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Sunday, November 22, 2015
Weekend Roundup
Much blather this week about the existential threat posed to the
United States by the prospect of allowing 10,000 Syrian refugees to
resettle here. Some demagogues like Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush insisted
that we only allow Syrian Christians to enter (7.8% in 1960, the
last Syrian census to bother to count sectarian identity, although
a 2006 estimate bumps this up to 10%). Others insisted on a vetting
process to weed out terrorist infiltrators, evidently unaware that
a rather onerous one already exists. Dozens of Republican governors,
including our own Sam Brownback (who recently displaced Bobby Jindal
as the least popular sitting governor in the US), issued executive
orders to help stanch the deluge of Syrian/Arab/Muslim immigrants.
Donald Trump not only opposed all immigration, but went further to
entertain the idea of a federal registry of Muslims in America. He
finally received some backlash for that (rather casual) statement,
but it appeals to a base distinguished only by the depths of their
ignorance. I'm seeing reports that "only 49% of GOP voters in Iowa
think that the religion of Islam should even be legal."
Reading Wikipedia's piece on
Islam in the United States would help alleviate this ignorance.
You will find, for instance, that about 1% of the American population
is Muslim (2.77 million). Also, Muslims are immigrating to the US at
a rate of about 110,000 per year. So 10,000 extra Syrians represents
less than 10% of the current immigration rate, about 0.36% of the
total Muslim population (1 in 277). If everyone shut up and just let
this happen, no one would ever notice anything. The problem, though,
is that by making a big stink about it, you're not just barring 10,000
Syrians, you're sending a message of hate and fear to 2.77 million
Americans. How does that help?
About one-fourth of the Muslims in America are African-Americans,
notably political leaders (including two members of Congress) and
many prominent athletes and musicians. Most others are first or
second generation immigrants, but some date back to immigrants
from the 1880-1910 era, and some can trace their families back to
the colonial era. The piece has numerous examples, plus a section
on "Religious freedom" that shows that Americans were aware of Islam
when they declared freedom of religion in the US Constitution.
One minor point I wasn't aware of is that the first country to
recognize the United States as an independent country was the
Sultanate of Morocco. It's worth adding that the US had generally
good relationships in the Arab world up through WWII. In the first
world war, Woodrow Wilson had refused to join Britain and France
in declaring war on the Ottoman Empire, and he later declined an
Anglo-French proposal that the US occupy Turkey when they were
divvying up the spoils of war. Before then, the US was primarily
known for its missionary schools like the American Universities
in Beirut and Cairo. (The Presbyterians who founded those schools
restricted their missionary work to Christians so as not to offend
Muslim authorities, but welcomed Muslims to study and respected
them, allowing the Universities to develop as intellectual centers
of liberal, nationalist, and anti-colonial thinking.) Arab/Muslim
respect for America only eroded after the US sided with Israel's
colonialist project and replaced Britain as the protector of the
aristocracies that claim personal ownership of the region's oil
wealth.
US good will in the Arab world was built on a reputation for
fairness and mutual respect, but has since been squandered in an
anachronistic, foolhardy attempt to grab the spoils of empire.
In some sense, we've gone full circle. The first significant
number of Muslims to appear in colonial America were brought
here from Africa, and they proved to be especially difficult to
manage as slaves. Islam was then and now a religion that stood
for justice and fought back against injustice. It should not be
surprising that today's right-wing sees imposing Christianity
on Muslims as key to ending their disobedience, as that was
precisely what their forebears the slaveholders had done. After
all, the prime directive of conservatism is to defend hierarchy
by forcing everyone into their "proper" place. Of course, that
was easier to do before conservative institutions like slavery
and the inquisition were discredited, but the more we live in
a world where people with money think they can buy anything,
the more we see even the hoariest fantasies of conservatism
come back to haunt us.
Some scattered links this week:
Richard Silverstein: Why "Reform" Islam?: This is mostly a response to
a NY Times piece,
Tim Arango: Experts Explain How Global Powers Can Smash ISIS.
(If I may interject, my own response is that the piece shows how low
the bar is to qualify as an "expert" on this subject.) Arango writes:
Talking to a diverse group of experts, officials, religious scholars
and former jihadis makes clear there is no consensus on a simple
strategy to defeat the Islamic State. But there are some themes --
like . . . pushing a broader reformation of Islam --
that a range of people who follow the group say must be part of a
solution.
