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United States Foreign Policy
On a NY Stage: Four Strong Characters Seek Out the Meaning of Gaza and the Arab Spring
![[Image from screenshot of project website.]](/content_images/3/sm_mondoweissreport.jpg "[Image from screenshot of project website.]")
[This report was written by Phillip Weiss and originally published on Monoweiss.] Last night we had an event about Gaza in Manhattan with the Culture Project. It was so great and affirming that I was up most of the night savoring the experience. It was in a grand hall in midtown Manhattan, it was sold out, people actually paid money to go in, and they were rewarded with wisdom about Gaza, Goldstone and the Arab spring. Of the five people on the stage that night, four were women. Many people commented on that, and god knows I'm proud to have had a hand in that staging. But what did they say? The four experts were like four big characters in a David Hare play. They were ...
Keep Reading »Democracy Now! Roundtable with Noura Erakat on Obama Speech and Palestine
![[Image from screen shot of Democracy Now! broadcast.]](/content_images/3/sm_demnownouraobama.jpg "[Image from screen shot of Democracy Now! broadcast.]")
This is a roundtable interview conducted with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat, author Norman Finkelstein, and J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami on Friday, May 20 in reference to President Barack Obama's May 18th "Middle East Speech" and U.S. policy towards Palestine and Israel. In a major speech on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and on the Arab Spring, President Obama said a Palestinian state must be based on the 1967 borders, the first time a U.S. president has explicitly taken this position. The Israeli government immediately rejected Obama’s comments, calling the 1967 borders "indefensible." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ...
Keep Reading »Who Cares About Osama
![[Image from unknown archive]](/content_images/3/sm_osama-bin-laden.jpg "[Image from unknown archive]")
A flight from Istanbul to New York the day after Usama Bin Ladin was assassinated is an inopportune time to write about what it all means, but I would be thinking about little else anyway between the security checks, the turbulence and the guy at customs asking me what I was just doing in Iraq. Last night thousands of Americans took to the street waving flags to revel in what was both righteous justice and jingoism. That same day hundreds of thousands of communists, leftists and workers took to the streets of Istanbul and Ankara to commemorate May Day and demand more rights. Some sang an old communist guerilla song about taking to the mountains to fight. Some saluted ...
Keep Reading »The Fateful Choice
![[President Obama during his announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by a US Navy SEAL operation. Image from mediabistro.com]](/content_images/3/sm_obamaosamadead.jpg "[President Obama during his announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by a US Navy SEAL operation. Image from mediabistro.com]")
When 19 al-Qaeda hijackers attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the United States faced a strategic dilemma that was unique in magnitude, but not in kind. Terrorists had killed numerous civilians before, in the US and elsewhere, with and without state sponsorship. Al-Qaeda was not the first non-state actor to present no coherent demands alongside its propaganda of the deed or to have no single fixed address. Nor were Americans the first victims of unprovoked terrorist assault to set aside political differences, at least for a time, in search of a unified self-defense. What separated the spectacular horrors of September 11 from past episodes was scale ...
Keep Reading »Special Bodies, Speculative Personhood: Bradley Manning and Mohamed Bouazizi
![[Image from lawanddisorder.org]](/content_images/3/sm_Guantanamo.jpg "[Image from lawanddisorder.org]")
He was very sincere. We are like soulless bodies since he left. –Basma Bouazizi, sister If Brad Manning, 22, is the Collateral Murder and Garani massacre whistleblower then, without doubt, he’s a national hero. –Wikileaks He may be a mutilated trunk dismembered all about, the spirit removed all around and separated from the limbs, yet he lives and breathes the vital air. –Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Bradley Manning and Mohamed Bouazizi’s names have become known because they galvanized world attention through what has been perceived as incalculable personal sacrifices. By comparing the respectively imprisoned and immolated bodies of two of the ...
Keep Reading »Memoir and Mythology
![[Greg Mortenson at Gultori School Pakistan. Image from Central Asia Institute]](/content_images/3/sm_GultoriSchoolPak_sm.jpg "[Greg Mortenson at Gultori School Pakistan. Image from Central Asia Institute]")
Facts aren’t the only thing that should be checked in Three Cups of Tea The recent uproar over Greg Mortenson’s immensely popular nonfiction book Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission To Promote Peace... One School at a Time has centered around the question of whether the account is factual, and whether Mortenson is siphoning money from his $20 million-a-year charity, the Central Asia Institute (CAI). Three Cups of Tea is the ostensibly nonfiction narrative of Mortenson’s efforts to build secular schools in Northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mortenson believes that in providing the region with secular education that competes with “extremist” terrorist-breeding ...
Keep Reading »Revolutionary Tremors in Central Asia?
