Memo to George Will
Yo Willy!:
The people of Virginia elected Jim Webb to the United States Senate. If that bothers you then, as the Vice President would say, go f*** yourself.
Since you don’t seem to know the difference between boorish behavior and patriotism, allow me to remind you.
Here is what patriotism looks like:
And here is what boorish behavior looks like:
And some more of what boorish behavior looks like:
Literally yours,
Mash
The Bush Administration has effectively signed Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s Death Warrant. The memo from National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley that undermined the Bush-Maliki summit in Jordan has now made Nouri al-Maliki a marked man in Iraq. Whether that was the intention of the leaked memo is unclear, but it will certainly be its effect, regardless of whether Maliki meets Mr. Bush or not.
Most of the reporting on the memo has focused on the aspects which have called into question Mr. Maliki’s commitment or his competence. Those parts of the memo may have been designed to embarrass Mr. Maliki, however the parts that deal with what the United States wants Mr. Maliki to do are the most explosive. It is these latter parts that most likely contributed to Mr. Maliki’s snub of Mr. Bush.
The memo proposes that Maliki create a new political support base independent of the Dawa party and Moqtada al-Sadr. The memo proposes steps that Maliki should take, as well as support that the United States will provide, to achieve this end:
There is a range of actions that Maliki could take to improve the information he receives, demonstrate his intentions to build an Iraq for all Iraqis and increase his capabilities. … Maliki should:
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Bring his political strategy with Moktada al-Sadr to closure and bring to justice any JAM actors that do not eschew violence;
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If Maliki is willing to move decisively on the actions above, we can help him in a variety of ways. We should be willing to:
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If it is Maliki’s assessment that he does not have the capability — politically or militarily — to take the steps outlined above, we will need to work with him to augment his capabilities. We could do so in two ways. First, we could help him form a new political base among moderate politicians from Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and other communities. Ideally, this base would constitute a new parliamentary bloc that would free Maliki from his current narrow reliance on Shia actors. (This bloc would not require a new election, but would rather involve a realignment of political actors within the Parliament). In its creation, Maliki would need to be willing to risk alienating some of his Shia political base and may need to get the approval of Ayatollah Sistani for actions that could split the Shia politically. Second, we need to provide Maliki with additional forces of some kind.
This approach would require that we take steps beyond those laid out above, to include:
Actively support Maliki in helping him develop an alternative political base. We would likely need to use our own political capital to press moderates to align themselves with Maliki’s new political bloc;
Consider monetary support to moderate groups that have been seeking to break with larger, more sectarian parties, as well as to support Maliki himself as he declares himself the leader of his bloc and risks his position within Dawa and the Sadrists;
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We should waste no time in our efforts to determine Maliki’s intentions and, if necessary, to augment his capabilities. We might take the following steps immediately:
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Tell Maliki that we understand that he is working his own strategy for dealing with the Sadrists and that:
• you have asked General Casey to support Maliki in this effort
• it is important that we see some tangible results in this strategy soon;
Nouri al-Maliki is being asked to sever his ties with the Dawa party to which he owes his loyalties for most of his life and to undercut his power base by throwing Moqtada al-Sadr under a bus. To add to this fanciful agenda, Hadley suggests this absurd gem at the end of the memo:
If Maliki seeks to build an alternative political base:
• Press Sunni and other Iraqi leaders (especially Hakim) [Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Maliki rival] to support Maliki
• Engage Sistani to reassure and seek his support for a new nonsectarian political movement.
I will just make two brief observations here. First, trading Moqtada al-Sadr for Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, SCIRI and the Badr Brigade is not exactly moving in the right direction. I should add that al-Hakim was the head of SCIRI’s Badr Brigade and that SCIRI is Iranian backed and believes that Iraq should be ruled as a Shia Islamic state. Second, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani does not exactly believe in a nonsectarian political movement. He believes that Iraq should be rightly ruled by the Shia majority.
The notion that Maliki wants to be Washington’s man in Baghdad is misplaced and it has been misplaced from the start. Maliki is a prominent member of the Dawa party which has a long history of anti-Western activities. When Maliki was first chosen as Prime Minister in April of this year, amid all the euphoria, I wrote the following:
Lost in all the euphoria at seeing progress in Iraq is whether or not this is progress in the right direction for Iraq or the United States. I had written in an earlier article that the likely replacement for al-Jaafari would either come from his own Dawa party or from the SCIRI. I had also suggested that neither outcome would be a positive outcome. We now have our answer. Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been replaced by another Dawa party member albeit one that is more hard-line. In fact while Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been the titular head of the Shiite alliance, al-Maliki has done all the heavy lifting. It is no surprise then that he would ascend to the Premiership.
Jawad al-Maliki has been the spokesman for the Dawa party and the Shiite alliance. He was involved in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution and more significantly was a member of the de-Baathification committee set up by the United States. He has been a critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has close ties with the Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army.
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After pushing hard for al-Jaafari’s ouster, the United States has gotten a more pro-Iranian Dawa party member. We have certainly come full circle in the Middle East. We have put in power in Iraq a person Saddam Hussein had sentenced to death. We have put in power a person who was involved in terrorist activities against not only Iraq but also Western and American targets in the Middle East. We have put in power a party, the Dawa party, that invented the modern suicide car bombing – a party that was involved in bombing the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and in the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut.
