Literary leftists–Part I: “Reading Lolita in Tehran” (be careful what you wish for)

The New Neo Posted on by

Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran has scored a surprising amount of popular success, currently ranked around #300 at Amazon, and amassing close to 300 comments there as well. For a fairly literary and even somewhat didactic work subtitled “A memoir in books,” that’s pretty good.

I think part of its success (aside from its great title) is that it’s the type of book that especially appeals to women’s book groups—in fact, that’s how I came to read it. Most of the members of my book group talked about the book’s main theme: the shocking and depressing ways in which Iranian women’s lives have been stunted and twisted by the authoritarian and misogynistic theocracy in charge in Iran, and how Nafisi and her students somehow managed to feed their spirits by the clandestine study of some of the classics of Western literature.

Apparently, literature can help keep people who live under a totalitarian system sane—the Soviet dissidents also provided evidence of that. But, although of interest, that was not the theme I kept noticing and marveling at when I read the book; no, a very different aspect of Reading Lolita in Tehran kept grabbing my attention: the tendency of literary and intellectual youths in free societies to gravitate towards leftist causes that would end up curtailing that very freedom.

Author Nafisi is currently a literature professor at Johns Hopkins. The biographical blurb on the flyleaf of her book states that she had formerly been an English professor at the University of Tehran but was expelled for refusing to wear the veil, and that she later emigrated to the United States in 1997.

But Nafisi’s story, and her relationship to the revolution that devastated her country, is far more complex and ironic than that. The year 1997 was not her first emigration from Iran; she had left at the age of thirteen and been educated in England, Switzerland, and the US, only returning during the pivotal and fateful year 1979 to her beloved and much-longed-for homeland.

And what a homecoming it was! She writes:

The dream had finally come true. I was home, but the mood in the airport was not welcoming. It was somber and slightly menacing, like the unsmiling portraits of Ayatollah Khomeini and his anointed successor, Ayatollah Montazeri, that covered the walls. It seemed as if a bad witch with her broomstick had flown over the building and in one sweep had taken away the restaurants, the children and the women in colorful clothes that I remembered. This feeling was confirmed when I noticed the cagey anxiety in the eyes of my mother and friends, who had come to the airport to welcome us home.

Nafisi learned through bitter experience that you can’t go home again, although you can try.

The terrible irony of her story arises because Nafisi herself was part of the revolution that ended up destroying her country. Her tale resembles that of so many youthful visionaries, dabbling in politics like a bunch of naive Mickey Mouses (Mice?) in Disney’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” not realizing until too late the horrors their machinations will conjure into existence.

Nafisi married early, at eighteen, and attended college at the University of Oklahoma during the 1970s. Her plunge into political activism was as casual (and as literary) as it was leftist:

I joined the Iranian student movement reluctantly. My father’s imprisonment and my family’s vague nationalist sympathies had sensitized me towards politics, but I was more of a rebel than a political activist–though in those days there was not much difference between them. One attraction was the fact that the men in the movement didn’t try to assault or seduce me. Instead, they held study groups in which we read and discussed Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State and Marx’s The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. In the seventies, the mood—not just among Iranians, but among American and European students—was revolutionary. There was the Cuban example, and China of course. The revolutionary cant and romantic atmosphere were infectious, and the Iranian students were at the forefront of the struggle.

So, revolution was a mood, an essence, something infectious in the air—rather like bacilli, as it turns out. Nafisi describes the group as markedly Marxist in philosophy and in style, sporting “Che Guevara sports jackets and boots…and Mao jackets and khakis.”

For Nafisi herself, romanticism and literature seem to have been the primary motives, passed somehow through the alchemy of her homesickness and transmuted into political activism:

[I] insisted on wearing long dresses outside the meetings…I never gave up the habit of reading and loving “counterrevolutionary” writers—T. S. Eliot, Austen, Plath, Nabokov, Fitzgerald—but I spoke passionately at the rallies; inspired by phrases I had read in novels and poems, I would weave words together into sounds of revolution. My oppressive yearning for home was shaped into excited speeches against the tyrants back home and their American backers.

Once in Tehran, Nafisi began to realize that the unsettling airport scene had been only the tip of the iceberg. She soon came to bitterly regret the mindless revolutionary zeal of her youth, and to realize that her revolutionary dream had turned into a nightmare, as they so often do:

When in the States we had shouted Death to this or that, those deaths seemed to be more symbolic, more abstract, as if we were encouraged by the impossibility of our slogans to insist upon them even more. But in Tehran in 1979, these slogans were turning into reality with macabre precision. I felt helpless: all the dreams and slogans were coming true, and there was no escaping them.

Although the revolutionaries back in Oklahoma and elsewhere had been decidedly leftist, the revolution they helped birth was a restrictive theocracy. One of the most interesting portions of the book describes how those leftists, at least in the early stages, managed to rationalize and excuse such clear signs that things had gone sharply awry as the imposition of the veil and the subjugation of women.

Nafisi was not one of those excusers, however; she describes her horror at the relentless approach of the suffocating clasp of the mullahs, a chill embrace undreamt of in her leftist days in Oklahoma.

