“On the 10th anniversary of the invasion, we should be hearing a lot more from them — and a lot less from the former American officials and pundits who got it wrong the first time.”—Marc Lynch
one surprising detail about the flood of retrospectives: They have almost exclusively been written by Americans, talking about Americans, for Americans. Indeed, many Iraqis fail to see the point of commemorating the disastrous war for the benefit of the American media.
In What’s Missing from the Iraq Debate, written for his blog on Foreign Policy, Lynch cites some exceptions, including Mark Kukis’s Voices from Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 but argues that books and commentary on the invasion have been very American-centric. American discussions about Iraq have focused on U.S. strategy, often ignoring Iraqi politics and public opinion. Lynch discusses the implications of this:
Myopia has consequences. Failing to listen to those Iraqi voices meant getting important things badly wrong. Most profoundly, the American filter tends to minimize the human costs and existential realities of military occupation and a brutal, nasty war. The savage civil war caused mass displacement and sectarian slaughter that will be remembered for generations. The U.S. occupation also involved massive abuses and shameful episodes, from torture at Abu Ghraib Prison to a massacre of unarmed Iraqis in the city of Haditha. The moral and ethical imperative to incorporate Iraqi perspectives should be obvious.
“The experience of the U.S. invasion and occupation scarred the country much more deeply than even I as a correspondent there imagined.”—Mark Kukis
Upon the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, we are re-posting an earlier interview with Mark Kukis about his book Voices from Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 and the current situation in Iraq and future prospects for the country.
Kukis wrote the book to give Iraqis a voice as a way to counteract their under-representation in the U.S. media. He discovered that most Iraqis were genuinely glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein but fault the United States for many policies enacted during the occupation, particularly its disbanding of the Iraqi army.
Iraqis, Kukis believes now see many of the problems confronting the country as the responsibility of the Iraqi government even if they are a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation. Here are some excerpts from the interview in which Kukis considers how Iraqis view their future:
What does Iraq’s near-term future look like to them? Do you agree?
The near-term future looks rather bleak to many Iraqis, mainly because of the persistently high violence. No nation can think of itself as normal or stable when bombs kill and maim hundreds each year in the biggest urban areas. I believe Iraq will grow economically in the coming years and return to its status as one of the most developed and wealthiest nations in the Middle East. You can have economic growth and high violence at the same time.
But most Iraqis I suspect will find little solace in economic gains so long as violence endures at the current levels, and there is little to suggest it will be easing. So, yes, I tend to join those in Iraq with a fairly dim view of the future given the violence.
[T]he anniversary retrospectives also give renewed exposure to those who promoted the war and have a large stake in still promoting the idea that they were not responsible for foisting on the nation an expedition that was so hugely damaging to American interests.
Pillar’s article was in part inspired by a recent event he participated in with former Bush administration figures the then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Douglas Feith, who as an undersecretary of defense was one of the most rabid supporters of the invasion of Iraq. Still maintaining that the war needed to be fought to protect the United States, Hadley and Feith suggest that if any mistake was made in deciding to go to war it was following bad intelligence. The lesson to learn is that administrations need to ask tougher questions about intelligence.
As Pillar shows, in what amounts to a devastating critique of the fallacy of Hadley and Feith’s position, bad intelligence had little to do with the Bush administration’s choice to go to invade Iraq. Bush and his neoconservative advisers wanted to get rid of Saddam and saw the post 9-11 atmosphere as giving them an opening. The administration backed intelligence when it supported their case (as with WMD’s) and discredited it when it challenged it (as with the lack of a connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda).
In particular, Kukis shares some of the reactions of a range of Iraqis to the early days of the invasion. This initial period, from the invasion in 2003 to the outbreak of sectarian disease, is referred to as “the collapse” by Iraqis. It was a period that Kukis describes for Iraqis in which, “Anger mingled with joy. Relief came with dread. Hopefulness flowed with rage.”