We have brought democracy to the Middle East. We have handed over Iraq to an Iranian nurtured and funded Islamist alliance (Dawa and SCIRI). I do not believe this is what the American people bargained for when we embarked on the invasion of Iraq. If we are holding out the hope that these Islamist parties whose stated goal is to bring about an Islamist revolution in Iraq will somehow smell the sweet scent of Democracy and become torchbearers of freedom and liberty, we are likely to be as disappointed as Dick Cheney was when we were not greeted as liberators. This is a far cry from the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction and the defeat of al Qaeda.
There was no reason to suspect, even back then, that Maliki would actively work against al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army. Unsurprisingly, the Bush Administration ignored reality in pursuit of a fantastical agenda of misplaced hope and ignorant ideology.
Today, having failed to ride Maliki to "victory" in Iraq, the Administration has chosen to undermine him. They have called him out as their patsy. They have designated him as their man to break apart the Shia hold on Iraq. I doubt that those who are the targets of Washington’s plan, the Dawa party and Moqtada al-Sadr, will take too kindly to Mr. Maliki upon his return to Baghdad. With the leaked memo, Washington has ensured Mr. Maliki’s political demise, and perhaps his death as well. Mr. Maliki’s demise will also ensure that future Iraqi leaders will keep their distance from Washington, lest they suffer the same fate.
So, it is unsurprising that Mr. Maliki had no appetite for dinner with Mr. Bush in Amman. When he finally does sit down to breakfast with Mr. Bush, it may very well be his last meal.
The talk of Washington is the Iraq Study Group. Everyone, including the Democrats, is waiting for the two beltway sages, James Baker and Lee Hamilton, to rescue them from the chaos in Iraq. You will recall that some time ago Washington was eagerly awaiting a similar sounding group, the Iraq Survey Group, to rescue George W Bush from his temper tantrum in Iraq, although in a different way. The Iraq Survey Group failed to find any Weapons of Mass Destruction (remember them?) buried in the Iraqi desert, so now its successor, the Iraq Study Group will try to dig out George W Bush’s legacy from the sands of Iraq.
George W Bush, however, is not so easily saved. Rumor has it that Barney has blessed the "stay the course" strategy in Iraq. While others see civil war in Iraq, Mr. Bush and Barney see a mission in need of completion:
President Bush, rejecting what he called "pessimistic" assessments of his Middle East policy, pledged Tuesday to make necessary changes in Iraq but vowed never to pull out U.S. troops before completing the mission there.
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Bush said, "We will continue to be flexible, and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there’s one thing I’m not going to do. I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."
The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are "part of a struggle between moderation and extremism that is unfolding across the broader Middle East," he said. "And in this struggle, we can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren."
Apparently, the mission in Iraq has been "accomplished" but not yet "completed".
Save Mr. Bush’s determination to achieve "victory", the parlor game in Washington is all about when the United States will withdraw and how much damage will be caused, both to the United States and to Iraq, before the withdrawal takes place. Now that the mainstream media has started calling the Iraq Civil War a civil war, we can also now discuss what the possible outcomes of this war will be and what role, if any, the United States should play in that outcome.
In order to not be left out of the parlor game, I offer below my thoughts on the future of Iraq.
Last summer Harvard Professor Monica Toft discussed the three possible ways civil wars can end in an article for the Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project:
Civil wars end in one of three ways: (1) negotiated settlement; (2) partition; or (3) military victory. U.S. support for any of these options comes with considerable costs and only a slim possibility of an outcome that advances U.S. interests beyond what they were at the close of Saddam Hussein’s rule in April of 2003.
She does not see a negotiated settlement as a long term solution in Iraq:
In a negotiated settlement, warring factions agree both to end violence and to become partners in a new government. Although negotiated settlements are the most popular policy option (promising high short-term benefits and low risk), they may not be best if we want a permanent settlement to civil war.
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A negotiated settlement is what the U.S. has attempted to implement for the last two years in Iraq and it has failed. The process of writing and adopting a constitution and electing a president and parliament were all designed to give each of Iraq’s different communities a say in the government. Although the Kurds and the Shiites fully participated in the process, the Sunnis did not.
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A key factor in the failure of negotiated settlements has been that both sides maintain a capacity to harm each other by force of arms, and because the fighting has not reached a clear outcome, both sides can claim legitimacy in their pre-cease-fire resort to violence. Negotiated settlements by their very design leave a state’s offices divided, both in terms of physical infrastructure and human capital. … The bottom line is that most often civil wars ended by negotiated settlement re-ignite within five years, often leading to escalated violence and destruction (and not inconsequently increasing levels of authoritarianism). This is Iraq today.
She also does not see partition as a viable option in Iraq:
Theoretically, partition is an ideal way to end a civil war and keep it ended; especially when that violence involves identity groups that live in largely separate enclaves.
