Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 238

Even Forgotten History Matters

Slogging his way through Norman Davies’ two-volume history of Poland, Dale Favier wonders if it’s really worth it, given how many of the book’s details he’ll forget. Why he answers in the affirmative:

When I was young and foolish, I thought I could learn all of history and have it all available in my head, or at least a lot of European history, or at least a lot of English history. Now I know that almost all this stuff will fall right back out of my head again. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not worth doing. There is another kind of knowledge building up, a synoptic sense of what people have done and will do, what sorts of organizations have succeeded, what sorts have failed, and some of the common notions of why. It’s all terribly vague and unsatisfactory, and the more you read the more you realize how variable and subjective the notions are, but as it accumulates I find that I’m far less likely to be fooled by the demagogues and politicians of the moment. I’m no better at predicting the future than anyone else, but I recognize the rashness of betting on my predictions better than most. History has a way of wriggling out of what people expect.

And there is a sense one gets for the fullness, depth, complexity of any one place and its people. It’s like looking at pond water under a microscope: suddenly you become aware of the incredible richness and diversity referred to — but also concealed — by a name like “water” or “Poland.” … That, too, is worth knowing: and you gradually obtain the conviction that the parts of the world that have not yet been given thousand-page histories by an Oxford or Harvard don are every bit as diverse and complex. You may not have looked at them yet through the microscope; you don’t know what’s there; but you know that if you did, they would resolve into new worlds and new constellations of sub-worlds. That, I guess, is what you really gain by reading these fat narrative histories: a sense for just how large the human universe is.

A New Iraqi Refugee Crisis, Ctd

Hayes Brown provides an update on the growing humanitarian emergency:

[T]he United Nations on Wednesday upgraded Iraq’s crisis to a level 3 humanitarian disaster — the most severe rating it has. “Now we’re focused on delivering water, food and essential items,” Colin MacInnes, deputy head of UNICEF in Iraq, told the Washington Post. “Iraq already has a level 3 polio disaster,” MacInnes continued, and as Syria across the border is also in the midst of a level 3 disaster, “that means we have currently three level 3 disasters that are affecting the country.”

“At the present moment, we have a very serious confrontation and we have meaningful levels of internal displacement. We are not yet witnessing a massive refugee outflow and I think it will depend on whether this crisis can be addressed effectively in the near future or whether it will be a protracted conflict,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres at a press briefing on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, for neighboring countries like Jordan, refugees from the original Syrian conflict remain a huge burden:

Tensions between Syrians and Jordanians are still a worry. Eighty percent of Syrian refugees live in Jordan’s cities and towns, where, since they are banned from working, they take black market jobs for low wages. The government says this has pushed down pay for Jordanians too. “The potential seeds of conflict are really there,” says Musa Shteiwi, who heads the University of Jordan’s Centre for Strategic Studies. A poll he ran late last year found that 73% of respondents were against hosting more refugees—up from 64% in 2012.

Jordan is asking donors to give it the $1 billion it says it will spend on additional security over the next three years thanks to the refugee influx—about as much as it has asked for education and health services for the refugees. It may also like to see a larger proportion of Syrians in controlled areas such as Azraq. Plans are already underway for a third refugee camp. Current urban dwellers are unlikely to be moved, but newcomers will find it harder to leave the camps.

This Fight Is About More Than ISIS

Marc Lynch explores how Arab supporters of Syria’s rebels see the conflict in Iraq:

The popular Al Jazeera personality Faisal al-Qasim recently observed to his 1.5 million Twitter followers that the Syrian and Iraqi revolutions were examples of “dressing up a popular revolution in terrorist clothes, demonizing it and opening fire on it.” Former Kuwaiti member of parliament Walid al-Tabtabaie, for instance, supports the “Iraqi revolution” while warning that ISIS “has some good people but is penetrated by Iran” and that “the corrupt in Syria can’t be in the interest of Iraq… they will stab you in the back.”