And it got worse, much worse; there are many passages in the book that reminded me uncannily of what it must have been like for French revolutionaries to have watched the unfolding of the Reign of Terror (those who survived, that is), not to mention Stalin’s ex-comrades viewing the purges of their ranks:

In later months and years, every once in a while Bijan [Nafisi’s husband] and I would be shocked to see the show trials of our old comrades in the U.S. on television. They eagerly denounced their past actions, their old comrades, their old selves, and confessed that they were indeed the enemies of Islam. We would watch these scenes in silence…I turned and asked Bijan, Did you ever dream that this could happen to us? He said, No, I didn’t, but I should have.

“No, I didn’t, but I should have.” What quiet words of chilling despair! And indeed, one wonders how it was that smart people could have been so dumb; by the mid-to late-1970’s, when Nafisi and her friends were supporting a leftist revolution in Iran, surely the jury was no longer out on the fact that this was a road that would lead to the revolution swallowing its own as well as many others. But we see such a phenomenon again and again, as history repeats itself in its winding, twisting path.

In Nafisi’s case, she seems to have been mainly a romantic, interested in literature almost to the exclusion of other topics—such as history, apparently. Unfortunately for her, she had to learn the lessons of history the hard way, from personal experience. And so, too, did her revolutionary Iranian comrades-in-arms, unfortunately for them—and for us, and for the world as well. They could never have guessed at the trajectory their lives would follow from those long-ago days of sartorial playing at being revolutionaries, sporting Che and Mao jackets, to their final moments in the executioner’s chamber.

And, if you can believe this interview, the Iranian students who took the Americans hostage in the last year of Jimmy Carter’s administration were hardly more serious or more focused than Nafisi herself. Read it and weep.

Nafisi’s story underscores the fact that there does seem to be something in the literary mind that is especially susceptible to romantic ideals of revolution, that doesn’t accept that institutions of government will always be flawed, that seeks a sort of misty perfection, and that believes in the power of youth to proclaim those ideals merely by taking to the streets and wishing it very, very hard.

[ADDENDUM: I’m well aware that all major political change is susceptible to being overtaken by unplanned and unwanted forces. That included our American Revolution, for example, and that’s why the drafting and adoption of our Constitution was so vitally important. That’s also why, as a neocon who had advocated regime change in Iraq, I waited with trepidation to see what the results of the Iraqi elections and constitution drafts would be.

So far, I am cautiously optimistic about the future of that country, as long as forces in the West continue to protect Iraq in its process of establishing some sort of true representative government, with checks and balances and guarantees of liberty and human rights that are unusual for that part of the world. Those things are our only hope against tyrannnies on both left and right.

But as Nafisi describes them, the leftists who wanted so much to overthrow the Shah did not even seem to care about those petty little details when thinking about what would take his place. They broke quite a few eggs, but instead of an omelet they got Humpty Dumpty. Are there any horses and men who can ever put him back together again?]

Shut up and deal

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve come so late to this game it’s almost over, but why not play anyway?

There’s only one more day left, and so I’m playing mega catch-up. But there’s a competition over at aaron’s. It’s a poll to elect women bloggers as playing cards (hearts, naturally) in a card deck of the blogosphere.

Go vote if you want. You don’t even have to vote for me; I’ll forgive you.

So, what’s up with those suits, anyway? Did you ever wonder why it’s hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds? I have. Card decks are among the most conservative things around–paleo-paleo-con–preserving old courtly distinctions long after their original incarnations (jack; jester) have gone the way of the dodo.

Well, the final choice as to which suits would become standardized seems to have been fairly arbitrary, after a great many predecessors had been tried. The suits we now use originated in France, and became popular because they were less expensive to make. Here’s a little playing card history:

The cards manufactured by German printers used the suits of hearts, bells, leaves, and acorns…Later Italian and Spanish cards of the 15th century used swords, batons, cups, and coins…The four suits (hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs) now used in most of the world originated in France, approximately in 1480. These suits have generally prevailed because decks using them could be made more cheaply; the former suits were all drawings which had to be reproduced by woodcuts, but the French suits could be made by stencil.

So, why not an apple?

Took the day off

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m visiting family today and am taking the day off. I plan to be back posting tomorrow.

The weather is lovely, and I’m about to go out for dinner, so that’s good.

I’ve only been online for a few moments today, but it was long enough to read the astounding news of the woman bomber who failed to detonate herself.

If I could travel back in time about five years to tell my previous self that I’d be writing about a woman who, with her husband’s help and guidance, strapped herself with explosives and walked into a wedding party at a fancy hotel in Jordan planning to blow herself up among a bunch of happy celebrating strangers, I would think I had gone mad. But such events have become part and parcel of our lives now.

I hope this woman has a lot of very useful information to impart.

The Arab street speaks

The New Neo Posted on by

The well-known “Arab street” has spoken recently, and it seems to be angry at al-Zarqawi .

The hotel bombings have outraged Jordanians, apparently even some who ordinarily don’t support the king’s Western ways:

The Amman protest was organized by Jordan’s 14 professional and trade unions, made up of both hard-line Islamic groups and leftist political organizations, traditional critics of the king’s moderate, pro-Western policies…

Iraqi government spokesman Laith Kubba has noticed, also:

the attack should alert Jordan that it needed to stop hosting former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“I hope that these attacks will wake up the ‘Jordanian street’ to end their sympathy with Saddam’s remnants … who exploit the freedom in this country to have a safe shelter to plot their criminal acts against Iraqis.”