Kukis cites varied Iraqi reactions to the looting, the U.S. bombing, and seeing U.S. troops patrolling Iraqi streets. While some spoke with a kind of awe about U.S. soldiers. Omar Yousef Hussein, who became a part of the insurgent movement, reveals a more conflicted view of the troops. In the following, he describes his first operation:
We made our way to the road. There were some shepherds there with sheep. They saw us planting the bomb but said nothing. It all seemed like a game, honestly. A game you might play as a child. We ran a wire from the bomb through the fields off the road and found a hiding place where the leaves and grass kept us from view. From there we watched. We did not have to wait long. It was a busy road. The Americans used it a lot. After about an hour we saw a Humvee. This was in the early days, when Humvees were often seen alone, not always in armored convoys like later. The Humvee approached, and at the right moment we detonated. The explosion flipped the Humvee onto its side, and after a moment a crowd gathered. We eased out of our hiding spot and joined the group on the street. I don’t know if the Americans in the Humvee were dead or not. I just saw them being carried away on stretchers. No one walked away as far as I could tell. I can’t say how the others felt at that moment, but I was in tears. I didn’t know whether I was crying out of sadness or fear or happiness. Maybe all those reasons. For me, that first operation was like breaking free from a whole life of oppression. I had grown up under Saddam Hussein. I had spent nearly a decade of my youth in his jails. I had seen my country invaded by a foreign army. All my life I felt beaten down by one hand or another. And now, finally, for the first time I was hitting back.
This week marks the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. During the week, we will be featuring books and authors’ perspectives on Iraq. In particular, the extraordinary work by Mark Kukis, Voices from Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 by Mark Kukis.
Kukis’s book features the testimony of close to seventy Iraqis from all backgrounds and occupations—from onetime Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to insurgents speaking on the condition of anonymity.
In addition to our blog, we will also feature the book on Twitter feed, and on our Facebook page. We are also offering a FREE copy of the book to the winner of our Book Giveaway.
To enter our Book Giveaway, simply e-mail pl2164@columbia.edu with your name and preferred mailing address. We will randomly select one winner on Friday at 1:00 pm. Good luck, and spread the word!
Judith Butler’s appearance last week at an event at Brooklyn College with Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement campaigner Omar Barghouti elicited controversy regarding both Israeli policies and the limits or threats to academic freedom.
In her recently published book Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, Butler engages a Jewish philosophical positions to articulate a critique of political Zionism. Butler has also been a supporter of the BDS movement and the event drew protestations from Alan Dershowitz, several New York City Council members, the New York Daily News , and a variety of Pro-Israel groups, who called for the event to be cancelled. Going further, several Council members threatened funding to Brooklyn College if the event was held.
This in turn led a diverse group of people and institutions, ranging from Mayor Bloomberg to the MLA, who supported Brooklyn College’s right to hold the event. To not hold it, they argued, would be a threat to academic freedom.
The Nation has published Butler’s remarks at Brooklyn College in full. In the following excerpt, Butler comments on the controversy:
The arguments made against this very meeting took several forms, and they were not always easy for me to parse. One argument was that BDS is a form of hate speech, and it spawned a set of variations: it is hate speech directed against either the State of Israel or Israeli Jews, or all Jewish people. If BDS is hate speech, then it is surely not protected speech, and it would surely not be appropriate for any institution of higher learning to sponsor or make room for such speech. Yet another objection, sometimes uttered by the same people who made the first, is that BDS does qualify as a viewpoint, but as such, ought to be presented only in a context in which the opposing viewpoint can be heard as well. There was yet a qualification to this last position, namely, that no one can have a conversation on this issue in the US that does not include a certain Harvard professor, but that spectacular argument was so self-inflationary and self-indicting, that I could only respond with astonishment.
So in the first case, it is not a viewpoint (and so not protected as extra-mural speech), but in the second instance, it is a viewpoint, presumably singular, but cannot be allowed to be heard without an immediate refutation. The contradiction is clear, but when people engage in a quick succession of contradictory claims such as these, it is usually because they are looking for whatever artillery they have at their disposal to stop something from happening. They don’t much care about consistency or plausibility.