![[Image from author's archive]](/content_images/3/sm_tajik.jpg "[Image from author's archive]")
On April 3rd, 2011 Kazakhstan held presidential elections. Nursultan Nazarbayev, in power since 1991, called these elections a year early after scrapping a plan to hold a national referendum that would do away with the inconvenience of regular presidential contests and which was to extend his term until 2020. The referendum plan, although backed by both chambers of the Kazakh legislature and an apparently willing public (5 million signature in support of the referendum seem to have been collected), was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Council. Despite this setback, Nazarbayev faced only three minor candidates in the presidential contest all of whom ...
Keep Reading »Of Principle and Peril
![[Voting at UN Security Council. Image from politics365.com]](/content_images/3/sm_prinper.jpg "[Voting at UN Security Council. Image from politics365.com]")
Reasonable, principled people can disagree about whether, in an ideal world, Western military intervention in Libya’s internal war would be a moral imperative. With Saddam Hussein dead and gone, there is arguably no more capricious and overbearing dictator in the Arab world than Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi. The uprising of the Libyan people against him, beginning on February 17, was courageous beyond measure. It seems certain that, absent outside help, the subsequent armed insurrection would have been doomed to sputter amidst the colonel’s bloody reprisals. But the world is not an ideal one. It is not clear what principle differentiates Libya from other countries in ...
Keep Reading »Civil Society in Arab Lands: By Ballot or by Bullet?
![[Image Source: Unknown]](/content_images/3/sm_TunisiaProtests.jpg "[Image Source: Unknown]")
Each time I attend a panel, workshop, forum, conference, symposium, brainstorming session, or congressional session on civil society in the United States, I am disappointed yet optimistic! I am disenchanted because at least since 9/11, the Bush administration as well as the Obama administration has not understood the real dynamics within the Arab and Middle Eastern civil societies. Rather than begging for money from the U.S., civil society actors in this region are asking U.S. policymakers to cease baking the Arab Ceausescus -who kept them in the Dark Age for more than four decades- in order to be able to establish a genuine democracy in the region and enjoy its ...
Keep Reading »Is Bahrain Next?
![[Image Source: Unknown]](/content_images/3/sm_BahrainProtests.jpg "[Image Source: Unknown]")
On Monday hundreds of young Bahrainis poured into the streets in communities and villages across the small island country. Mobilized by decades of autocratic excess, torture, and years of anguish over the unfulfilled promises of political reform, the country’s activist community is struggling to tap into the revolutionary fervor that has gripped the Middle East in recent weeks and move forward a democratic agenda. They have made clear their desire to set aside an often paralyzing sectarianism that has recently divided the country’s Shiite majority from their Sunni rulers. Inspired by pro-democracy protesters elsewhere, they have also made clear their commitment to ...
Keep Reading »Indyk Won't Apologize for U.S. Policy Toward Egypt [Video-Today!]
![[Martin Indyk Interviewed by Sam Husseini]](/content_images/3/sm_indyk.jpg "[Martin Indyk Interviewed by Sam Husseini]")
[Video Below] The new activist group RootsAction put out an alert this week calling on the U.S. government to apologize for its policy of backing a dictator in Egypt for 30 years. Washington Stakeout today questioned Martin Indyk (currently director of foreign policy at Brookings, senior adviser to U.S. government envoy George Mitchell. He has worked in the past at Washington Institute for Near East Policy and American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]): Sam Husseini: “Does the U.S. foreign policy establishment owe the Egyptian people an apology for having backed a dictator for all these years? …” Indyk: “What the Egyptian people want to see is that ...
Keep Reading »U.S. Foreign Policy and the Democratic Uprising in Egypt
![[Image Source: AP]](/content_images/3/sm_Mubarak_Obama2.jpg "[Image Source: AP]")
At least thirteen pro-democracy protesters have been killed and hundreds injured in clashes with pro-Mubarak mobs in and around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. The attacks began on Wednesday when hundreds of Mubarak’s supporters, some of them on horses and camels, charged the pro-democracy protesters in an attempt to take control of the area. The assault escalated in the early hours of Thursday when Mubarak’s mob opened fire on their opponents. Since then, the mob has continued to use violence and various other means to disperse the mass of ordinary Egyptians calling for the regime’s ouster. The Egyptian army – which is widely respected in the country – stood by and ...
Keep Reading »Russia TV Interview with Jadaliyya Co-Editor on Palestine, Obama, and AIPAC
This is a Russia TV interview with Jadaliyya Co-Edtor Noura Erakat that aired on Tuesday May 24, 2011. In it, Noura discusses developments surrounding the Question of Palestine, with particular emphasis on the role of U.S. foriegn policy and Barack Obama's recent speech at the AIPAC Summitt.
Keep Reading »Text of Obama Letter Ordering Further Sanctions on Syria
[On Wednesday May 18th, 2011, President Obama issued a letter addressed to both the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate in regards to a new set of US sanctions on Syria. The letter was originally made public by The White House Press Secretary and can be found here.] For Immediate Release May 18, 2011 TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT TO THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:) Pursuant ...