ISIS is a real threat, without question, a savvy and experienced fighting organization with a clear ideology, significant financial resources and a proven ability to attract foreign fighters to its cause. But this Arab counter-narrative shouldn’t be ignored.

The sharp divide between an American debate that focuses exclusively on ISIS and an Arab debate that focuses on a broad Sunni rebellion starkly evokes the similarly skewed discourse in the first few years of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. From 2003 to 2006, U.S. officials and media often reduced the Iraqi insurgency to “al-Qaeda” and regime dead-enders, thus vastly exaggerating the importance of al-Qaeda in Iraq, delegitimating the political grievances of the Sunni community and missing opportunities to divide the insurgency. Heavy-handed, indiscriminate military responses informed by these views helped to fuel the insurgency.

Another major reason this matters:

These Arab narratives about what’s happening in Iraq shouldn’t be taken at face value, but listening carefully to them might help to avoid a counterproductive American foray back into Iraq. Inside Iraq, a broadly based Sunni insurgency, which commands the support of non-ISIS tribes and armed factions, would reinforce the case for why pushing Maliki for serious political accommodation before providing military aid is the right policy (Petraeus, for what it’s worth, agrees).

True, getting rid of him might not solve Iraq’s problems, but the crisis won’t be overcome without significant changes, which he seems highly unlikely to make (and nobody would trust his promises to do so after the crisis has passed). The point is not to appease ISIS, which could care less about such things, but to break the alliance between ISIS and some of its current Iraqi Sunni allies by giving them a reason to opt back into a political system in which they have largely lost faith. On their own, airstrikes and military support of Maliki without the prior delivery of real political change are likely to only push the various strands of the insurgency closer to ISIS. Political reform isn’t a luxury item that can be postponed until the real business of military action has been conducted – it is the key to once again dividing ISIS from those larger and more powerful Sunni forces.

Ali Kheder’s list of “the players actively fighting across Iraq today” further illustrates the folly of viewing the recent bloodshed as merely a fight between the Iraqi government and ISIS.

Does Israel “Pinkwash?” Ctd

Tyler Lopez is dismayed that Palestinian activists still accuse Israel of “pinkwashing” – i.e., using its mostly positive gay rights record to distract from its human rights abuses in the occupied territories – and are discouraging gay tourism to Israel during pride month:

Pinkwashing advocates are trapped in their own gender studies/international relations fantasyland. Legitimately concerned with human rights abuses in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, they have created an entire academic language in order to hype up a concept that draws an unrealistic correlation between their cause and the gay rights movement. Because of this, any LGBTQ person traveling to take part in a gay rights demonstration is a homonationalist, unwittingly part of the pinkwashing agenda. It’s no longer appropriate to label any city as “gay-friendly” or “homophobic,” because, according to pinkwashing activists, pro-gay legislation and LGBTQ visibility aren’t the appropriate barometers with which to measure social change. Gays, perhaps it’s time to book your tickets to Saudi Arabia. (Don’t worry about finding a hotel; if you’re openly gay, the Saudi government will be happy to provide accommodations.)

Of course, LGBTQ rights aren’t the only marker of social change or human rights. But suggesting that they’re separate from any other universal human right is dangerous. An accusation of pinkwashing presumes that gay human rights causes are less salient than Palestinian human rights causes, when in fact they’re all equal.

I rendered a similar verdict on “pinkwashing” way back in 2011. I see no reason to change my mind. It is perfectly possible to decry the brutal occupation and the relentless settlement building of the Israeli government in the West Bank while also celebrating Israel’s amazing commitment to gay freedom. In its region, Israel isn’t just an exception; it truly is a shining city on a hill. The tragedy of Israel is that so much of its democratic energy has been diverted into the oppression of another people. I favor engagement, not disengagement; argument, not sanctions.

(Photo: Russian tourists attend the annual gay pride parade in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv on June 13, 2014. By Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images.)

