Category: The Middle East

Get Your War On.

We’re clearly going to war, we’re giving all the old folks prescription drugs, we’re eliminating AIDS in Africa, and American taxpayers won’t have to pay a red cent. Anybody notice a problem? Dubya’s State of the Union promised a lot, including dividend goodies for the rich and flaming death to Saddam, but it didn’t say much about the actual State of the Union. At any rate, I was impressed with the AIDS initiative (although I’d be more impressed if he wasn’t getting advice from cranks like these), but otherwise didn’t think much of Dubya’s speech. I also doubt he changed anyone’s mind about the Iraq situation, but perhaps Secretary Powell’s speech next week will prove more fruitful. (Thacker link via Julian’s Jabberings.)

Card-Carrying Members?

Via a friend of mine in the program, Professors Eric Foner (with whom I’ve taken two classes) and Glenda Gilmore offer a rebuttal to Daniel Pipes’ recent list of academics who hate America. An article like this really doesn’t deserve a response but, simply put, Pipes is a moron. Reading any chapter of Foner’s recent Story of American Freedom — or any of his other books for that matter — belies Pipes’ ridiculous and dangerous charge of anti-Americanism. And finding fault with Dubya’s wag-the-dog Freudian fiasco in Iraq, a soon-to-be-military excursion that has already run roughshod over our Constitution, hardly speaks ill of anyone’s patriotism.

If anything, it’s egregiously anti-American for Pipes to earmark academics who should be constrained from the “outside.” A quote the Daniel Pipes of this world ought to consider: In the words of Cornel West, “To understand your country, you must love it. To love it, you must, in a sense, accept it. To accept it as how it is, however is to betray it. To accept your country without betraying it, you must love it for that in it which shows what it might become. America � this monument to the genius of ordinary men and women, this place where hope becomes capacity, this long, halting turn of the no into the yes, needs citizens who love it enough to reimagine and remake it.“

Gangs of Helms Deep.

Also from Follow Me Here, Salman Rushdie compares gang violence in Two Towers and Gangs of New York to developments in Iraq. Interesting points, but did we see the same Scorsese film? In both the initial and final gangland scenes, there’s hardly any sense of moral ambiguity. To the contrary, as I noted in this post, the Irish (Neeson/DeCaprio) forces are portrayed exclusively as maligned, freedom-loving immigrants, while the Nativist (Day Lewis) gang are portrayed as racist brutes. You’d never get the sense in Scorsese’s film that it was the former group that actually unleashed virulent hatred upon the city’s African-American population in July of 1863. I suspect this reading of Gangs has more to do with the close friendship between Rushdie and “The Band that Built America.” Or perhaps Rushdie saw the longer Scorsese cut of the film, which is rumored to be more nuanced.

The Rollback begins.

An appeal court today approved broadened wiretap powers for John Ashcroft’s Justice Department. (But don’t worry…they’ll only use it on the bad people.) In loosely related news, the Dems are discovering a filibuster won’t work in stopping much of the GOP’s desired legislation, including oil and gas drilling of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Looks like things’ll be getting worse before they get better.

Speaking of big oil, I was doing some reading between classes in what passes for a student center here at Columbia and ended up sitting next to the undergraduate pro-war-in-Iraq table. (To be honest, I’m always a bit startled by the conservatism of today’s undergraduate community, although I suppose it wasn’t much different in my day – I still remember the drunken revelries all over campus that accompanied the 1994 midterms.) At any rate, I noticed the organization’s name was Students United for Victory, which would make their acronym SUV. Ah well, I presume the irony was lost on these earnest young hawks.

Fresh faces.

Despite a last minute op-ed gambit by Harold Ford (I thought he was making an interesting case until he conflated national security with the Iraq vote), Nancy Pelosi wins the Democratic leadership handily. Hopefully, she’ll make the most of it. On the GOP side, Tom DeLay moved up the ranks to take Dick Armey’s spot. I’d say a higher national profile for the Exterminator is a good thing. The more people get a sense of how creepy DeLay is, the more palatable the Dems will seem in contrast.

It’s Alright, Ma (He’s only from Yemen.)


Caught the first of Bob Dylan’s two NYC shows last night, and as always it was a powerful experience. Dylan (who spent most of the night on piano) definitely had an agenda for the evening. For one, the war in Iraq weighed heavily on the early part of the set. A cover of Don Henley’s “End of the Innocence” (?!) at the 4-spot led into the always-excellent “Things Have Changed” (as in the The-Times-They-Are-NOT-A’-Changin’) and, after a surprisingly rockin’ version of the Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” (?!), Bob gave us the one-two punch of “Masters of War” (self-explanatory) and “It’s Alright Ma (I’m only Bleedin’)” (in which he yelled the line “And even the President of the United States must have to stand NAKED.”)

For another, Dylan spent an inordinate amount of time playing other peoples’ songs, with Neil Young (“Old Man“) and Warren Zevon (“Mutineer“) tunes at the back end of the set. Considering also that the encore was “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and “All Along the Watchtower” – two songs noted for other peoples’ versions of them – and it seems like Bob felt like paying credit to his colleagues tonight.

All in all, a great show, with “Just Like a Woman” and “Shelter from the Storm” also deserving special attention (The really hardcore Dylan fans’ highlight seemed to be the second song, “Yea! Heavy and a Bottle of Bread,” from The Basement Tapes…but to be honest, I didn’t recognize it until I saw the setlist.) The night also featured the following misheard exchange between me and my sister during a very loud “Drifter’s Escape:” Her (pointing at guy a few rows over dancing like crazy): “He’s jamming!” Me: “He’s from Yemen?” Ah well, I guess you had to be there. (Picture courtesy of Jim Lawhead.)

Woo boy.

Oh, man…it’s ugly. You know it’s a bad election night when the highlight is seeing Carville wear a trash can on his head. I guess we Dems should’ve expected this the minute most of the party capitulated to Dubya’s wag-the-dog Iraq vote. If you don’t give the American people a choice, they won’t make one. Sigh…

Regime Change.

Rolling Stone writer William Greider thinks the Dems need to get rid of Daschle and Gephardt. I always liked Daschle – in fact, of the current (admittedly lame) crop of Democratic presidential contenders he and John Kerry were my top two choices. But after the Majority Leader’s capitulation on the Iraq resolution, I’ve definitely soured on him. [As I’ve noted many times here, however you feel about the (all-too-)suddenly all-consuming issue of Iraq, it is Congress’s job to declare war, not the President’s.] As for Gephardt, he’s been trying for too hard, too long. Somebody should’ve told him years ago that, in the media age, a man without eyebrows will never be President. At any rate, I think Greider’s point here is essentially sound — The Democratic leadership needs to stop imagining themselves in higher offices and start drawing lines in the sand.