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In effect, Iraq is becoming partitioned today, with the Kurds maintaining their grip on the north and the Sunnis and Shiites consolidating their control over the west and south respectively. The unmixing of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad is only consolidating the populations into concentrated and mutually hostile enclaves. Concentrated enclaves turn out to be one of the most dangerous settlement patterns of ethnic and religious groups in terms of the likelihood of violence and civil war. Think of Chechnya, which continues to fight Russia for independence.
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Partition of Iraq would work only if two conditions held: (1) the parties were consolidated into internationally recognized states and Iraq’s resources were distributed in a way that made each state economically viable; and (2) the partition into independent states was enforced by a generation of occupation by skilled and politically well-supported troops (preferably Muslims). Given that Iraq’s Sunni minority has been implicated in decades of persecution of both Kurds and Shiites, getting Kurds and Shiites to agree to support creation of a viable Sunni state will be difficult to achieve. Moreover, one can hardly imagine a third party both capable and willing to maintain an occupation of Iraq for twenty years to insure the interests of each of the parties, but this is what would need to be done. … Finally, given the long-standing reluctance of the international community to support partition as a general solution to civil wars, the U.S. is unlikely to find much support for partition from its allies. Regional actors will be even more intransigent: Kurds, for example, currently inhabit four of the region’s states (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey). These bordering states would steadfastly resist the creation of an independent Kurdistan.
She sees victory by one of the warring sides as a more lasting option:
A final option is military victory: one side in civil war – rebels or incumbents – demonstrably defeats the other side by force of arms. Military victory is not only the most common type of civil war outcome historically, but also the one which most often results in enduring peace: military victories are far less likely to break down than are negotiated settlements.
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The U.S. can choose to support either the Sunnis or Shiites. Supporting either side to achieve victory would be difficult and costly in terms of time, taking as long as a decade to succeed given Iraq’s porous borders and the support each of the sides receives from across those borders.
Supporting one of the two sides in the civil war comes at a cost of tipping the regional balance of power either toward the Arabs or toward Iran.
Finally, she suggests the throwaway option of pulling out of Iraq and letting the chips fall where they may. She also suggests a way that Mr. Bush could walk away and declare victory:
Having gone to Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein, the U.S. has discovered that what the people of Iraq wanted most was to be free of Saddam Hussein; but once free (a negative objective), positive objectives varied. The Shiites wanted representation in the control of Iraq commensurate with their population (and many wanted revenge for the persecution they suffered under Sunni rule). The Sunnis wanted to maintain their preferential status. The Kurds wanted their own state. To the extent that the war in Iraq, under U.S. auspices, has become a civil war, the civil war itself represents the success of a U.S. policy of bringing freedom to the people of Iraq.
Although Professor Toft’s listing of the three outcomes of civil wars is sound, she only discusses the three options in the context of an American occupation. She does not discuss fully the throwaway option of an American pullout, and what the three possible outcomes in Iraq then look like. To me, the latter discussion is much more interesting and more relevant since the United States has, dare I say, decided to pull out of Iraq.
I think there is a strong case to be made that the American presence in Iraq is fueling the civil war by delaying its resolution. That is not to say that the United States has effective control of the situation on the ground – it does not, but the presence of American troops gives the respective parties cover to arm and consolidate control of areas of the country. Without a doubt, the American presence guarantees that the Kurds in the north are able to consolidate their hold on Kirkuk and beef up the peshmerga. The American presence also allows the Shia factions to consolidate power in the various arms of the government, especially the security forces. The American forces also act as a buffer between the Shia and the Sunni by providing some measure of protection to the Sunni community to arm and consolidate their power in the western parts of Iraq. The American presence has also allowed the systematic ethnic cleansing of Iraq by Shia, Sunni and the Kurds. The ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods in Baghdad and other parts of the country has now effectively drawn geographical battle lines in Iraq’s civil war. The American presence also holds together a fractious Shia coalition that would otherwise collapse, and probably needs to if Iraq is to survive as a nation.
It seems to me that it is essential that the United States pull out of Iraq. After an American pullout, the Iraqi civil war may start to resolve itself. The Iraqi civil war has regional implications. Those regional forces can, without the constraints of American occupation, begin to pull Iraq toward a resolution.
As cited above, one possible outcome is military victory by one warring side. The conventional wisdom is that if the Americans leave the Shia will prevail in a civil war by virtue of their majority. I do not believe that is likely to occur for three reasons. First, the Sunni Arab countries of the region would see a Shia victory in Iraq as an expansion of Iranian hegemony into Arab territory. Without an American presence, the Sunni Arabs are likely to get significant support from regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. The risk of a regional conflagration is likely to dampen any hopes of a Shia military victory in Iraq. Second, the Shia in Iraq are fractured between pro-Iranian groups such as SCIRI and more nationalistic Shia such as the Sadrists. Moqtada al-Sadr, like his father the Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, represents an Iraqi nationalist Shia movement. Sadr’s Shia movement and the Mahdi Army are likely to come into open conflict with the Iranian backed SCIRI and the Badr Brigade when the American occupation ends. Al Maliki’s Dawa Party sits in the uncomfortable middle between Sadr and SCIRI while being at the mercy of both. With an American exit, the Dawa Party is likely to see its fortunes dwindle. Lastly, the Shia cannot prevail over both the Sunni and the Kurds. Any military victory by the Shia would have to accept an independent state in the Kurdish north.