“But to focus on the short clip, posted online, that portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, pedophile, and general sex fiend, is largely to miss the point. The true animating cause behind the protests is power, that is, Western power to define the Islamic world in ways that undermine its values, aspirations, identity, and, ultimately, its autonomy and means of self-determination.” — Jonathan Lyons
Over the last couple weeks, there have been protests against the US throughout the Muslim world, ostensibly in response to the short film The Innocence of Muslims.
Islam, Violence, and the West: It’s not the Video, Stupid
By Jonathan Lyons
It may be tempting to watch the unrest unfolding in parts of the Muslim world and wonder what real harm could there be in a cheesy “desert saga,” replete with glue-on beards, stilted dialogue, and an over-the-top touch of melodrama? Or perhaps to take some refuge in an absolutist notion of free speech.
But to focus on the short clip, posted online, that portrays the Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, pedophile, and general sex fiend, is largely to miss the point. The true animating cause behind the protests is power, that is, Western power to define the Islamic world in ways that undermine its values, aspirations, identity, and, ultimately, its autonomy and means of self-determination. (more…)
Todd Gitlin is perhaps not Judith Butler’s most ardent supporter. In a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Trouble with Judith Butler—and Her Critics, Gitlin, author of The Intellectuals and the Flag and other titles, faults her for her somewhat obfuscatory writing and her devotion to what he terms, “theory.”
However, he does take issue with the Jerusalem Post’s recent articles attacking Butler in the wake of her winning the Theodor Adorno Prize, awarded by the city of Frankfurt. Gitlin points out that the Jerusalem Post‘s claims that Butler has defended Hezbollah and Hamas lacks any real evidence beyond a misreading of her remarks given in front of an academic audience. (Butler herself refuted the Jerusalem Post in an article in Mondoweiss. For more on her views about Israel, please see her recently published Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism.)
Gitlin argues the tactics of the Jerusalem Post reflect the current and lamentable state of debate in our society:
These days, even the most lucid writers fall victims to scurrilous, slovenly, sound-bite spitballing that pretends to be grown-up debate. The gotcha habit of seeking the author’s clumsiest, least defensible moments and waving them in the air like chunks of raw meat, is a disgrace and a curse. I imagine there is Talmudic support for this view.
“What gives a tradition legitimacy is very often what works against its effectiveness. To be effective, a tradition must be able to depart from the particular historical circumstances of its legitimation and prove applicability to new occasions of time and space. In a sense, such resources can only become effective by losing their grounding in historical or textual precedent….” — Judith Butler
Today we have part of the introduction of Parting Ways. In this excerpt, Butler explains “what it means to derive a set of principles from a cultural tradition” and then applies this explanation to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can read the introduction to Parting Ways in it’s entirety on Scribd.
To Derive a Set of Principles
Let us reflect first on what it means to derive a set of principles from a cultural tradition and then move to the larger political issues at hand. As I noted, to say that principles are “derived” from Jewish resources raises the question of whether these principles remain Jewish once they are developed within a contemporary situation, assuming new historical forms? Or are they principles that can and must be, always have been, derived from various cultural and historical resources, thus “belonging” exclusively to none of them? In fact, does the generalizability of theprinciples in question depend fundamentally on their finally not belonging to any one cultural location or tradition from which they may have emerged? Does this nonbelonging, this exile, help to constitute the generalizability and transposability of the principles of justice and equality? (more…)
So, on the one hand, Jews who are critical of Israel think perhaps they cannot be Jewish anymore of Israel represents Jewishness; and on the other hand, those who seek to vanquish anyone who criticizes Israel equate Jewishness with Israel as well, leading to the conclusion that the critic must be anti-Semitic or, if Jewish, self-hating. My scholarly and public efforts have been directed toward getting out of this bind. — Judith Butler
Our highlighted book this week is Judith Butler’s Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism. You can enter our giveaway for a chance to win a FREE copy!