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi agrees, stating:

she did not believe al-Qaeda “or any of these violent extremists have had support among mainstream Arab opinion at all. Now they are making sure they are turning everyone against them.”

Can we believe it? Here’s evidence to bolster Ashrawi’s claims:

Braizat said in an opinion poll conducted last year by his office, 67 percent of Jordanian adult respondents had considered al Qaeda in Iraq “a legitimate resistance organization.” That attitude may be changing, he said Friday, explaining that he had spoken since the attacks to 10 survey participants who held favorable views of al Qaeda; nine of them had changed their minds.

It seems difficult–perhaps impossible–for Jordanians to excuse this as an insurgency or a nationalist movement fighting against an evil occupation. Since Al-Zarqawi is a Jordanian, this feels like a case of fratricide:

“Oh my God, oh my God. Is it possible that Arabs are killing Arabs, Muslims killing Muslims? For what did they do that?” screamed 35-year-old Najah Akhras, who lost two nieces in the attack. Similar thoughts were heard over and over throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Until now Najah Akhras had somehow avoided knowing that yes, Arabs kill Arabs, Muslims kill Muslims–although how, after watching the Iraq-Iran war, or seeing what is happening these days in Iraq, or even learning the Black September history of Jordan itself, I don’t really know. Perhaps when reality is just too horrific, the mind closes down and denies–until the horror comes home in a way that no longer can be denied.

One wonders why al-Zarqawi didn’t heed his far more strategic mentor, al-Zawaheri, who cautioned him about the negative PR fallout from this sort of thing. And why, oh why, did Zarqawi actually claim this as his own act, rather than letting people blame it on the Jews or the Americans, as many in the Arab world did 9/11? My guess is that Zarqawi just doesn’t care; his focus is on proving that he’s badder than old King Kong, and meaner than a junkyard dog.

Lest you think I’m being frivolous by quoting Jim Croce–that’s not my intent. I am simply noting that although Zarqawi has political/Islamicist motives, his actions here don’t seem to be strategic at all. In fact, they seem counterproductive (as Zawaheri understood), and more in the realm of psychological pathology writ large: that is, he is a psychopath on a world stage.

The details of Zarqawi’s criminal past:

He spent his time scrapping and playing football in Zarqa’s dusty streets and surprised no one by dropping out of school aged 17.

He drifted into casual crime as an enforcer and general-purpose thug. At some time, he was imprisoned for sexual assault. On the streets, he learned the art of violence. It was a lesson he used to dramatic effect when he hacked off the head of American engineer Nick Berg in the first “snuff video” to emerge from Iraq.

Indeed, much of his violence has a street crime feel to it. It is brutal, direct, unflinching and unthinking. Not for Zarqawi the press interviews with Westerners that bin Laden once gave. Not for Zarqawi the pampered Saudi childhood. Not for Zarqawi the meandering meditations on Islamic theory as a justification for murder. If Zarqawi and his network are eclipsing bin Laden and al-Qaeda, as some terrorist experts believe, then it is a form of terrorism that betrays its roots in Zarqa’s brutish underworld, not some austere Arabian seminary.

Jordan has reason to regret its previous leniency towards its spawn Zarqawi. He was imprisoned there for plotting to replace the monarchy with an Islamic state, but was inexplicably released in 1997 after serving only five years in prison.

NOTE: I wrote most of this post last night, intending to finish it today. But this morning, when I checked out the NY Times, I wondered whether I’d spoken too soon about this being a case in which the Israelis weren’t being blamed. Take a look at this front-page article headlined: “Many in Jordan see old enemy in attack: Israel,” which describes blaming the same-old same-old scapegoat.

However, it’s impossible to know from the Times article how many this “many” refers to. As is so often the case these days, the Times sees no need to quantify it. That there are such people in Jordan and elsewhere I have no doubt, but that news is only useful if we know how extensive the belief is, and the Times offers no help with that.

However, the Times does offer some rather insightful remarks on the “blame Israel first” crowd from several Arab scholars and pundits who seem to have thought some of this through:

Whatever the cause, the result is the same: “In the first place, people don’t even recognize the reality around them,” said Muhammad el-Sayed Said, a political analyst at the government-financed Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Egypt. “Secondly, they continue to overlook and ignore the problem without supporting a consistent anti-terrorism campaign, which the government might be seeking.”

Dawoud al-Shoryan, a prominent writer and journalist from Saudi Arabia, says he is not convinced that those who blame Israel really believe it. But, he added, many people are deeply angry at United States policy in the region, including its occupation of Iraq, and blaming Israel is a way of conferring some degree of legitimacy on a crime that would be considered unspeakable if committed by a Muslim.

“They try to hide the hideous face of terrorism by hanging it on the United States and Israel,” he said. “Shifting the accusation is nothing but a subconscious attempt to justify the act.”

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, it seems.