Some of those "experts" go further in insisting that terrorism is
so intimately tied to Islam that only by "reforming" the latter can
it be purged of such instincts. Silverstein replies:
But even if we concede for argument's sake that there is some correlation,
no matter how tenuous, why do we blame an entire religion? Why do we blame
an entire sacred book when a tiny minority of a religion misinterpret it?
Why do we say the religion is at fault rather than the human beings who
betray or distort it?
Baruch Goldstein was a mass murderer who killed 29 Palestinian Muslim
worshippers at a religious shrine. He did this in the name of his twisted
form of Judaism (which I prefer to call settler Judaism to distinguish it
from normative Judaism). Did I hear Tim Arango or anyone else wring their
hands about the correlation between Torah and mass murder? Even if I did,
should I have?
There is nothing wrong with Torah. Just because Jews misread their
sacred text, must I blame the text itself?
The problems here are so ridiculous it's hard to enumerate them.
One, of course, is scale: there are over a billion Muslims in the
world today, and hardly any of them present a "terrorist" threat,
so why try to discredit the majority's religion? And who are we to
decide to reform what they believe? Religions are changed by prophets,
not by academics or politicians, and for lots of reasons it's ever
getting harder to do that. Established religions like Christianity
are certain non-starters, as they've already been rejected. Doubt
is easier than replacement, so maybe atheism, secular humanism, or
Marxism might make a dent, especially if one attempted to apply such
"reform" here as well as there -- but even the Soviets weren't very
effective at banishing old religions. So why even talk about such
impractical nonsense?
Well, it's mostly transference: our way of saying that they're
the problem. The facts rather argue differently. At the simplest
level, you can compare the frequency and size of acts of violence
by Muslims that occur in Europe and the US -- what we like to call
"terrorism" -- with the same measure of acts of violence by the US
and Europe in the Muslim world, and you'll find that there are far
more of the latter than the former. Also, if you put them on a
timeline, you'll find that the latter predate the former (at least
for any time after the early 8th century). Maybe the religions or
the ideologies of the west are the ones that should be reformed?
A more promising route might be to find a sense of justice that is
acceptable to both (or all) religions, and build on that. But the
key to doing so isn't dominating the other into submission. It is
looking into oneself to find something that might work as common
ground. Unfortunately, you don't get to be an "expert" on ISIS by
understanding that.
Also see another of Silverstein's pieces:
"Remember the Stranger, for You Yourselves Were Strangers:
This could just as well be the motto of the United States as one of the
cardinal verses in the Torah. It should be stamped on Bibi Netanyahu's
forehead since he violates this precept virtually every day that he
maintains prison camps for African refugees, who he refuses to grant
asylum or even an application process. For those who take the passage
to heart, it means be humble, remember the refugee, show kindness and
hospitality to the less fortunate. The Republican presidential candidates
apparently don't read their Bibles. Or if they do, they're reading the
wrong passages.
The GOP is now making hay out of the Paris terror attacks. Each
candidate falls all over himself to be more punitive, more intolerant
than the next. 23 governors, including one Democrat, have said they
will refuse to accept Syrian refugees within their states. This,
despite the fact that governors have no say in immigration matters
and may not expel legal refugees. That's the job of the federal
government. But don't tell the governors that. It might educate them
about the separate powers delegated to the states and federal
government. A little something called the Constitution.
Another historical fact worth mentioning: in 1938, 937 European
Jews boarded the S.S. St. Louis en route to America where they hoped
to find refuge from Hitler's encroaching hordes. They waited for
months in Cuba and other sites while their supporters sought a safe
haven in this country. At long last, they gave up and sailed back to
Europe. Where 250 of them were swallowed in the Holocaust and
exterminated along with 6-million other European Jews.
There is a catastrophe enveloping Syria in which nearly 200,000
civilians have died. 500,000 Syrians have fled toward Europe and any
other safe harbor they might find. These are not terrorists, not ISIS,
though most are Muslim. There is nothing criminal in being either
Syrian, a Muslim or a refugee. Despite what viewers saw on this FoxNews
panel which quoted approvingly Winston Churchill's bit of colonial
Islamophobia: "Islam is as dangerous in a man as rabies in a dog."
It would take FoxNews to dredge up 19th century British religious-cultural
imperialism, spoken by the leader who epitomized empire in all its
worst forms.
Yousef Munayyer: There Is Only One Way to Destroy ISIS: This says
pretty much what I said last week, except that I didn't feel the need
to cast the optimal outcome as the destruction of ISIS. I think it's
clear that ISIS will adapt to conditions, so I'd say that the thing
to do is to change the conditions to render ISIS much less malign.