The Theodor W. Adorno Prize is given every three years by the city of Frankfurt “to further and acknowledge outstanding performances in the fields of philosophy, music, theatre and film.” Past winners have included such luminaries as Jürgen Habermas, Jean-Luc Goddard, and Jacques Derrida. This year’s prize is being awarded to Judith Butler. However, the Jerusalem Post recently published an article critical of Butler and the awarding of the prize, “Frankfurt to award US advocate of Israel boycott.” Monday, Mondoweiss published a letter from Butler herself responding to the criticisms she faced in the Jerusalem Post article on her stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Butler begins her letter by listing the three main criticisms leveled against her in the article in the Jerusalem Post:
The accusations against me are that I support Hamas and Hezbollah (which is not true) that I support BDS (partially true), and that I am anti-Semitic (patently false). Perhaps I should not be as surprised as I am that those who oppose my receiving the Adorno Prize would seek recourse to such scurrilous and unfounded charges to make their point. I am a scholar who gained an introduction to philosophy through Jewish thought, and I understand myself as defending and continuing a Jewish ethical tradition that includes figures such as Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt…. I was taught at every step in my Jewish education that it is not acceptable to stay silent in the face of injustice. Such an injunction is a difficult one, since it does not tell us exactly when and how to speak, or how to speak in a way that does not produce a new injustice, or how to speak in a way that will be heard and registered in the right way. My actual position is not heard by these detractors, and perhaps that should not surprise me, since their tactic is to destroy the conditions of audibility.
Butler is particularly disturbed by what she sees as the silencing tactics of many of her critics.
It is untrue, absurd, and painful for anyone to argue that those who formulate a criticism of the State of Israel is anti-Semitic or, if Jewish, self-hating. Such charges seek to demonize the person who is articulating a critical point of view and so disqualify the viewpoint in advance. It is a silencing tactic: this person is unspeakable, and whatever they speak is to be dismissed in advance or twisted in such a way that it negates the validity of the act of speech. The charge refuses to consider the view, debate its validity, consider its forms of evidence, and derive a sound conclusion on the basis of listening to reason. The charge is not only an attack on persons who hold views that some find objectionable, but it is an attack on reasonable exchange, on the very possibility of listening and speaking in a context where one might actually consider what another has to say.
You’d bring someone home, and the first question was “Are they Jewish, are they not Jewish?” Then I entered into a lesbian community in college—late college, graduate school—and the first thing they asked was, “Are you a feminist, are you not a feminist?” “Are you a lesbian, are you not a lesbian?” and I thought, “Enough with the separatism!” — Judith Butler
Today we have part of a conversation between Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni and Judith Butler excerpted from Aloni’s book What Does a Jew Want?: On Binationalism and other Specters. In this excerpt, Butler explains how her Jewish background led her to the study of philosophy and critical theory, which in turn led her back to a study of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can read the conversation in it’s entirety on Scribd.
Udi Aloni: Now I must be Jewish: what was your parents’ relation to Judaism?
Judith Butler: My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an Orthodox synagogue and after my grandfather died, she went to a Conservative synagogue and a little later ended up in a Reform synagogue. My father was in reform synagogues from the beginning.
My mother’s uncles and aunts were all killed in Hungary. My grand¬mother lost all of her relatives, except for the two nephews who came with them in the car when my grandmother went back in 1938 to see who she could rescue. It was important for me. I went to Hebrew school. But I also went after school to special classes on Jewish ethics because I was interested in the debates. So I didn’t do just the minimum. Through high school, I suppose, I continued Jewish studies alongside my public school education. (more…)
“Animosity between the largely Sunni protest movement and the minorities who stood by and watched Assad’s forces slaughter them will have to be ironed out and discussed on a countrywide scale. There will be many more deaths, even after the regime is ousted. Syrians will have to partake on one key activity: to listen to each other. For the country’s minorities and for those fearing a conservative government replacing Assad they must consider themselves Syrian first, and Alawite, Christian, Kurd, second.” — Stephen Starr
On Monday, the Guardian ran “Syria can find peace if its minorities seek common ground,” an article on the dangers posed by animosity between the minority groups in Syria written by Stephen Starr. Starr is a freelance journalist who has lived in and reported from Syria since 2007, and the author of the forthcoming Revolt in Syria: Eye-witness to the Uprising. Starr has written about the Syrian uprising for the Washington Post, Financial Times, the London Times and the London Sunday Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Irish Times.
