From an email from DG:
1) Tomfoolery once shame on you, Tomfoolery twice shame on you
Thomas Friedman writing today in "Bad Bargains:"
No one explains it better than the Saudi writer Mai Yamani, author of “Cradle of Islam” and the daughter of Saudi Arabia’s former oil minister. “Despite the decade of the West’s war on terror, and Saudi Arabia’s longer-term alliance with the United States, the kingdom’s Wahhabi religious establishment has continued to bankroll Islamic extremist ideologies around the world,” wrote Yamani in The Daily Star of Beirut, Lebanon, this week.
“Bin Laden, born, raised and educated in Saudi Arabia, is a product of this pervasive ideology,” Yamani added. “He was no religious innovator; he was a product of Wahhabism, and later was exported by the Wahhabi regime as a jihadist. During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent some $75 billion for the propagation of Wahhabism, funding schools, mosques, and charities throughout the Islamic world, from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Yemen, Algeria and beyond. ... Not surprisingly, the creation of a transnational Islamic political movement, boosted by thousands of underground jihadist Web sites, has blown back into the kingdom. Like the hijackers of 9/11, who were also Saudi-Wahhabi ideological exports ... Saudi Arabia’s reserve army of potential terrorists remains, because the Wahhabi factory of fanatical ideas remains intact. So the real battle has not been with Bin Laden, but with that Saudi state-supported ideology factory.”
I don't have a problem with this argument. Friedman's right to quote Yamani. What I have a problem with is Friedman's hypocrisy. Nine years ago in An intriguing signal from the Saudi Crown Prince, Friedman wrote:
Crown Prince Abdullah is known as the staunchest Arab nationalist among Saudi leaders, and the one most untainted by corruption. He has a strong Arab following inside and outside the kingdom, and if he ever gave such a speech, it would have a real impact on Arab public opinion, as well as Israeli. Prince Abdullah seemed to be signaling that if President Bush took a new initiative for Middle East peace, he and other Arab leaders would be prepared to do so as well.
I also used the interview with the Saudi leader to ask why his country had never really apologized to America for the fact that 15 Saudis were involved in 9/11?
''We have been close friends for so long, and we never expected Americans to doubt us,'' he said. ''We saw this attack by bin Laden and his men as an attack on us, too, and an attempt to damage the U.S.-Saudi relationship,'' the crown prince said. ''We were deeply saddened by it and we never expected it to lead to tensions between us. But we've now learned that we respond to events differently. . . . It is never too late to express our regrets.''
The Saudi double game existed back in 2002 also. But then Friedman was willing to let the then-Prince off the hook as long as he engaged in a public relations gambit to put Israel on the spot diplomatically.
Worse, the other day in "End of the Mideast wholesale" Friedman wrote:
The third group I hope will have to pay retail is Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Under Mubarak, in an odd way, the Brotherhood had it easy. Mubarak made sure that no authentic, legitimate, progressive, modern Egyptian party could emerge between himself and the Muslim Brotherhood. That way, Mubarak could come to Washington once a year and tell the president: “Look, it’s either me or the Muslim Brotherhood. We have no independent, secular moderates.”
Therefore, to get its votes, all the Muslim Brotherhood had to say was that “Mubarak is a Zionist” and “Islam is the answer.” It didn’t have to think hard about jobs, economics or globalization. It got its support wholesale — by simply being the only authentic vehicle for protest against the regime. Now the Muslim Brotherhood is going to have to get its votes retail — I hope.
The naivete Friedman displays towards the Muslim Brotherhood is staggering. This is another way of saying, "Once they have to govern, they will moderate their views." That doesn't happen. Nine years after the fact Friedman is willing to take on the Saudi support of Wahhabism, but today he's turning a blind eye toward the radicalism of the Muslim Brotherhood. Barry Rubin recently wrote:
The Brotherhood is a radical Islamist group that supports genocide against Israel and violence against the United States. It is anti-Christian and wants to keep women as second-class people. It favors killing homosexuals. Here is Egypt’s foremost politician predicting that they will be to a large extent in control of the country, making its laws, and writing its constitution.
Let me make this clear: In October 2010 I warned that the Muslim Brotherhood was going on the offensive and its leader declared jihad against the United States. I didn’t say this because of something I thought up. I was quoting a speech made by the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. People mourn today because the United States ignored a declaration of jihad by a guy named Usama bin Ladin. Remember him? And then there was September 11.At the start of Egypt’s revolution, I was the first to point out the dangers. What the mass media ignored in February it accepted as fact in April.