Munayyer is aiming at the same result, but he's pitching it to people
who assume that destroying ISIS is a necessity, but who are flexible
and sensible enough to comprehend that just going into ISIS territory
and killing (or as we like to call it, liberating) everyone won't do
the trick (even if it is possible, which isn't at all clear). Munayyer
draws the picture this way:
I've found that the best way to think about comprehensive counter-terror
strategy is the boiling-pot analogy. Imagine that you're presented with
a large pot of scalding water and your task is to prevent any bubbles
from reaching the surface. You could attack each bubble on its way up.
You could spot a bubble at the bottom of the pot and disrupt it before
it has a chance to rise. Many bubbles might be eliminated in this way,
but sooner or later, bubbles are going to get to the surface, especially
as the temperature rises and your counter-bubble capabilities are
overwhelmed.
The other pathway is to turn down, or off, the flame beneath the
pot -- to address the conditions that help generate terrorism. When
it comes to the question of ISIS in particular and broader terrorism
in general, Western counter-terror strategy has focused on the bubbles
and not the flame. While significant resources have been invested in
intelligence and homeland security, too few have been invested in
resolving the conditions that generate terrorism. In fact, too often,
the West has contributed significantly to those conditions.
Munayyer blames the US for invading Iraq, but while key leadership
of ISIS came from the anti-American resistance in Iraq, the context
which allowed them to claim statehood was the civil war in Syria. End
that civil war and ISIS can no longer claim statehood and caliphate.
That still leaves the concept, and we've seen that the concept can
inspire guerrilla groups and lone wolves elsewhere, but concepts are
a poor substitute for reality. Ending that civil war is no easy task,
partly because every belligerent group believes they can ultimately
impose their will by force -- a fantasy fueled by foreign support --
and partly because every group fears that the others will treat it
unjustly. To turn the heat down, you have to phase out the foreign
interests, convince each group that its cause is futile, and get
each group to accept a set of strictures that will ensure fair and
equal treatment for all. ISIS might well be the last group to join
into a peace agreement, and it may take force to get the leaders of
ISIS to see that their war is futile, but the vow to destroy them
is premature: a peace which includes them is much sounder than the
perpetual war you get from excluding them or the stench of martyrdom
that remains even if you manage to kill them all. Moreover, as you
reduce the heat, the popular support that the leaders depend on will
fade away.
After Paris, no one wants to speak about ISIS in terms other than
its unconditional destruction, yet when they do so, they reveal how
little they understand ISIS, and how little they know about themselves.
France and Britain still like to think of their recent empires as some
sort of blessing to mankind, but their actual history is full of
contempt, repression, racism, and bloody violence. The former colonial
master of Syria was no arbitrary target for ISIS, a point which was
underscored by how quickly Hollande was able to reciprocate by bombing
Raqqa. Similarly, New York and Washington were not picked for 9/11
because they would look good on TV. The US was cited for specific
offenses against the Muslim world, and Bush wasted no time proving
America's culpability by doing exactly what Bin Laden wanted: by
sending his army in to slaughter Muslims in foreign lands, starting
with Afghanistan. Bush did that because was locked into an imperial
mindset, believing that America's power was so great he could force
any result he wanted, and that America's virtue was so unquestioned
that he never needed to give a thought to why or how. And Hollande,
ostensibly a man of the left, proved the same. (Indeed, so does
Bernie Sanders -- see the link below -- even though he's neither
as careless nor as cocky as Bush.)
Protester gets punched at Trump rally. Trump: "Maybe he deserved to get
roughed up": Billmon has been obsessed this week with Trump-as-Fascist
analogies (see his
Twitter feed), but this is one
story that brings the point home. The thing that distinguished Mussolini
and Hitler was not that they held conservative views but that they were
so bloody minded about it: they were bullies, eager to fight, anxious to
draw blood, and they started with beating up bystanders who looked at them
funny. They celebrated such violence, and the more power they grabbed the
more they flaunted it. Trump may not be in their league, but he's doing
something more than merely condoning this "roughing up" -- he's feeding
his crowd's frenzy of hate. I thought Jim Geraghty was onto something
when he described Bush's supporters as "voting to kill." Trump's fans
are basically the same folks, but now he's offering them something more
visceral.