So, which point of view will win out? My guess is that, whatever the Times says, the Jordan hotel bombings have cut into some of that denial, and that quite a few Jordanians were mugged by the tragic and horrific reality of 11/9.

Veterans Day, Armistice Day

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, indeed, I am that old–old enough to remember when Veterans’ Day was Armistice Day. The change occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II. Since then the original name has largely fallen out of use–although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the November 11th date of the holiday, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed.

I’m also old enough–and had a teacher old enough–to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Field” in fifth grade–although without being given any historical context for it, I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war.

You can find the story of the poem here . It was written by a Canadian doctor who served in the European theater (there is no separate URL for the discussion of the poem, but you should click on the “John McCrae´s Poppies in Flander’s Fields” link on the left sidebar). It’s not much as poetry, but it was great as propaganda to encourage America’s entry into the war.

The poem’s first line “In Flanders fields the poppies blow” (and by the way, I don’t mean to be picky here, but can anyone tell me why it’s not “Flanders’s fields” and “Veterans’ Day?”) introduces that famous flower that later became the symbol of Armistice–and later, Veterans–Day. Why the poppy?

Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.

There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.

But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.

Now a day to honor those who have served in our wars, Veterans Day has an interesting history in its original Armistice Day incarnation. It was actually established as a day dedicated to world peace, back in the early post-WWI year of 1926, when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.

The original proclamation establishing Armistice Day as a holiday read as follows:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

After World War II, of course, the hope that peaceful relations among nations would not be severed had long been extinguished. By the time I was a young child, a weary nation sought to honor those who had fought in all its wars and thus secure the peace that followed–even if was only a temporary one.

And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War.

So this Veterans/Armistice Day let’s salute and honor those who have fought for our country. The hope that some day war will not be necessary is a laudable one–and those who fight wars hold it, too. But that day has not yet arrived–and, realistically but sadly, perhaps never will.

Are Bush’s critics lying about lying?

The New Neo Posted on by

Like Dr. Sanity and the Anchoress, I’m tired, tired, tired of the “Bush lied about WMDs” meme, which is itself a lie (or at least a grave error).

Fortunately, though, Norman Podhoretz isn’t as tired as the rest of us. He’s written this article of remarkable clarity on the subject in Commentary. If it were a lawyer’s brief, it would be–to coin a phrase–a “slam-dunk.” He carefully and patiently amasses irrefutable evidence that Bush did not lie. Read the whole thing, as they say.

But Podhoretz actually sounds a bit tired, too, I’m afraid:

What makes this charge [“Bush lied about WMDs”] so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.

The fact that the “Bush lied” meme went all the way around the world several times over before the truth had time to even get its underwear on, much less its pants, has caused me no end of puzzlement. Surely there are many ways to criticize the Iraqi war without using such a transparently inane one. Illogical and easy to disprove by offering quote after quote after quote (some of them from the very people making the accusations) and fact after fact suggesting that everyone thought Saddam had WMDs, the “Bushlied” meme seems to nevertheless have unusually strong legs.

That so many otherwise intelligent-seeming people have swallowed it points to something irresistable about this particular lie (or error) about lying. What could it be?

My first thought is that people tend to be angry at being misled about something, even if the misleading was in fact done innocently and in good faith; nobody likes to be wrong. So it’s easy–and very tempting–to strike out at the source and imagine one has been purposely duped.

My next thought is that people are understandably reluctant to commit to war, and it’s not unusual, ex-post-facto, to attack the reasons originally given for entering such a conflict. There are even those who question whether Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and let it happen.

And then there are those lingering memories of controversy over the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, for example, which have made people in this country especially sensitive around this issue of being lied to in order to start a war.

The members of Congress who are criticizing Bush overemphasize his own reliance on WMDs as the casus belli, conveniently forgetting it was only one of many reasons he gave. Why do they do this? I think the answer is simple: it’s the reason that convinced them, the one that they gave the most credence to, the one designed to appeal most to a reluctant warrior or an isolationist.

What else? That old reliable, Bush-hatred, is part of the picture. To believe Bush was mistaken is one thing, and probably true (although he had plenty of company in this, to be sure). But to believe he lied requires a belief in a much greater depth of corruption.

Remember back when Clinton was in the middle of Monicagate, and he was accused of wagging the dog when he bombed Afghanistan and Sudan? Or when some thought Clinton had had Vince Foster murdered? It was one thing to not be a major fan of Clinton’s (I, for instance, counted myself among that number), but it was another to think him capable of a bombing to save his political skin, or a cold-blooded murder of a friend. Granted, the number on the right who believed the latter to be true never numbered anything remotely like those on the left who believe the “Bush lied” meme, but I think the process of believing both things is somewhat similar: each arises in the idea that the person in question is totally untrustworthy and almost devoid of a moral sense, not just lacking in judgment.

So, this one isn’t going to die, I’m afraid, despite how many convincing articles Norman Podhoretz has the stamina to write. More power to him, of course. But on this blog and others I’ve watched as the topic of WMDs and lies has been batted around in the comments section ad nauseum, without a single mind appearing to change.

Blogger Wunderkraut is tired, too (via Willisms)–tired, tired, tired–of blogging and debunking the same stuff over and over. It’s a dirty little secret that blogging is both invigorating and tiring, with peaks and valleys and long slow slogs.