The other possible outcome of a civil war is partition. However, any partition of Iraq that leaves the Kurds with an oil-rich independent country in the north of Iraq will be fiercely opposed by Turkey, and to a lesser extent by Iran and Syria. Turkey has between 25 to 30 millions Kurds who have been long persecuted. Any Kurdish country to Turkey’s east will endanger Turkish territorial integrity and will be a non-starter. The Sunnis in the west and center of Iraq also cannot form a viable country without having access to the oil rich north and south of Iraq. There is no three country map that can be carved out of Iraq that does not deny one of the group’s much needed oil revenue.
The only remaining outcome for Iraq is then a negotiated settlement. The negotiated settlement may however come after an attempt at all out military victory is fought to a stalemate. The negotiated settlement will happen not because it is the preferred outcome, but because it is the only viable outcome. A negotiated settlement will certainly have to include the major regional players such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. The negotiated settlement will come after realization by the Arab states, and acceptance by Iran, that Iraq is, and historically has been, the Arab bulwark against Persian influence. Iran will find once again that the Iraqi Shia are not Iran’s fifth column in Iraq. An American departure from Iraq will eventually lead to a restoration of the balance of power in the region between the Arabs and the Iranians.
The Kurds of Iraq will once again be denied an independent homeland. But that denial will likely come at a price for Turkey. Turkey may be forced to give autonomy to its Kurds as a condition for Kurdish guarantee of Iraq’s territorial integrity.
The Iraq that is likely to emerge through the meat grinder of civil war will owe its stability to a regional need for stability, not to some gift of freedom given by George W Bush. Ironically, Mr. Bush is likely to see this precarious yet stable Iraq emerge from the ashes of his failed policy. Yet, it will emerge because Mr. Bush will finally have left it alone, and not because of his efforts at playing puppet master to the Arabs.
"Rock The Casbah" is probably the most misunderstood political song of modern times, but like this post it has nothing to do with rock and roll and everything to do with politics and religion…
I don’t often write about Islam directly. The last time I wrote about my views on Islam was over a half a year ago. But I read a post yesterday via Crooks and Liars that I feel I need to address. The post, entitled "Western Muslim Opinion On The War In Iraq", either inadvertently or deliberately puts up the mother of all straw men. The straw man and its attempt to knock it down is in large part the reason we are still in Iraq. We are in Iraq still because for too long the American public has been fed a steady diet of misinformation about the nature of the conflict there – and this post propagates the misinformation.
I am a Muslim, I live in the West, and I have an opinion on the war in Iraq. Given that the title of the post addresses me directly, I feel that I am well positioned to answer it. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I am a Sunni Muslim.
The post, from Eteraz.org, exhorts Muslims to speak out against the methods of Muslims in Iraq:
I have to say, I am severely hurt by what Islam has become in Iraq. In fact, to say that this blatant murdering of civilians by the militants contains any remnants of Islam, is difficult if not impossible. The Islam of the Sunni militants is a theology of anarchy which has no respect for the rules of war, or the values of Islam. The Shi’a themselves are no less. Islam does not stand for total war, but the Sunni and Shi’a militants violate that prescription almost regularly (to the tune of thousands of murders of average Iraqi civilians). We Western Muslims can oppose the American occupation, but we also have to oppose the way the insurgents are brutalizing and defilling life and human dignity.
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The Sunni militants’ version of "insurgency" and "freedomfighting" is non-sensicial; they want not to fight the "occupier" but to kill the occupied. It is the most heinous and disgusting form of "resistance" I have ever seen in my life, or read about. Their strategy is: if we murder enough Iraqi elders, women and children, then the Americans will leave. I beseech Western Muslims to take heed of this. I know you are anti-war, and I know you wish that Americans left Iraq, and I know you think Bush is a liar. I think all these things. But please, for God’s sake, can you at least recognize, that the strategy of "resistance" being employed by the militants is barbaric. I challenge any person to find me any instance in the history of Islam where murdering civilians as a way to resist an opponent was considered legitimate under Islam. There is no such event.
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The "Islamic" thing for the insurgents would be to attack only military targets. If they cannot attack the military targets, then they have lost. These are the rules of Islamic Law. The Shariah doesn’t say that "well, if you can’t attack the military, go ahead and slaughter any one who comes across your way." That’s not Islam. Please recognize that. That’s nihilism. It has no honor. It is not Islamic.
My point is pretty simple: a Muslim that opposes the War in Iraq must also oppose the methods of the insurgents and speak out against them. I don’t care if you think that criticizing the insurgents bolsters the American occupation. If your condemnation of murder is based on political strategy, then I have to say, you need to check your Islam.
The post buys into the meme that Muslims are complicit in the "War on Terror" if somehow they don’t denounce as un-Islamic actions by those designated as "them" in George W Bush’s "War on Terror" in Iraq. It feeds the notion that the Iraq conflict is a part of the "War on Terror" and the "them" is Islam or a "hijacked" version of Islam.