About That Iraqi Democracy: Forget About It

One might be forgiven for thinking that the catastrophic war in Iraq was designed to bring democracy and sovereignty to that nation after a brutal, foul dictatorship. That, after all, was what we were told from the get-go, along with the alleged threat of non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Many service-members died to bring that democracy about; almost 200,000 Iraqis died in the bloody transition. And they elected a prime minister; and re-elected him in fair elections. And yet now, courtesy of the CIA’s unofficial spokesman, David Ignatius, we hear that Maliki is nonetheless going to be deposed by the US:

President Obama sensibly appears to be leaning toward an alternative policy that would replace Maliki with a less sectarian and polarizing prime minister — and then begin using U.S. military power on behalf of this more broadly based government. The White House is already mulling a list of alternative prime ministers.

So the whole pretext of Iraqi democracy was a sham, and we now know this without a shadow of a doubt. The next leader of Iraq will be picked in Washington, and not by the people of that country. And the right of an elected government to choose its own policies and direct its own governance – for good or ill – has been effectively rendered null and void. There’s never any welfare reform with imperial welfare. They are to be dependents for ever. And, of course, the CIA’s previous regime changes in the Middle East – Iran, anyone? – do not even merit a mention. Just because they have screwed it up every single time doesn’t mean they don’t have the absolute right to screw it up again. Because the residue of their own disasters can be used to justify yet more ones. Just ask Fred Hiatt.

As with most imperial projects – and what other word can be used to describe the embedded assumptions in Ignatius’s column? -  Washington will use local power-brokers to implement its designs. Ignatius is perfectly candid about the rawness of the imperialism involved:

The people who will pull the plug on Maliki are Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and other Iraqi kingmakers. The United States should push them to signal unmistakably that Maliki is finished. And they must do so in coordination with Iran, which will effectively have a veto on the next Iraqi prime minister, whether we like it or not.

Notice the lack of any subjunctive. The Kurdish leader will do what he is told; the Sunni tribes must cooperate with Iran. This is the mindset of the CIA, a beyond-the-rule-of-law organization that has done more damage to this country’s interests and values than any other organ of state. The contempt of these imperialists (who brought torture into the American bloodstream) for the autonomy of any other country is a striking as their contempt for American values.

So Ignatius admits that this illegal intervention needs “political cover”from other interested parties in the region (all of whom have ulterior motives and almost all of whom have contributed to this burgeoning sectarian warfare). And the goal now is to intervene simultaneously in Syria’s civil war, to the tune of training up to 10,000 “Syrian moderates” (try not to laugh out loud or burst simultaneously into tears).

And the entire point of this exercise is to get another war up and running – and soon – in Syria and Iraq:

Targeting ISIS perhaps could begin with its safe havens and infiltration routes along the Syria-Iraq border, where there’s less chance of hitting Sunni tribesmen. “We know where their base camps and training camps are, which is where we can start — and it’s important to start,” says U.S. Central Command adviser Derek Harvey.

Yes, “it’s important to start”. Sure, we don’t know where any of this could lead – but the one thing we have learned this past decade and a half is to launch a war first and figure out those questions later. Intervening in two sectarian countries just adds to the challenge, I guess. It’s so good to know someone advising Central Command has absorbed the lessons of the past so well.

I’m distressed by the news out of DC and alarmed by Obama’s presser, but I haven’t given up on the president yet.

Ignatius is voicing the CIA’s agenda, as usual, not necessarily the president’s. In his presser today,

Mr. Obama insisted that the United States would not press for Mr. Maliki’s replacement by a new leader. “It’s not our job to choose Iraq’s leaders,” he said. But he added, “Right now, there’s too much suspicion, there’s too much mistrust.”

And yet 300 military “advisers” and the possibility of air-strikes is how wars start. And the president has been woefully supine when it comes to confronting the lawless incompetence of the CIA for the past six years; and once military strikes begin, we’re back to square one, trying to control a country we do not understand and cannot master, taking the bait of all sorts of interested parties, who will use us as they have used us in the past to promote their own agendas. The president also signaled he is leery of Ignatius’ utopian notion of 10,000 “Syrian moderates”:

He cited the difficulties in deciding whether to arm members of the opposition. “If you have former farmers or teachers or pharmacists who now are taking up opposition against a battle-hardened regime,” he said, “how quickly can you get them trained?”