Wunderkraut writes:

Maybe all bloggers go through this at some point. This must be where most give up, while others stick it out. You reach a point where you have written about the things that most interest you and you feel like you are repeating yourself. What more is there to say? How many more times can one point out the bias in the MSM? How many more times can you point out the hypocrisy of the Democrats in Congress concerning the war in Iraq?…

If I grow weary and the next blogger grows weary and this continues until the big name Conservative bloggers grow weary”¦then the MSM and their buds in the Democratic Party will have won and we will be left with the MSM passing forged “fake but accurate” documents to the unsuspecting American public.

Yes, Wunderkraut, it’s a war of attrition, and they’re hoping to tire us out. And blogging is a marathon, with no finish line.

Maybe we should all treat ourselves to one of these:

Poor Cassandra

The New Neo Posted on by

Varifrank posts a fine rant about those modern-day prognosticators who never seem to be called to account for the failure of their predictions of doom and gloom to come true (with, of course, the sole exception of Bush and the WMDs).

I’ve often wondered the same thing, in relation to pundits (especially those financial analysts who tell you where to invest), scientists, economists, fortunetellers, and psychics. But I’m not sure most of these predictions aren’t considered a sort of entertainment, much like disaster or horror movies, meant to impart a frisson of almost-pleasurable anxiety but not necessarily to predict reality.

I have one tiny quibble with Varifrank’s essay: he compares these people to poor old much-maligned Cassandra. Now I happen to know a little bit about Cassandra, having been fascinated by her back in high school when I first encountered her through Greek tragedies (yes, they used to make us read them in high school, and a public high school at that) and was moved to write a paper on her poignant plight.

Cassandra received one of those “yes, but” gifts/curses of which the Greek gods seemed so very fond. Her resultant powers, however, actually made her the opposite of those whom Varifrank decries: it was Cassandra’s terrible fate to make correct predictions about dreadful events to come, but to never be believed.

Who would ever host her on cable news?

Who is killing Saddam’s defense lawyers?

The New Neo Posted on by

Things that pique my interest are things that don’t make sense at first, that cause me to wonder what’s going on because something doesn’t quite jibe. One of those things is that two of Saddam’s defense lawyers have now been murdered.

Why doesn’t that make sense? After all, aren’t there enough people in Iraq who are angry at Saddam, angry enough to kill anyone who might want to defend him? Naturally, of course, no question–and it may indeed be just as simple as that.

But I doubt it. It somehow doesn’t have the right modus operandi–the fingerprints, as it were, of the opposition to Saddam: Shi’ite clerics calling for forbearance when their own people are bombed, anti-Saddamites supporting the ascendance of the rule of law. Instead, it bears more resemblance to what we’ve seen in the past from Saddam supporters.

Why would Saddam’s supporters kill his own lawyers, on his orders or on their own initiative? I’m not ordinarily a conspiracist, but in this case I might make an exception.

The world press has talked from the start about how Saddam’s trial shouldn’t be held in Iraq, and the murders of the lawyers could play to this belief and create clear proof in their eyes that indeed, it’s not safe enough. And who would benefit from a move? Saddam, especially if it’s to a European country with no death penalty (unlikely, but possible).

Who would benefit from a delay? Saddam (or his supporters). Who is a coldblooded killer who would murder his own best friend (and in Saddam’s case, probably has) many times over to further his power, or to protect himself? Saddam, or his supporters. Who would dearly love to give the impression that the anti-Saddamites are just as much cold-blooded killers as Saddam himself? Yes, indeed; you-know-who.

When one tries to learn more about the lawyers’ murders, the plot gets very thick indeed. Here, for example, is the Telegraph on the subject:

Today’s killing has raised further questions as to whether a fair trial can take place amid the violence in Iraq.

Defence lawyers have threatened to boycott the trial unless measures are taken to protect them, and one of the reasons the judge gave for adjourning the trial last month was that witnesses were too scared to turn up…

“There can be no fair trial without providing security for witnesses, judges and lawyers on an equal footing. No trial can take place in such conditions,” said Issam Ghazzawi, a spokesman for Saddam’s defence team.

Human rights organisations have also expressed concern.

Nicole Choueiry, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, said: “The safety of these people is very important if the trial is to go on.

“It is the responsibility of the Iraqi government and the US military to provide protection.”

Makes sense, doesn’t it? So then, why haven’t these lawyers been protected? Well, see this, from the Hindu:

The assassination of a second lawyer associated with the trial was likely to raise new questions about whether this country can conduct such a sensitive prosecution in the midst of insurgency and domestic turmoil.

Following al-Janabi’s death, members of the defence team said they had suspended further dealings with the special court until their safety is guaranteed…

[Head of Saddam’s defense team] Al-Ubaidi said that the entire defence team had rejected an offer of guards from the Interior Ministry, pointing to frequent Sunni Arab accusations that ministry forces or Shiite militias linked to the government have killed members of the minority that was dominant under Saddam.

He said then that they were talking with U.S. officials about getting protection from American troops. But a later defence team statement said that it would seek United Nations protection for the Iraqi lawyers because they do not trust either the U.S. military or the Iraqi government to ensure their safety.