I do not consider it a duty of Muslims to oppose the violence in Iraq as "un-Islamic". The post lays it out: "a Muslim that opposes the War in Iraq must also oppose the methods of the insurgents and speak out against them." Why? Specifically, why Muslims? Who says that Muslims, just like everyone of good conscience, are not horrified by the violence and killings in Iraq? Who says that Muslims are not opposed to this chaos? I feel no inclination to draw a line here between me, a supposed "good" Muslim, and "them", who are the "bad" Muslims in Iraq. Killers and murderers are just that, as they have been throughout history, and I feel no inclination to give them the mantle of Islam, however "bad" their use of it may be. The War in Iraq was not, and is not, a "Clash of Civilizations", and I feel no desire to label it as such. I feel no desire to conflate Iraqis with al Qaeda as "them" as George W Bush’s "we must fight them there so we won’t have to fight them here" slogan implies. Suggesting this conflict has something to do with "what Islam has become in Iraq", as the writer asserts, is a gross misreading of the conflict in Iraq and is the kind of thinking that fuels the remaining support for George W Bush’s ill-advised policy in Iraq.
Iraq has been, since at least March of this year, in a state of civil war. It is a civil war not over religion, but over tribal and sectarian lines. The Shia-Sunni split in today’s civil war is a convenient shorthand but it is not quite accurate. The writer of the post states:
The Sunni militants’ version of "insurgency" and "freedomfighting" is non-sensicial; they want not to fight the "occupier" but to kill the occupied. It is the most heinous and disgusting form of "resistance" I have ever seen in my life, or read about. Their strategy is: if we murder enough Iraqi elders, women and children, then the Americans will leave.
The killing in Iraq right now has very little to do with "resistance" to the occupier. The killing of Shia by Sunnis is not meant to drive the Americans out of Iraq. The American presence in Iraq currently is almost irrelevant. The American invasion and occupation was the catalyst for the civil war, and to that end, it has succeeded spectacularly in destroying civil society in Iraq.
There are a number of conflicts going on in Iraq. There is first the sectarian civil war between the Shia and Sunni Arab communities. There is the struggle for Kirkuk taking place between the Iraqi Arabs and the Kurds (this in many ways is the most intractable of the conflicts facing Iraq). There is a fight emerging between the multiple factions within the Shia community – this is the bloody struggle between the Sadrists and the SCIRI. The government of al Maliki will be a casualty of the battle within the Shia community. There is an Iraqi nationalist insurgency going on against the Americans. And lastly, there is a battle between foreign Islamists and the American forces in Iraq. So, when Iraqis butcher Iraqi, they are settling their own scores – they are not killing Iraqis to expel the Americans. Only people like Dick Cheney in their narcissistic existence believe that Iraqis kill each other because they don’t like him or his boss.
The current Shia-Sunni violence in Iraq is driven by tribal loyalties. It is a political fight and not a religious one. When civil society broke down in Iraq during the American occupation, the country began to disintegrate along tribal and sectarian lines. The so-called debaathification of Iraq essentially decapitated Iraqi civil society – what was left was chaos.
The Shia-Sunni split in Iraq has in many ways come full circle. The Shia-Sunni split in Islam originated in Iraq. The split started as a political and tribal dispute, not a religious one. The dispute is over who should have succeeded Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, as the first caliph (ruler) of the Muslim community. After Muhammad’s death, his father-in-law, Abu Bakr, was elected the first caliph. However, some in the Muslim community felt that Muhammad’s son-in-law (husband to his daughter Fatima), Ali, should have been the first caliph. These followers of Ali, or Shiat Ali (Shia, for short), are the modern day Shia. The Shia believe that the caliphate should pass down the descendants of Muhammad, not through elected position. It is worth noting, at the risk of blasphemy, that Ali is not a direct descendant of Muhammad.
The dispute, between Shia and Sunni, then is all about who should wield political power. It is a tribal dispute between the tribe of Abu Bakr and the tribe of Ali. Its western analogue is the difference between electing your leader and believing that your leader has been divinely ordained, as in western monarchies.
To round out our foray into Islamic history, I should note that the last descendent of Ali was Muhammad al-Mahdi. He is considered the last of the twelve Imams by the Shia. At the age of four, after inheriting the title of Imam, al-Mahdi disappeared. The Shia believe that al-Mahdi did not die, but was "hidden". When al-Mahdi failed to reappear after a few centuries, the Shia chose to elect a supreme Imam from a council of twelve scholars as their spiritual leader. The Shia believe that the twelfth Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, will return some time in the future.
So, in modern day Iraq, the fight between the Shia and the Sunni once again is over political power. To put it crudely, the dispute is over which tribe should rule Iraq after Saddam Hussein. The unresolved tribal dispute that has its origins in Islamic history, continues to rage in Iraq now that civil society has collapsed. In this fight, George W Bush’s "War on Terror" is irrelevant.
[Cross posted on Taylor Marsh]
To all who visit this blog, Happy Thanksgiving. Thanks to those who share their thoughts on this blog and enrich our little virtual community. Thanks to those who read in silence and continue to come back.