Starr begins his article by explaining how well-to-do Syrians avoided discussing politics before the recent uprising:
“You can write about anything you want,” friends and acquaintances regularly told me during my five-year stay in Syria. “But do not touch politics or religion.” For Syrians, the open discussion of politics was something on few people’s minds. Before the current revolt took hold, managing to secure a good job in spite of crippling graft and sparse opportunities was a far more pressing concern.
Pre-March 2011, the vast majority of Syrians I know kept their heads down and enjoyed life as they could. In wealthy areas of the country, politics and open discussion were gladly sacrificed for economic security and streets where their children could play in peace.
“[I]t is activists’ videos appearing on television stations around the world that have shaped our thinking and opinions on Syria. The conflict becomes black and white when viewed through such a lens: Assad’s regime is wrong and the rebels are right. The truth, of course, is more complicated than that.”
–Stephen Starr
Monday, Foreign Policy posted “The Fog of Civil War,” an article on the complex and frequently misrepresented civil war in Syria by Stephen Starr. Starr is a freelance journalist who has lived in and reported from Syria since 2007, and the author of the forthcoming Revolt in Syria: Eye-witness to the Uprising. Starr has written about the Syrian uprising for the Washington Post, Financial Times, the London Times and the London Sunday Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Irish Times.
Starr begins his article with the story of protests in Jdaydieh Artouz, a story that he believes has been distorted in the public imagination:
In Jdaydieh Artouz, a town 11 miles southwest of Damascus that is home to a mix of Sunnis, Christians, and Alawites, protests have been taking place almost daily for well over a year. Yet the security forces, centered at a police station a few hundred yards up the street from where the protesters regularly gather, have largely ignored them. One wet, cold January night while out to pick up some sharwama sandwiches, I watched cars with Bashar al-Assad’s face emblazoned across the rear window pass within inches of the indomitable demonstrators. Neither side appeared perturbed. With the exception of isolated incidents in which several protesters were killed, the town remained peaceful throughout the uprising — that is until Thursday, July 19, when rebel fighters fired RPGs at the police station, killing five officers.
Living in this town for the first 11 months of the uprising, I tried, and failed, to get articles published questioning why the regime tolerated protests or allowed free assembly in some areas, but not others. These incidents didn’t fit the narrative that all protests were being violently quashed. The majority, of course, were — and often brutally — but the full picture was unnervingly complex. (more…)
Over the next couple weeks, New York City is going to be treated to a couple of unique events featuring CUP author Udi Aloni and CUP Insurrections Series editor Slavoj Zizek.
First, this coming Sunday, April 15th, Israeli filmmaker Udi Aloni and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek are presenting a multifaceted theatrical performance loosely based around Aloni’s recent book, What Does a Jew Want?. After the performance itself, there will be some discussion and a book signing. Here are the details: (more…)
To enter the giveaway please submit by email your name and mailing address by 1 pm eastern time on Friday, January 20th to pl2164@columbia.edu. The winner will be drawn at random. (Unfortunately, the giveaway is only available to those living in the United States or Canada.)
As Jonathan Lyons explains, in page 99 he examines the West’s failure to take seriously the accomplishments in philosophy and science from the Muslim world. This, he argues, has been one of the West’s most persistent and ultimately damaging misunderstandings about the Muslim world. The other two relate to Islam and women and Islam and violence.
Jonathan Lyons writes
The Western narrative of Islam and science, like those of Islam and women and Islam and violence, is part of a 1000-year-old discourse that shapes what we say – and more importantly, what we cannot say – about Islam and the Muslims. This, in turn, has left us intellectually unprepared and politically unable to respond to some of the most significant challenges of the twenty-first century: the global rise of Islamic political power; the more narrow emergence of religious violence and terrorism; and clashes between established cultural values and multicultural rights on the part of growing Muslim immigrant populations.