Saddam’s defence team, which includes some 1,500 lawyers who act as advisers, is led by Khalid al-Dulaimi and Abdel Haq Alani, an Iraqi-born lawyer based in Britain. Alani is the top legal consultant to Saddam’s daughter, Raghad, and believed to be backbone of defence team.

I can’t really blame them for not trusting the Iraqi government to protect them, to tell you the truth; I would imagine the motivation to do so would be a little weak. But the Amnesty spokesperson above is the very definition of a useful idiot, I’m afraid–either simply ignorant or willfully deceptive–because it seems clear that the defense will not accept protection from either the Iraqi government or the US.

Note the continual calls for UN involvement and the movement of the trial into a “neutral” (read: western European?) country–a country, no doubt, with an anti-US agenda, no death penalty, and even perhaps a history of being on the take from defendant Saddam:

[al-Dulaimi] blamed the government for Tuesday’s attack…

“The aim of these organized attacks is to scare Arab and foreign lawyers,” al-Dulaimi said. “We call upon the international community, on top of them the Secretary-General of the United Nations, to send an investigative committee because the situation is unbearable.”

He called for moving Saddam and his colleagues into a neutral country. Al-Dulaimi said defence lawyers do not recognize the trial’s next date which comes on Nov. 28.

Who is al-Dulaimi? I haven’t been too successful in finding much information. But he certainly doesn’t seem to fit the picture of the public defender, reluctantly taking on the case because he knows that the rule of law requires that even the likes of Saddam needs a defense lawyer for the trial to be fair.

No, al-Dulaimi has quite a different agenda. This interview in Der Spiegel makes it clear he reveres Saddam and considers the trial illegitimate. A few quotes:

The trial will be adjourned. The last chapter in Saddam Hussein’s life has not yet begun…The entire proceeding [the trial] is a farce…Although I am aware that this is not as much a criminal trial as a political process, I cannot imagine that the Iraqi judges will give in to pressure by the US occupiers…Neither the so-called governing council, which the former American governor appointed, nor the current Iraqi government are legitimate…By law, Saddam is still the head of state. The American invaders and occupiers deposed him and took him prisoner after having destroyed Iraq. Now they are using the law of the strong to impose their will and walk all over Iraqi laws…As far as I am concerned, the current government also lacks all legitimacy.

Clearly, al-Dulaimi is not just a defense attorney, but a die-hard supporter who seems to believe time is on his–and Saddam’s–side. And does anyone else hear the following sentence: I cannot imagine that the Iraqi judges will give in to pressure by the US occupiers–as a possible veiled threat?

Please note the following excerpt from this
article, which appeared in the Telegraph after the first killing of a defense lawyer, back in late October:

The killing raised worries about the viability of staging the emotionally charged case in Iraq.

Although heavy protection exists for the judges and prosecutors, security does not appear to have been provided for the defence team, all 12 of whom had been publicly named.

Mr Janabi, a friend of Saddam, is understood to have had no bodyguards at the time of his abduction.

Here we have the typical reaction–the trial may need to be moved–and the assertion (without further explanation) that the defense team has not been provided with security.

But the last sentence seems curiouser and curiouser. If Janabi had been offered but refused Iraqi government and/or US protection–as the entire defense team had done, apparently–why did he not have any bodyguards at all? Surely some could have been found? So his guardless state (if indeed this was even true) makes no sense to me, unless he was set up.

I don’t pretend to know what’s going on; these are mere speculations, gleaned from a few news articles that may not even be correct in their facts. But even a quick check of the Iraqi blogs didn’t reveal any inside information on the topic (if anyone can find anything, please post it in the comments).

So Roger, you write mystery novels–got any ideas?

Who is Sarkozy, and why are they saying all those things about him?

The New Neo Posted on by

Lost in the sound and fury of the French riots is the story of one of the main players, Nicolas Sarkozy. The story of the conflict between Sarkozy on one side and Chirac/Villepin on the other has its own drama, although it’s been played out on a smaller stage, that of internal French politics. It seems that well before these riots, Sarkozy made some enemies in high places (at least if you believe the following accounts).

Here’s some background information about Sarkozy, and some speculation as to what may be at least part of the reason behind Chirac and Villepin’s failure to get tougher at the outset of the riots. I have no idea whether this is true–not having my finger on the pulse of French politics–but it is certainly an interesting possibility voiced by those closer to that pulse than I am (via Brussels Journal on November 5):

The French establishment led by the corrupt President Jacques Chirac and his Prime Minister, the aristocrat Dominique de Villepin, an appointee who has never held an elected office, begrudged Sarkozy his popularity. The minister was distrusted. He was an outsider, a self-made man who had made it to the top without the support of relations and cronies, by hard work and his no-nonsense approach.

Sarkozy (whose real surname is Sarké¶zy de Nagy-Bocsa) is a second generation immigrant, the son of a Hungarian refugee and a Greek mother. “I like the frame of mind of those who need to build everything because nothing was given to them,” he said a few months ago about his upbringing.

The experience of his youth has made Sarkozy not only the most pro-American French politician, but also virtually the only one who understands what second generation immigrants really need if they want to build a future.