We all have much to be thankful for, regardless of our station in life.
I am thankful to have the love of my wife and my daughter. In their often wonderful and sometimes exasperating ways, my daughter and my wife teach me each day about myself and about life, I am thankful for that.
I am thankful for the friends I have. I am thankful for the friends who share good times with me and the friends who stand by me when times are not so good.
I am thankful to my parents for showing me how to get there from here. I will try not to stray too far from the path.
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On this day, we should also remember that we are part of a larger family – the global family. On this day, we who hold little power other than the power of our humanity, stand in solidarity with our extended family.
I think today of Mirza Tahir Hussain who is reunited with his family.
I think today of a little girl named Abeer who died, so brutally and so inhumanely, at the altar of George W Bush’s Freedom Agenda. I think today of the parents in iraq who are left with the grim task of searching morgues to find news of their loved ones.
I think today of my Palestinian friends who are still without country or passport. I think today of the absurdity of people having to live on their own land in refugee camps. I think today of the indifference of those in power to the plight of the Palestinians.
I think today of the children of Darfur who will die a preventable death because the world does not care. I think today of the families in Somalia who have been left to a life of misery because the Freedom Agenda has bigger fish to fry.
I think today about a little girl named Madhabi in Bangladesh who suffers the evils of modern slavery.
I think today of a little boy in Bangladesh named Amman to whom I owe a debt that I cannot repay.
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I think today of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his brother Bobby who lay side by side at Arlington National Cemetery. I think of greatness interrupted.
Today, 43 years and a day after JFK’s assassination, a film about RFK’s assassination, "Bobby", is being released – go see it.
Robert Kennedy, the public servant who I most admire, visited South Africa in 1966 during the worst years of Apartheid. He went to Cape Town on June 6th 1966, exactly two years before his death, and delivered a speech of hope and humanity.
My Thanksgiving gift to you is this speech. I quote the entirety of RFK’s speech below (I recommend you listen to the audio of the speech as you follow the transcript.):
Mr. Chancellor, Mr. Vice Chancellor, Professor Robertson, Mr. Diamond, Mr. Daniel, and Ladies and Gentlemen:
I come here this evening because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-seventeenth century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once the importer of slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage. I refer, of course, to the United States of America.But I am glad to come here — and my wife and I and all of our party are glad to come here to South Africa, and we’re glad to come to Cape Town. I am already greatly enjoying my stay and my visit here. I am making an effort to meet and exchange views with people of all walks of life, and all segments of South African opinion, including those who represent the views of the government.
Today I am glad to meet with the National Union of South African Students. For a decade, NUSAS has stood and worked for the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — principles which embody the collective hopes of men of good will all around the globe. Your work at home and in international student affairs has brought great credit to yourselves and to your country. I know the National Student Association in the United States feels a particularly close relationship with this organization.
And I wish to thank especially Mr. Ian Robertson, who first extended the invitation on behalf of NUSAS. I wish to thank him for his kindness to me in inviting me. I am very sorry that he can not be with us here this evening. I was happy to have had the opportunity to meet and speak with him earlier this evening. And I presented him with a copy of Profiles in Courage which was a book that was written by President John Kennedy and was signed to him by President Kennedy’s widow, Mrs. John Kennedy.
This is a Day of Affirmation, a celebration of liberty. We stand here in the name of freedom. At the heart of that Western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man, the child of God, is the touchstone of value, and all society, all groups and states exist for that person’s benefit. Therefore, the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western society.
The first element of this individual liberty is the freedom of speech: the right to express and communicate ideas, to set oneself apart from the dumb beasts of field and forest; the right to recall governments to their duties and to their obligations; above all, the right to affirm one’s membership and allegiance to the body politic — to society — to the men with whom we share our land, our heritage, and our children’s future.
Hand in hand with freedom of speech goes the power to be heard, to share in the decisions of government which shape men’s lives. Everything that makes man’s life worthwhile — family, work, education, a place to rear one’s children and a place to rest one’s head — all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. Therefore, the essential humanity of man can be protected and preserved only where government must answer — not just to the wealthy, not just to those of a particular religion, not just to those of a particular race, but to all of the people.
And even government by the consent of the governed, as in our own Constitution, must be limited in its power to act against its people, so that there may be no interference with the right to worship, but also no interference with the security of the home; no arbitrary imposition of pains or penalties on an ordinary citizen by officials high or low; no restriction on the freedom of men to seek education, or to seek work or opportunity of any kind, so that each man may become all that he is capable of becoming.
These — These are the sacred rights of Western society. These were the essential differences between us and Nazi Germany, as they were between Athens and Persia.
They are the essence of our differences with communism today. I am unalterably opposed to communism because it exalts the State over the individual and over the family; and because its system contains a lack of freedom of speech, of protest, of religion, and of the press, which is characteristic of a totalitarian regime. The way of opposition to communism, however, is not to imitate its dictatorship, but to enlarge individual human freedoms. There are those in every land who would label as Communist every threat to their privilege. But may I say to you as I have seen on my travels in all sections of the world, reform is not communism. And the denial of freedom, in whatever name, only strengthens the very communism it claims to oppose.