Keep Reading »Democracy Now! Interview with Toby Jones on Saudi Arabia
This is an interview conducted with Toby Jones on Friday, April 6, in regards to the Saudi regime's response to calls for reform both in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The interview addresses the recent events in both kingdoms, highlighting the role of oil wealth and US foreign policy. It also discusses the possible impact of the recently announced killing of Usam Bin Ladin. Transcripts of the interview follow the below video. Saudi Arabia—the oil rich kingdom that is the birthplace and former home of Osama ...
Keep Reading »A Sense of Nervous Anticipation Looms in Pakistan
There is a nervous tension in the air in Peshawar after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Over the past couple of days, people are holding their breath. Waiting. Waiting to see what will happen next. Rumors are rampant. It almost feels as if death is right now looming above people’s heads. Death, people feel, is waiting to strike Peshawar, waiting to strike Pakistan, yet again. We hope not. We pray not. Yet everyone here feels that things are about to get worse, yet again. Questions are being raised in ...
Keep Reading »The Arab Uprisings and US Policy (Panel Video)
On Thursday, April 28th, 2011, the Middle East Policy Coucil held a one-day conference on Capitol Hill in Washingtong D.C., "featuring a discussion of the populist movements sweeping across the Arab world, their regional and global consequences, and how they are impacting U.S. interests and policy choices." Jadaliyya Co-Editor Bassam Haddad was one of the speakers at the conference, as were Anthony Cordesman (Center for Strategic International Studies), Barak Barfi (New American ...
Keep Reading »What is Sharia?
This question has animated scholarly, religious, and political debates for centuries. These debates have been lively, at times contentious, and have been held (under different circumstances and leading to different results) in different parts of the Muslim majority world as well as in parts of the world with few, if any, Muslims. More recently, it seems that the question “What is sharia?” has become a pressing concern in Western countries with growing Muslim minorities who continue to be unevenly ...
Keep Reading »Essential Readings: Counterinsurgency
This Essential Readings post is written by Laleh Khalili. [Editors' Note: This is the second in a series of "Essential Readings," in which we ask contributors to choose a list of must-read books, articles, and new media sources on a variety of topics. These are not meant to be comprehensive lists, but rather starting points for readers who want to read more about particular topics.
Keep Reading »Bahraini Protesters to Obama: Foreign Troops Unleash Violence Against Bahrainis And Claim to Have American Green Light!
[This is a public letter addressed to US President Barack Obama from by protesters in Bahrain under the name “Movement of 14 February.” The letter was circulated on March 15, 2011] Mr President, You certainly know about the Saudi and other gulf troops arriving to Bahrain to aid the government in clamping down the peaceful protesters. If you can find any legal, logical or ethical justification for this intervention, can you find any justification as well to them forming thugs attacking peaceful ...
Keep Reading »Solidarity and Its Discontents
While building solidarity between activists in the U.S. and Iran can be a powerful way of supporting social justice movements in Iran, progressives and leftists who want to express solidarity with Iranians are challenged by a complicated geopolitical terrain. The U.S. government shrilly decries Iran’s nuclear power program and expands a long-standing sanctions regime on the one hand, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes inflammatory proclamations and harshly suppresses Iranian protesters and ...
Keep Reading »Why Tahrir Infuriates the Neo-Cons
Everywhere you turn, Niall Ferguson is berating Obama’s “muddling” of Egypt. He’s blogging on The Daily Beast, spewing angrily on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, and inaugurating his new column in Newsweek with a cover story blasting Obama. Tahrir Square is the neo-cons’ worst nightmare… And Ferguson is one of the scribes who helped globalize and legitimize the neo-cons’ ideas. Since 9/11, Ferguson’s books on empire have become airport bestsellers, and he’s gone from Oxford to NYU to Harvard. Like the Oxford ...
Keep Reading »Preparing Tomorrow's History Lessons
Last night, my husband Michael Kennedy and I wrote an essay for Jadaliyya suggesting that the Polish Round Tables of 1989 might present a model for those hoping to move the Tahrir protest movements forward. He is an academic who works on Central and Eastern Europe, I on the Middle East. The difference in our world regions, I often tell him, is in your part of the world, the US supports protest movements; in my part of the world, the US stands in their way. I’d hoped Egypt’s January 25 movement would be ...
Keep Reading »Encouraging the Outcome through Silence
On Tuesday February 1st, the 82-year old Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt with a hammer-swinging fist since 1981, announced that he would not run in September’s presidential election. He also pledged to “die on Egyptian soil,” sending the message that he would be retiring in Egypt, not into exile. The demonstrators rejected his belated concession. The protesters’ demands have not wavered since the beginning of the uprising. They want an end to Mubarak’s tenure and have signaled that military generals ...
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His poems will be read with admiration and awe, but perhaps it’s time to forget about Adunis the cultural critic and radical intellectual. The Arab Spring has consigned Adunis, the self-proclaimed revolutionary, to irrelevance. And that is the beauty of revolutions.click | email | tweet
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