And how do you know that after they’ve been trained and equipped, they won’t turn around on a dime like the Iraqi army just did? This is the Arab Middle East. There is no trust there. And there are no reliable allies.

In my view, this is not a conflict in which you can half-intervene. By some miracle, we extricated ourselves at great loss. And yet the breezy tone in Ignatius’s column and the decision by Obama to send Special Forces advisers to Iraq suggest something more ominous still. So let me reiterate something: in my view, the one thing Obama pledged never to do he must never do. For me, re-entering the Iraq war – which is what US-targeted airstrikes with Special Forces on the ground against ISIS would do – is a deal-breaker. In one move, it could obliterate Obama’s entire foreign policy legacy of deleveraging the empire and effectively treat the American people as irrelevant. It would also instantly make the United States a prime target for these religious fanatics.

So this is truly a test of the president’s mettle. Will he stand up for the American people and follow his own instincts or cave to the CIA and the hyperventilating Beltway? His presser today both reassured but also worried me. I worry because I have learned the hard way that the elites in Washington like to treat the world as a garden to tend, they have never seen a crisis they don’t think they can solve, and they love to imagine themselves in the vanguard of the good and the true, even if all their recent interventions have led to mass murder and lies. This goes for Democrats as well as Republicans. And when the imperial complex sees a new opportunity to enlarge its power and money and relevance, they tend to have their way. Because they always have their way, and until we elect someone with the spine to rescue us from this eternal, corrosive, imperial quicksand, they always will.

Terror Winning War On Terror

Ian Bremmer captions the above chart from RAND (pdf):

Since 2007, the number of attacks by al Qaeda and its affiliates has risen nearly tenfold, with violence levels highest in Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Somalia. Unlike a decade ago, core al Qaeda has been involved in very few plots, but its branches have more than made up the difference. Between 2012 and 2013, both al Qaeda in Iraq and the Syria-Civil-War-born Jabhat al-Nusra quadrupled their attacks.

This war is real and metastasizing, as the Arab world continues on its rough road to what might be modernity. And I should reiterate one lesson I draw from this. Our previous tactics – invasion, occupation and torture – clearly failed. Drones have become a two-edged sword in terms of fomenting as much terror as they might destroy. We’re left with domestic security, which means to say the NSA. I worry almost as much as some others about the potential for abuse in this country’s vast intelligence and spying networks. But they exist for a reason; and they are primarily defensive. They exploit our core advantage over Islamist mass-murderers: our technological superiority. In this long war, which will wax and wane as the Arab and Muslim world grows and adapts, a better-monitored and better safe-guarded NSA is our friend and not our enemy.

Our Cold Civil War Intensifies, Ctd

In a shrewd and worried column, Clive Crook thinks Americans’ left/right social and geographic isolation has made productive ideological debate close to impossible and poisonous partisan discourse even worse. He cites a Stanford study that goes even further:

Using data from a variety of sources, we demonstrate that both Republicans and Democrats increasingly dislike, even loathe, their opponents.

We also find that partisan affect is inconsistently (and perhaps artifactually) founded in policy attitudes. The more plausible account lies in the nature of political campaigns; exposure to messages attacking the out-group reinforces partisans’ biased views of their opponents.

This makes a bunch of sense when you think about it. What is the primary form of communication to low-information voters? Political ads. What do they do? Intensify contempt for various candidates along stereotypical partisan lines. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam, and cut yourself off from anyone with a different viewpoint, and you have our gridlocked society. And all the Supreme Court seems to do is usher in yet more money to finance yet more of this poison; and all the media seems able to do is reach for ratings by exploiting these emotions.