I would not dare predict a Muslim Brotherhood victory by myself. Up until now, I thought the nationalists would form a strong bloc. But with Moussa not organizing a party and everyone else in the country doing little to create a strong anti-Islamist front, I’m going to listen to what Moussa thinks. He ought to know.
The Muslim Brotherhood poses a real risk to American interests. And yet Friedman, now, acts as if they will have to moderate if they gain power. Rather than sounding an alarm about the danger in advance, Friedman relies on one of his platitudes to reassure us. Maybe in nine years we'll get a column about the dangers of Islamists gaining power.
2) The problem with Syria
In an editorial yesterday, They should be condemning Syria, the editors of the New York Times argued:
It is outrageous that Syria is even being discussed for membership. Since the uprising began more than seven weeks ago, President Bashar al-Assad’s security apparatus has repeatedly responded with deadly force, including firing live ammunition at a funeral and seizing critically wounded demonstrators from a hospital. Hundreds are believed to have been killed, including 14 on Sunday. Thousands have been arrested or are missing. On Monday, the government boasted that it had gained the upper hand over the protesters.
Along with India, Indonesia and the Philippines, Syria is on a consensus slate to take one of four seats set aside for nations in the so-called Asian bloc. Despite pressure from the United States and Europe, Syria is refusing to abandon its candidacy.
Mr. Assad knows no shame. But shame on the Asian bloc for not insisting that Syria withdraw. India, Indonesia and the Philippines would be a lot more credible candidates if they refused to run with Syria. Shame, too, on the Arab members of the United Nations that reaffirmed support for Syria’s election even after Mr. Assad turned his guns on his people.
Since this editorial appeared, Syria was sidelined and Kuwait emerged as a candidate in its place. What bothers me is the naivete demonstrated here. This has always been how the reconstituted UN Human Rights Council has operated. There has been no criterion for membership and the world's worst dictatorships have used the council to serve their own purposes - including launching the investigation into Operation Cast Lead that resulted in the Goldstone report. I don't know what the editors of the Times were thinking. Of course Syria has no shame; there was no one holding it accountable.
The editorial is further undermined because the other day, the New York Times effectively gave the Assad regime an opportunity to present its views unfiltered in the news pages. Meanwhile the situation in Syria has deteriorated to the point that the EU has imposed sanctions on the regime. The United States is not reported to be part of the sanctions effort, perhaps it felt that it was premature to take any actions.
3) Like Libya, like Syria
Syria's candidacy for the UN Human Rights council emerged from the fact that Libya's crushing of dissent became too obvious. Today, we had somerhetorical echoes of Libya in Syria.
Mr. Makhlouf, a childhood friend and first cousin of Mr. Assad whose brother is the intelligence chief in Damascus, suggested that the ruling elite — staffed by Mr. Assad’s relatives and contemporaries — had grown even closer during the crisis. Though Mr. Assad has the final say, he said, policies were formulated as “a joint decision.”
“We believe there is no continuity without unity,” he said. “As a person, each one of us knows we cannot continue without staying united together.”
He echoed an Arabic proverb, which translated loosely, means that it will not go down alone. “We will not go out, leave on our boat, go gambling, you know,” he said at his plush, wood-paneled headquarters in Damascus. “We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end.” He added later, “They should know when we suffer, we will not suffer alone.”
This recalls the comments of Saif al-Islam Qaddafi from a few months ago:
"We will not be tolerant. We will fight to the end. We will never ever surrender to these people," said Saif al-Islam, wearing a sport jacket and jeans.
4) Just like the old Palestine Pound
Babylon and Beyond featured an interview with Jihad al-Wazir (whose father Khalil al-Wazir or Abu Jihad, was a close confidante of Yasser Arafat until he was killed by Israeli commandos in the late 1980's). al-Wazir is the head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority. I was struck by this assertion:
But Jihad Al-Wazir, 48, governor of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, which hopes to soon evolve into the first central bank, says work is needed before reintroducing the Palestinian pound.
"[R]eintroducing?" Yes there used to be a Palestine Pound, it was the currency of Mandatory Palestine. Someone reading the interview, though, might get the idea that there previously had been an independent Palestinian state that had issued the currency. Using the term "reintroducing" suggests a non-existent history.
7) Stations identification
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Middle East.
1 comment:
The world ignoring the danger of Islamism; Syrian instability and the mass media's inability to get an accurate picture of the Middle East.
Maybe they'll get it right in ten years' time.
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