Many nations have set forth their own definitions and declarations of these principles. And there have often been wide and tragic gaps between promise and performance, ideal and reality. Yet the great ideals have constantly recalled us to our own duties. And with painful slowness, we in the United States have extended and enlarged the meaning and the practice of freedom to all of our people.
For two centuries, my own country has struggled to overcome the self-imposed handicap of prejudice and discrimination based on nationality, on social class or race — discrimination profoundly repugnant to the theory and to the command of our Constitution. Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: "No Irish Need Apply." Two generations later President Kennedy became the first Irish Catholic, and the first Catholic, to head the nation; but how many men of ability had, before 1961, been denied the opportunity to contribute to the nation’s progress because they were Catholic or because they were of Irish extraction? How many sons of Italian or Jewish or Polish parents slumbered in the slums — untaught, unlearned, their potential lost forever to our nation and to the human race? Even today, what price will we pay before we have assured full opportunity to millions of Negro Americans?
In the last five years we have done more to assure equality to our Negro citizens, and to help the deprived both white and black, than in the hundred years before that time. But much, much more remains to be done. For there are millions of Negroes untrained for the simplest of jobs, and thousands every day denied their full and equal rights under the law; and the violence of the disinherited, the insulted, the injured, looms over the streets of Harlem and of Watts and of the South Side Chicago.
But a Negro American trains now as an astronaut, one of mankind’s first explorers into outer space; another is the chief barrister of the United States government, and dozens sit on the benches of our court; and another, Dr. Martin Luther King, is the second man of African descent to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent efforts for social justice between all of the races.
We have passed laws prohibiting — We have passed laws prohibiting discrimination in education, in employment, in housing, but these laws alone cannot overcome the heritage of centuries — of broken families and stunted children, and poverty and degradation and pain.
So the road toward equality of freedom is not easy, and great cost and danger march alongside all of us. We are committed to peaceful and nonviolent change, and that is important to all to understand — though change is unsettling. Still, even in the turbulence of protest and struggle is greater hope for the future, as men learn to claim and achieve for themselves the rights formerly petitioned from others.
And most important of all, all of the panoply of government power has been committed to the goal of equality before the law, as we are now committing ourselves to the achievement of equal opportunity in fact. We must recognize the full human equality of all of our people before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this, not because it is economically advantageous, although it is; not because the laws of God command it, although they do; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.
We recognize that there are problems and obstacles before the fulfillment of these ideals in the United States, as we recognize that other nations, in Latin America and in Asia and in Africa, have their own political, economic, and social problems, their unique barriers to the elimination of injustices.
In some, there is concern that change will submerge the rights of a minority, particularly where that minority is of a different race than that of the majority. We in the United States believe in the protection of minorities; we recognize the contributions that they can make and the leadership that they can provide; and we do not believe that any people — whether majority or minority, or individual human beings — are "expendable" in the cause of theory or of policy. We recognize also that justice between men and nations is imperfect, and the humanity sometimes progresses very slowly indeed.
All do not develop in the same manner and at the same pace. Nations, like men, often march to the beat of different drummers, and the precise solutions of the United States can neither be dictated nor transplanted to others — and that is not our intention. What is important, however, is that all nations must march toward increasing freedom, toward justice for all, toward a society strong and flexible enough to meet the demands of all of its people — whatever their race — and the demands that the world of immense and dizzying change that face us all.
In a few hours, the plane that brought me to this country crossed over oceans and countries which have been a crucible of human history. In minutes we traced migrations of men over thousands of years; seconds, the briefest glimpse, and we passed battlefields on which millions of men once struggled and died. We could see no national boundaries, no vast gulfs or high walls dividing people from people; only nature and the works of man — homes and factories and farms — everywhere reflecting Man’s common effort to enrich his life. Everywhere new technology and communications brings men and nations closer together, the concerns of one inevitably becomes the concerns of all. And our new closeness is stripping away the false masks, the illusion of differences which is the root of injustice and of hate and of war. Only earthbound man still clings to the dark and poisoning superstition that his world is bounded by the nearest hill, his universe ends at river shore, his common humanity is enclosed in the tight circle of those who share his town or his views and the color of his skin.
It is — It is your job, the task of young people in this world, to strip the last remnants of that ancient, cruel belief from the civilization of man.
Each nation has different obstacles and different goals, shaped by the vagaries of history and of experience. Yet as I talk to young people around the world, I am impressed not by the diversity but by the closeness of their goals, their desires and their concerns and their hope for the future. There is discrimination in New York, the racial inequality of apartheid in South Africa, and serfdom in the mountains of Peru. People starve to death in the streets of India; a former Prime Minister is summarily executed in the Congo; intellectuals go to jail in Russia, and thousands are slaughtered in Indonesia; wealth is lavished on armaments everywhere in the world.
These are different evils, but they are the common works of man. They reflect the imperfections of human justice, the inadequacy of human compassion, the defectiveness of our sensibility toward the sufferings of our fellows; they mark the limit of our ability to use knowledge for the well-being of our fellow human beings throughout the world. And therefore they call upon common qualities of conscience and indignation, a shared determination to wipe away the unnecessary sufferings of our fellow human beings at home and around the world.