The Best Of The Dish Today

As summer kicked in, we continued our deep dive into Iraq today. No US airstrikes, mercifully. An intransigent sectarian in Maliki. The case for partition. The options with Iran. Turkey’s strange, paranoid complacency. Oh, and the now-familiar but still shocking gall of Paul Wolfowitz.

If you want your eyes open to a different take on the transgender experience, this email is quite something. If you can’t believe the deranged Benghazi fixation on the right, you’re not alone. Plus: another formerly sympathetic observer gives up on Israel’s occupation. And this optical-illusion video deserves some sort of award.

The most popular post of the day was Obama Caught Another Terrorist and the Right Can’t Handle It. Next up: Paul Wolfowitz’s Noble Lies.

Many of today’s posts were updated with your emails – read them all here.  You can always leave your unfiltered comments at our Facebook page and @sullydish. 17 more readers became subscribers today. You can join them here - and get access to all the readons and Deep Dish – for a little as $1.99 month. One writes:

I don’t have a comment for your thread, nothing unique that hasn’t been covered on The Dish since the recent Iraq crisis began. With that said, I work in the counterterrorism community, where one of my responsibilities is to shape counterterrorism policy for the National Security Council staff. I have the full range of American and allied intelligence reporting to shape my work, which is essential. At the same time, I also look to The Dish nearly every hour for the ongoing political, moral, ethical, and historical debate on the Iraq crisis. I could do a good job with the former, I can only discharge my duties in a truly responsible way with the latter.

You need not post any of this – I recognize it’s hardly interesting – I just felt a note of thanks to you and the team was appropriate. Yes, the president and other people far more powerful than me are fans, but so are the mid-level civil servants working on Saturday mornings. I’m proud to be a long-term subscriber. Please keep going.

See you in the morning.

(Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty.)

The Rarest Of Them All

“Rarity itself has become very rare,” argues Rex Sorgatz:

With access to infinite bytes of media, describing a digital object as “rare” sticks out like a lumbering anachronism. YouTube — the official home of lumbering anachronisms — excels at these extraordinarily contradictory moments. Here, for instance, are the Beatles, performing a “VERY RARE” rendition of “Happy Birthday.” That sonic obscurity has been heard 2.3 million times. And here [see above] is a “Rare Acoustic” version of Slash performing “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” Over 26 million have devoured this esoteric Axl-less morsel.

More? Nearly 5 million people have heard Bob Marley opine “No Woman No Cry” (“version rare”), while a bit of conspiratorial Area 51 footage (“RARE,” of course) has racked up 1.5 million views. And some Woody Allen standup from 1965 (excitedly: “RARE!”) has garnered a half-million views, while double that number have endured a Marlon Brando screentest (prosaically: “Rare”).

He concludes:

“Rare” is such an quizzical descriptor, a blatant contradiction of the very nature of digital culture.  Rarity describes a state of scarcity, and as we enter a proto-post-scarcity economy, digital stuff defies such shortages. Things are no longer rare; they are either popular or unpopular.

Life Of An Obit Writer

Ann Wroe writes the obituaries for The Economist. Isabelle Fraser, a fan, spoke to Wroe about what the job is like:

Readers often write in to complain, “especially when it’s an evil man. They hate that. They do think, the Americans especially, that it’s a sign of honouring someone, a sign of respect.” Wroe says that when she receives such letters, “I write back and say that all human life is interesting.”

Those characters who make for the best tales are usually people who are totally unknown; often they are suggested by readers. One such person was Marie Smith, the last person to speak Eyak, an Alaskan language. “She was the only person left who remembered all the different words for all the parts of a spruce tree. And nobody is ever going to see a spruce tree in that way again. I love it when there is an end of a whole tradition or culture: it is the last glimpse we are going to get first-hand of something that’s gone.”

Wroe’s attitude about death is refreshing, allowing her to face it every week, albeit from a certain distance. “I don’t think of dead as dead, that’s the thing, and therefore it doesn’t trouble me. It’s an absence, if you like. It’s not the end.” She notes how “I never mention how people die, because I don’t think that’s important at all. I think an obituary is a celebration of a life.”