" Iran, as some have suggested? Gaddis Smith might have put it best: "President Carter inherited an impossible situation -- and he and his advisers made the worst of it." Carter seemed to have a hard time deciding whether to heed the advice of his aggressive national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wanted to encourage the Shah to brutally suppress the revolution, or that of his more cautious State Department, which suggested Carter reach out to opposition elements in order to smooth the transition to a new government. In the end he did neither, and suffered the consequences.
Even after it became known that the Shah was suffering from cancer, President Carter was reluctant to allow him entry to the United States, for fear of reprisal against Americans still in Iran. But in October, when the severity of the Shah's illness became known, Carter relented on humanitarian grounds. "He went around the room, and most of us said, 'Let him in.'" recalls Vice President Walter Mondale. "And he said, 'And if [the Iranians] take our employees in our embassy hostage, then what would be your advice?' And the room just fell dead. No one had an answer to that. Turns out, we never did."...
No, they never did. And soon the whole world knew it.
[ADDENDUM: Here's an interesting--although perhaps biased from the Right--look at how Carter contributed to Khomeini's rise. Note something that caught my eye: the role of our old friend Ramsey Clark (second from last paragraph in the "Iranian Voice" piece). Note, also, the role of the State Department.]
For anyone who was alive at the time and old enough to pay attention to the news, the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of Jimmy Carter and the Iranian Revolution is the hostage crisis that occurred less than a year after the installment of the Khomeini regime. We watched, impotently, as America was brought to its knees by a bunch of anti-American Iranian kidnappers and a US President who seemed powerless to do anything about them. And the incident wasn't a short one, either, lasting a Biblical-sounding 444 days.
Carter did do a few things about the crisis, it's true. He froze Iranian assets in the US and halted oil imports, as well as trying diplomacy. In desperation, about six months into the mess, he approved a half-baked and doomed rescue attempt that ended in tragedy and more humiliation for the US (see here for my post about this incident). In the final ignominy for Jimmy (but a relief for the nation), the hostages were freed on the day of Ronald Reagan's inauguration.
Here's more about Carter's reasoning and the strategies behind it during the hostage crisis:
As winter turned to spring, and negotiations failed to produce a deal, frustrated Americans demanded stronger action. "No one can know how much pressure there was on Jimmy to do something," Rosalynn Carter recalled. "I would go out and campaign and come back and say, 'Why don't you do something?' And he said, 'What would you want me to do?' I said, 'Mine the harbors.' He said, 'Okay, suppose I mine the harbors, and they decide to take one hostage out every day and kill him. What am I going to do then?'"
Based on that evidence, I'd prefer Rosalynn to have been in charge. Carter's mindset was zero tolerance for even the possibility of a hostage being killed. His basic orientation was pacifist, and the hostage crisis revealed him to the world as an ineffectual and timid leader. By extrapolation, his role implied that the United States was the same. And, for the moment at least, it was.
It's easy to pay attention to dramatic events such as the hostage crisis, which thrust themselves into nearly everyone's consciousness in a way that could hardly be ignored. It's much easier, however, to ignore the more subtle, far less widely-covered events that led up to the Shah's downfall and Khomeini's rise, events in which President Carter played a large role as well.
Perhaps, as I wrote yesterday, no policy of the Shah's in his final years in power could have stopped the steamroller of discontent with his policies and the increasing support for the mullahs. After all, the Iranians knew what they disliked about the Shah, and there was something with which everyone could find fault. The Shah was brought down by an unholy and bizarre alliance, a trio made of three groups with beliefs that utterly contradicted those of the other two-- civil libertarians, socialists, and totalitarian Islamists. Each group had reasons to dislike the Shah, and each of them calculated that they'd be the only ones left standing in the end. But there was room for only one winner, and that turned out to be the mullahs.
So maybe Carter's pre-Revolutionary policies towards the Shah weren't all that important in bringing about the latter's downfall. Or maybe they were. What were those policies?
First, a bit of background. The Shah had been a staunch ally of the US for his lengthy reign (see this for some background. Yes, it's Wikipedia, but it seems fairly straightforward and quite detailed). A particularly complex (and controversial) event in US-Iranian relations involved the Shah's cooperation with the Eisenhower administration in a 1953 coup (or, to be technical, a counter-coup) against Mossadegh, the elected Prime Minister of Iran who was suspected at the time of being a Communist sympathizer .
The Shah lived in what's known as a "rough neighborhood." This meant that, in order to implement the modernization of Iran, he felt he needed to be harsh in dealing with the opposition. Jimmy Carter was dedicated to the cause of spreading human rights throughout the world, and he decided to put pressure to bear on the Shah to expand civil liberties and relax his policies towards those in his country who were against him.
Carter threatened the Shah with cutting arms shipments, and in response:
The Shah...released 357 political prisoners in February, 1977. But lifting the lid of repression even slightly encouraged the Shah's opponents. An organization of writers and publishers called for freedom of thought, and 64 lawyers called for the abolition of military tribunals. Merchants wrote letters requesting more freedom from government controls. Some people took to the streets, perhaps less fearful of being shot to death, and they clashed with police. A group of 120 lawyers joined together to publicize SAVAK torture and to monitor prison conditions. Dissident academics formed a group called the National Organization of University Teachers, and they joined students in demanding academic freedom. Political dissidents started disseminating more openly their semi-clandestine publications.
As events spiraled out of control, there were demonstrations throughout Iran. Police reacted harshly, and many protestors were killed, which led to more demonstrations and more deaths, which led to--well, you get the idea.
A genie of dissent had been unleashed--a valid one, because there was much to protest. But as things escalated, and the Shah eventually lost the support of the army and the police (a turning point), few seemed to be prescient enough to predict what forces would replace his regime--not what was hoped for, but what was likely to do so. There were only three choices, and two of them--the mullahs and the Marxists--could reasonably be expected to be far more repressive than the Shah.
Jimmy Carter was probably sincere in wishing that his pressure on the Shah would lead to greater civil liberties, not fewer. But if so, it was one of the gravest miscalculations in history. Be careful what you wish for.
On New Years Eve of 1977:
President Carter toasted the Shah at a state dinner in Tehran, calling him "an island of stability' in the troubled Middle East....Did the Carter administration "lose" Iran, as some have suggested? Gaddis Smith might have put it best: "President Carter inherited an impossible situation -- and he and his advisers made the worst of it." Carter seemed to have a hard time deciding whether to heed the advice of his aggressive national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wanted to encourage the Shah to brutally suppress the revolution, or that of his more cautious State Department, which suggested Carter reach out to opposition elements in order to smooth the transition to a new government. In the end he did neither, and suffered the consequences.
Even after it became known that the Shah was suffering from cancer, President Carter was reluctant to allow him entry to the United States, for fear of reprisal against Americans still in Iran. But in October, when the severity of the Shah's illness became known, Carter relented on humanitarian grounds. "He went around the room, and most of us said, 'Let him in.'" recalls Vice President Walter Mondale. "And he said, 'And if [the Iranians] take our employees in our embassy hostage, then what would be your advice?' And the room just fell dead. No one had an answer to that. Turns out, we never did."...
No, they never did. And soon the whole world knew it.
[ADDENDUM: Here's an interesting--although perhaps biased from the Right--look at how Carter contributed to Khomeini's rise. Note something that caught my eye: the role of our old friend Ramsey Clark (second from last paragraph in the "Iranian Voice" piece). Note, also, the role of the State Department.]
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