Also, a few links for further study (briefly noted; i.e., I don't
have time for this shit right now):
David Atkins: White Resentment of Welfare Is More Than Just About Racism
Now: Builds on a NY Times piece on Kentucky,
Alec MacGillis: Who Turned My Blue State Red?, noting that Republican
voters are as harsh and unforgiving of the white poor as they are of blacks,
etc. I can think of anecdotal evidence that confirms this, and it revolves
around shame: the belief that we are each personally responsible for our
success and failure. Part of the trick is to get the "failures" to blame
themselves and drop out of the political process -- the only way poorer
states vote red is when poor people give up on voting their own interest.
And part of it is that marginally successful people think they're immune
from failure thanks to their superior characters.
Benjamin Balthaser: Jews Without Money: Toward a Class Politics of
Anti-Zionism: Starts by noting the class divide between the rich
patrons of the Jewish National Fund and the middle class Jewish Voice
for Peace protesters outside. I figured he would expand on this by
noting how often rich Jews have supported Zionism almost as a way of
shuttling their poor brethren from Russia to Israel -- Lord Balfour,
after all, addressed his Declaration to Baron von Rothschild, the
richest Jew of his time and the one he most wanted to ingratiate
himself with. Instead, Balthaser goes off in other directions, all
interesting.
Tom Boggioni: Ex-CIA director: White House ignored months of warnings
about 9/11 to avoid leaving 'paper trail' of culpability: Some of
these stories are familiar, although Tenet used to be more dedicated
to sucking up to Bush, whose indifference to Al-Qaeda before 9/11 was
exceeded only by his demagogic opportunism after.
Daniel Marans: How Wall Street's Short-Term Fixation Is Destroying
the Economy: The business management motto at the root of
short-termism is "make your quarters, and you'll make your year."
Of course in the real world businesses stumble from time to time,
so managers have learned to adjust, packing the quarters they blow
with all the losses they've been hiding to make it easier to make
new quarters, the year be damned. Marans notes that corporate
reinvestment of profits averaged 48% from 1952-84 but dropped to
22% from 1985-2013. The obvious reason is that high pre-Reagan
taxes favored reinvesting profits, whereas low taxes made it less
painful to extract those profits and put them elsewhere -- indeed
set up a dynamic of owners devouring their companies (a practice
which vulture capitalists soon perfected). There are a couple
more epicycles to this diagram: tying CEO compensation to the
stock market helped to ween top management from the workforce
and turn them into stock manipulators, opening up all sorts of
opportunities for insider trading scams. This, in turn, makes
the stock market more volatile, an opportunity for quick traders
to trample over ordinary investors, reducing the quantum of
short-term thinking from the quarter to weeks, days, minutes.
Ben Railton: For More Than 200 Years, America Has Shunned a 'War on
Islam': Looks like Railton has read the Wikipedia article I opened
with, although he adds a little more on the Barbary Wars (which gave
the Marines that "shores of Tripoli" stanza). Along similar lines, see
John Nichols: Muslims Have Been Living in America Since Before the
Revolutionary War.
Rich Yeselson: The Decline of Labor, the Increase of Inequality:
Useful, informative piece on the decline of labor unions in recent
decades.
Senator Bernie Sanders on Democratic Socialism in the United States:
Fairly major speech by Sanders attempting to establish a "democratic
socialism" brand name that is so modest and reasonable it's as American
as apple pie. I haven't read this closely: if I did, I'd probably find
much to second guess (and some things to outright oppose, minimally
including much of the end section on ISIS). On the other hand, as I
get older and more modest in my ambitions, I find myself gravitating
more toward Keynes than Marx, and more to FDR's "second bill of rights"
than more radical manifestos, and those are things that are central to
this speech.
By the way, I backed into this link from
Mike Konczal: Thoughts on Bernie Sanders's Democratic Socialism and
the Primary. Also note that one thing Konczal cites is a new book
by Joseph Stiglitz: Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy:
An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity (he mentions hardcover
and Kindle, but a paperback is also available) -- a book I intend to
pick up ASAP. He also mentions Lane Kenworthy's Social Democratic
America, which makes the case for increasing government spending
up toward Scandinavian levels -- an argument I have some sympathy for,
but I wouldn't neglect the smarter rules Stiglitz (and others like
Dean Baker) argue for, and I can think of some times the Scandinavians
haven't managed to do yet. (Kenworthy also has an outline and parts of
a future book, The Good Society,
here.)
Konczal doesn't mention this, but there is at
least one more "vision of left-liberalism": see the pro-union books
of Thomas Geoghegan: Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How
the European Model Can Help You Get a Life and Only One Thing
Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement. Finally, several pieces to file under "Americans Acting Like Jerks":
Ask a question, or send a comment.
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