It is these qualities which make of our youth today the only true international community. More than this, I think that we could agree on what kind of a world we would all want to build. It would be a world of independent nations, moving toward international community, each of which protected and respected the basic human freedoms. It would be a world which demanded of each government that it accept its responsibility to insure social justice. It would be a world of constantly accelerating economic progress — not material welfare as an end in/of itself, but as a means to liberate the capacity of every human being to pursue his talents and to pursue his hopes. It would, in short, be a world that we would all be proud to have built.
Just to the north of here are lands of challenge and of opportunity, rich in natural resources — land and minerals and people. Yet they are also lands confronted by the greatest odds — overwhelming ignorance, internal tensions and strife, and great obstacles of climate and geography. Many of these nations, as colonies, were oppressed and were exploited. Yet they have not estranged themselves from the broad traditions of the West; they are hoping and they are gambling their progress and their stability on the chance that we will meet our responsibilities to them to help them overcome their poverty.
In the world we would like to build, South Africa could play an outstanding role, and a role of leadership in that effort. This country is without question a preeminent repository of the wealth and the knowledge and the skill of this continent. Here are the greater part of Africa’s research scientists and steel production, most of its reservoirs of coal and of electric power. Many South Africans have made major contributions to African technical development and world science. The names of some are known wherever men seek to eliminate the ravages of tropical disease and of pestilence. In your faculties and councils, here in this very audience, are hundreds and thousands of men and women who could transform the lives of millions for all time to come.
But the help and the leadership of South Africa or of the United States cannot be accepted if we, within our own country or in our relationships with others, deny individual integrity, human dignity, and the common humanity of man. If we would lead outside our own borders, if we would help those who need our assistance, if we would meet our responsibilities to mankind, we must first, all of us, demolish the borders which history has erected between men within our own nations — barriers of race and religion, social class and ignorance.
Our answer is the world’s hope: It is to rely on youth. The cruelties and the obstacles of this swiftly changing planet will not yield to obsolete dogmas and outworn slogans. It cannot be moved by those who cling to a present which is already dying, who prefer the illusion of security to the excitement and danger which comes with even the most peaceful progress.
This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease — a man like the Chancellor of this University.
It is a revolutionary world that we all live in, and thus, as I have said in Latin America and in Asia and in Europe and in my own country, the United States, it is the young people who must take the lead. Thus, you, and your young compatriots everywhere, have had thrust upon you a greater burden of responsibility than any generation that has ever lived.
"There is," said an Italian philosopher,¹ "nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the — in the introduction of a new order of things." Yet this is the measure of the task of your generation, and the road is strewn with many dangers.
First, is the danger of futility: the belief there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world’s ills — against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world’s great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant Reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32 year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that "all men are created equal."
"Give me a place to stand," said Archimedes, "and I will move the world." These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history, but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and then the total — all of these acts — will be written in the history of this generation.
Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
"If Athens shall appear great to you," said Pericles, "consider then that her glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty." That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our time.
The second danger is that of expediency: of those who say that hopes and beliefs must bend before immediate necessities. Of course, if we must act effectively we must deal with the world as it is. We must get things done. But if there was one thing that President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feeling of young people around the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs — that there is no basic inconsistency between ideals and realistic possibilities, no separation between the deepest desires of heart and of mind and the rational application of human effort to human problems. It is not realistic or hardheaded to solve problems and take action unguided by ultimate moral aims and values, although we all know some who claim that it is so. In my judgment, it is thoughtless folly. For it ignores the realities of human faith and of passion and of belief — forces ultimately more powerful than all of the calculations of our economists or of our generals. Of course to adhere to standards, to idealism, to vision in the face of immediate dangers takes great courage and takes self-confidence. But we also know that only those who dare to fail greatly, can ever achieve greatly.
It is this new idealism which is also, I believe, the common heritage of a generation which has learned that while efficiency can lead to the camps at Auschwitz, or the streets of Budapest, only the ideals of humanity and love can climb the hills of the Acropolis.
And a third danger is timidity. Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world — which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us: "At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists." "So too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize."² I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.
For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger, my friends, is comfort, the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says, "May he live in interesting times." Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged, will ultimately judge himself, on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.
So we part, I to my country and you to remain. We are, if a man of 40 can claim the privilege, fellow members of the world’s largest younger generation. Each of us have our own work to do. I know at times you must feel very alone with your problems and with your difficulties. But I want to say how I — impressed I am with the stand — with what you stand for and for the effort that you are making; and I say this not just for myself, but men and women all over the world. And I hope you will often take heart from the knowledge that you are joined with your fellow young people in every land, they struggling with their problems and you with yours, but all joined in a common purpose; that, like the young people of my own country and of every country that I have visited, you are all in many ways more closely united to the brothers of your time than to the older generations in any of these nations. You’re determined to build a better future.
President Kennedy was speaking to the young people of America, but beyond them to young people everywhere, when he said: "the energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it; and the glow from that fire can truly light the world." And, he added, "With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own."³
I thank you.