More important than the so-called “social benefits” ”“ the government alms provided by welfare politicians like Chirac, Villepin and their predecessors ”“ is the provision of law and order. This guarantees that those who create wealth do not lose it to thugs who extort and rob and burn down their properties.

Sarkozy’s decision to send the police back to the suburbs which had been abandoned by previous governments was resented by the “youths” who now rule there. That this would lead to riots was inevitable. Sarkozy knew it, and so did Chirac, Villepin and the others. Sarkozy intended to crack down hard on the rioters. If the French government had sent in the army last week, it would have been responding to the thugs in a language they understand: force. And the riots would long have ceased.

What happened instead was that Sarkozy’s “colleagues” in government used the riots as an excuse to turn on the “immigrant” in their own midst. Paris is well worth a mass, King Henri IV of France once said. Bringing down Nicolas Sarké¶zy de Nagy-Bocsa is well worth a riot, King Chirac must have thought. Contrary to the normal French policy in dealing with trouble makers, the authorities decided to use a soft approach. Chirac and his designated crown prince Villepin blamed Sarkozy’s “disrespectful rhetoric” ”“ such as calling thugs thugs ”“ for having detonated the explosive situation in the suburbs. Dominique de Villepin stepped in and took over the task of restoring calm from Sarkozy. While the latter was told to shut up and keep a low profile, Villepin began a “dialogue” with the rioters. As a result the riots have spilled over from Paris to other French cities. Do not be surprised if this French epidemic soon crosses France’s borders into the North African areas surrounding cities in Belgium and the Netherlands.

As for Sarkozy, the best thing this immigrant son can do is to resign and make a bid for the 2007 presidential elections as an outsider. His popularity with the ordinary Frenchmen has not been tarnished yet. But this could soon change if he remains a member of a Villepin government which is clearly unwilling to abolish the current “millet” system. French patriots do not like to see their country disintegrate into a cluster of self-governing city-states, some of which are Sharia republics.

Since the Brussels Journal post above was written three days ago, it may be that it’s already too late for Sarkozy to save himself–or France–from the consequences of letting the riots get out of control. In fact, this morning when I turned on my TV, a CNN reporter was declaring authoritatively (without, of course, citing any surveys or statistics), that (if my recollection of her words is correct) “Sarkozy is now the most hated man in France.”

Here’s another piece on Sarkozy, this one from this past May. It offers a reason as to why Chirac might want to sabotage Sarkozy’s political career, and describes the supposed ways he tried to do so (and how they backfired on Chirac–until now, that is).

Some lengthy excerpts:

The 49-year-old [Sarkozy] had the two most difficult jobs in the French government: Minister of the Interior and Minister of Finance. Few held even one of these positions and came out with a favorable public opinion. Sarkozy became the country’s most popular politician, with about two-third of the people viewing him favorably.

He was told that crime cannot be reduced, especially given the disenfranchised and alienated Islamic population. As the Interior Minister, Sarkozy put more police on the streets and introduced monthly performance ratings. Crime rate dropped and Islamic violence was curtailed. The man was also told that he cannot take on French labor unions and will never make France more business-friendly. He did – and the economy improved.

The new leader of the Union for Popular Movement party makes no secret of his desire to rise to the top. Running on a platform of lower taxes, flexible labor markets, more freedom for innovation and enterprise, his outlook seems almost American – and shockingly, the French are eating it up.

By the time he was 22, Sarkozy had won a seat in city council. At 28, he was elected city mayor and by 33, the young man was in the French parliament. Throughout much of this time, he was a protégé of Jacque Chirac, even dating his daughter for a while. Yet, a few years later, he ditched Chirac and backed Prime Minister Edouard Balladur for President. Chirac won and Sarkozy lost his position as a Budget Minister, finding himself outside the circles of power.

“The two men hate each other,” claimed an insider in an interview with Time Europe. But in 2002, Chirac’s government was floundering and Sarkozy was riding high as a popular, charismatic figure. Presuming that he can ride on the wave of Sarkozy’s popularity, while at the same time putting the young man in a no-win position, Chirac decided to appoint his former protégé as the Minister of Interior in the middle of an anti-Semitic wave of violence by Islamic youths. Sarkozy responded with policies so brilliant that people around the world began to talk about him as a future President of France. Chirac then moved Sarkozy to another no-win position – Minister of Finance at the time when the economy was not doing as well as most French would want. Once again, Sarkozy was a spectacular success.

Sarkozy privatized much of France Telecom, reducing the government’s stake to under 50%. He waived the inheritance tax, suspended the corporate tax and stood up to demonstrations by the mega-powerful labor unions.

Apparently, the French press are getting into the anti-Sarkozy act, also. Sarkozy seems to have been “dowdified” in his inflammatory “riff-raff” comments,for example.

It’s a sideshow to the main event, but an interesting and sobering one nevertheless. And in the end, any take-down of Sarkozy and his attempts to deal with the situation would most likely have long-term effects.

Riots roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t usually do a whole lot of linking. But there are so many interesting posts dealing with the riots that I thought today I’d list a few that caught my eye through my very brief trip around the blogosphere.