When Udi Aloni comes to New York to discuss his new book What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters he will also be screening and talking about two of his films, Local Angel: Theological Political Fragments and Kashmir: Journey to Freedom, which tells the story of a new generation of Kashmiri Muslims who, in one of the world’s most beautiful and dangerous places, began a nonviolent resistance struggle to change the destiny of their nation.
Aloni’s interest in Kashmir as a stateless region has parallels with his longtime interest and work regarding the Palestine-Israel conflict. The following is a trailer for Kashmir: Journey to Freedom, which will be screened at Columbia on Monday, October 10 at 6:30. The screenings will be followed by a Q-and-A with Udi Aloni.
Events include a screening of two of Aloni’s documentaries, including Local Angel: Theological Political Fragments. Slavoj Zizek referred to the experience of watching the film as “the closest you can get to an intellectual orgasm”; a panel discussion with Zizek, Alain Badiou, James Schamus, Alissa Solomon, and Aloni about What Does a Jew Want?; and a performance of Aloni’s play “While Waiting,” performed by the Freedom Theater of the Jenin Refugee Camp.
Erica Chenoweth recently wrote Think Again: Nonviolent Resistance, published in Foreign Policy, which we will feature next week. She also just published an article on the web site Waging Nonviolence in which she examines the question of whether nonviolence resistance could have worked succeeded in Libya.
Chenoweth admits that “the success of the Libyan uprising will, no doubt, be remembered as a successful case of violent insurgency.” However, as she argues, a nonviolent resistance never had time to take hold. Qaddafi’s crackdown on peaceful protest turned violent very quickly which led rebels to adopt violence. Nonviolent campaigns, Chenoweth points out, need time to organize and to develop other methods of resistance such as boycotts, work slowdowns, etc. The turn to violence by Libyan rebels put them in a precarious position and gave Qaddafi a pretext for adopting extremely harsh measures. While Chenoweth admits that Qaddafi would have undoubtedly repressed a nonviolent protest movement, she suggests that “adopting violence put the rebels at a major force disadvantage, and it’s unlikely that they would have succeeded without NATO’s air support.”
Erica Chenoweth concludes by citing reports of the role civil resistance did play in the success of the Libyan uprising. She writes:
Khaled Darwish’s op-ed in the New York Times today seems to corroborate this account, describing how women and children rushed into the streets of Tripoli before the rebel advance, how civilians blocked apartment rooftops from snipers, and how they sang and chanted over loudspeakers in unity against Qaddafi’s regime. If these descriptions are true, then civil resistance had a pretty important part in the “endgame” of the Libyan revolution, and as such, deserves at least some credit for the opposition’s victory.
“The experience of the U.S. invasion and occupation scarred the country much more deeply than even I as a correspondent there imagined.”—Mark Kukis
In a recent interview with Time magazine, Mark Kukis discussed his recently published book Voices from Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 as well as the current situation in Iraq and future prospects for the country.
Kukis wrote the book to give Iraqis a voice as a way to counteract their under-representation in the U.S. media. He discovered that most Iraqis were genuinely glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein but fault the United States for many policies enacted during the occupation, particularly its disbanding of the Iraqi army.
Iraqis, Kukis believes now see many of the problems confronting the country as the responsibility of the Iraqi government even if they are a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation. Here are some excerpts from the interview in which Kukis considers how Iraqis view their future:
What does Iraq’s near-term future look like to them? Do you agree?
The near-term future looks rather bleak to many Iraqis, mainly because of the persistently high violence. No nation can think of itself as normal or stable when bombs kill and maim hundreds each year in the biggest urban areas. I believe Iraq will grow economically in the coming years and return to its status as one of the most developed and wealthiest nations in the Middle East. You can have economic growth and high violence at the same time.
But most Iraqis I suspect will find little solace in economic gains so long as violence endures at the current levels, and there is little to suggest it will be easing. So, yes, I tend to join those in Iraq with a fairly dim view of the future given the violence.