Chicago Boyz has a number of interesting takes on the situation, including why Germany has been exempt (at least so far), despite a large immigrant Moslem population; and reflections on the rioters’ seemingly careful calibration of the violence. Clive Davis has his own well-rounded roundup of links and opinions, including ones on the topic of just how intifada-like the riots are; La Shawn Barber offers some interesting views on how these riots are quite unlike the riots of the 60s in the black communities of the US, to which they are sometimes being compared; Melanie Phillips believes that the rioting “youths” are not interested in becoming part of French society, but rather seek to become autonomous from it (seems true, but which came first, the chicken or the egg? Do they want this now only because they were denied assimilation earlier, or did they always want to have their own separate fiefdom within France?); and No Pasaran has hard-hitting posts in both French and English.

This is one of those stories that started rather slowly in both the blogosphere and the MSM, but has been building rather than fading. What originally could be dismissed as just another riot which was expected to die down almost as soon as it began seems to have developed ususually strong legs–and reach. I still believe we are in the “fog” stage, and do not really understand the greater significance of these disturbances, although that certainly doesn’t stop anyone–including me–from speculating.

So, is it a “clash of civilizations?”

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday, Clive Davis expanded on some comments he made earlier here, about blog response and press coverage (or lack thereof) of the riots in France, and added some interesting-looking links to some French blogs. He also provides a helpful translation of a few bits for the non-French-speaking among us, which includes me.

Clive wrote:

Religion complicates things enormously in Europe, yes, but we’re not yet in a clash of civilisations. I don’t want to sound Pollyanna-ish. At the same time, there’s no point being apocalyptic either, even if it does give us a nice, warm glow inside.

Today, he adds further commentary on the question of whether this is indeed a “European intifada.”

So, are we in a clash of civilizations, or aren’t we? Clive is always worth reading and listening to, and I think he is correct to ask the question, and to say the answer is not a simple “either-or.”

But sometimes the answer is “maybe,” or “yes, and.” Unfortunately, I don’t think we are in any position to say for sure that we are not in such a clash, much as I would like this to be the case. The “fog of riots” has not lifted. And although there may be no point in being apocalyptic (not Now, at least), I don’t think it’s a good idea to dismiss the “clash” possibility out of hand.

Reasonable people may differ on this, of course. But I tend to think the evidence is quite strong that if we aren’t in a clash of civilizations at the moment, we are at least teetering on the brink. Whether or not these particular riots fall into the category “clash of civilizations” remains to be seen. But pundits and bloggers and people in the street are going to rush in to fill the vacuum of knowledge with theories, and the idea that there are Islamic fundamentalist supremicists behind this, pulling at least some of the strings (directly or indirectly, intially or presently), is not an entirely unreasonable one.

Even without those puppeteers, fundamentalist Islamic tradition has a strain of intolerence, supercessionism, and violence that might be irrelevant were it not being revived today among some Moslems, both in Europe and elsewhere, permeating their worldview and informing their actions. On this topic, here’s part of an interview conducted a year ago with Bat Ye’or, author of Eurabia:

Stephen Crittenden: The Muslim populations are here in Europe, in large numbers, particularly in France and Germany. I want to put it to you that there’s only one realistic political reaction to that for the future, and that is to learn to live together.

Bat Ye’or: Yes I agree totally with you. The problem is that Europe has tried to do that and this was in fact the basis of the dialogue, but the Europeans didn’t know how to proceed with the dialogue. They were not imposing their views, they were accepting always, but not imposing. They were apologetic and they didn’t say ”˜Here we are, we are like this and you have to accept our mores and our laws’, because the dialogue between Muslim and non-Muslims is not symmetrical, it is not based on equality. The non-Muslims always have to adopt an attitude of passivity and acceptance and flattery in relation to the Muslim. This was how the dialogue developed. Now they didn’t foresee that they would be themselves victims of this policy with a recurrence of Islamic fundamentalism, the return of the 7th century mentality. They didn’t see in the long term the cultural revolution, that migration will bring also the intransigence of the Muslim fundamentalists.

Stephen Crittenden: Where do you think this is all going?

Bat Ye’or: It is going to disaster, because either Europe will become the new continent of dhimmitude or there will be a very savage xenophobic movement, because this immigration was not integrated properly, it happened too quickly. It is not only because the immigration was Muslim, because this would happen with any immigration, when you bring millions of people coming into a country in a very short term, they won’t integrate necessarily. But on top of it there is a refusal from the Muslim population often, not always, to integrate because they reject totally the Judaeo-Christian civilisation. I mean for 13 centuries they fought to destroy it, and if we are not aware – us non-Muslims and Muslims – of this past, we will not be able to come together, to bridge through our differences, and we have to recuperate this whole history that has been totally destroyed by the Janissary, Edward Said, in order to build with the Muslims a future of peace, not on dhimmitude because this will be our future, but on freedom and equal respect.

[ADDENDUM: Austin Bay adds all sorts of perspective, historical and otherwise, to the question of whether this might be jihad, or at least some sort of hybrid of jihad and a host of other things. He also sheds some rather fascinating light on the “Is Paris Burning?” quote from WWII that many bloggers are using in reference to the riots.]