Saif Ammous has his comprehensive exam (a big deal, apparently) next Tuesday at Columbia. He’s told me he won’t respond to my comment on the big thread below, nor anyone else’s, till he gets that done. Good luck, Saif.
I met Ammous a few months back at a lecture at Columbia. First the Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. spoke, then Scott Ritter. (It was Columbia’s effort to compensate for the fact that the school had prevented President Ahmadinejad from speaking there.) I was standing against a wall when Ritter described what a nuclear war with Iran would look like, and Ammous gave me a devilish look and said, "I gotta get that on youtube." Over the last few months, I’ve seen him at other lectures and social events, everything from Arab Night at an Upper West Side restaurant to lecturing on Arab development at the 92d Street Y, in a pinstriped suit and pink tie.
One of the pleasures for me of getting to know Ammous is seeing intellectual distinction, and social sophistication too, in The Other. This is what liberal globalists asked for, it’s the best thing about Clintonism. Bringing Arab intellectuals into the west and engaging them, and hearing them out. I want to seduce these people. I want them to fall in love with western freedoms. But I recognize there’s an exchange, we learn to honor their concerns, especially when they’re calling us on liberal principles. That exchange seems to me the only way out of the mess we’re in….
Integrity and non-dogmatic diplomacy
============================
The past is past.
All of us must live according to modern enlightened principles.
Palestinians and Israelis must come out from the past.
Allegiances to past faiths and politics must be quit.
Integrity means: no terror, no oppression.
Independently both people must demonstrate that they can maintain internal peace, and will be moving towards peaceful coexistence.
Refugee matters should be settled with diplomatic means.
There is no possibility for a physical return to the lost and broken and shattered past.
Phil, it's an Arab custom that men hold hands with one another and walk with their arms around each other. Are you going to do that with your new boyfriend Saif?
Pierre: Good idea, I'm afraid I'm not that evolved yet.
"The past is past."
No, the past is prologue.
After a new religion here comes the new inquisition:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/122134be-ed14-11db-9520-000b5df10621.html
"Diplomats stressed the provision had been carefully worded to include ONLY denial of the Holocaust â the Nazi mass murder of Jews during the second world war â and the genocide in Rwanda in 1994."
The past is prologue and in the new play Portia is Shylock as a transvestite.
"The latest draft, seen by the Financial Times, will make it mandatory for all Union member states to punish public incitement 'to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin'."
When this type of hate crime legislation makes it to the U.S. (and Abe Foxman has been pushing for it for years), will someone go to jail for saying that the Jewish community promoted the Iraq war? Or will smart people just play it safe and ignore the topic altogether?
Um, I am not going to speak for Saifedeen, but this "I want to them to fall in love with our Western freedoms" bit shows your provincialism, esteemed sir. How do you know that Saifedeen doesn't already want those? Lord, didn't he go to … The American University of Beirut, an institution of higher learning accredited by New York State, which has been a beacon of intellectual freedom in the Arab world for 150 years?
Seriously. You have got to get out more and meet some Arab intellectuals, Mr. Weiss. Fouad Ajami doesn't count, because he'll just nod his head and go along with all that "savages need uplifting and wooing" talk.
And while you're at it, go visit AUB why don't you? Meet some slick smart Arabs who want to live in freedom – in their own countries no less.
I say this with all respect. I've been a fan of yours for years.
Phil, I am inclined to agree with Leila on this point.
With all due respect to the passion and commitment of Ammous, pinning our hopes for change in the Middle East on openly atheist Arabs who wear pink ties illustrates the disconnect between the desires of the "liberal globalists" and the reality of regional grassroots opinion.
In my opinion, this is the 2nd WORST thing about Clintonism (here is the 1st –
George, I read your Clinton post. Good job. (I'm a lefty, but I have to applaud people in either party who stick to their principles and praise or blame politicians according to what they deserve, not according to their party.)
Having read the Swisher and Enderlin books on Camp David, and the Robert Malley article in the New York Review, it's always seemed to me that Clinton was the chief villain at Camp David. He was a bully and when the talks failed, he ignored the Palestinian plea to emphasize how much progress had been made, preferring instead to blame the Palestinians. My impression is the same as yours–he went into Camp David wanting to leave as the President who brought peace to the Israelis and Palestinians and this was not the way to do it. He thought he could bully the Palestinians to give up more land, when they thought that giving up 78 percent of their original homeland should be sufficient.
Thanks Donald.
Clinton was very effective at convincing the world that "Arafat turned down the deal of a lifetime". This has become, even for the most partisan Republican and however undeservedly, just another widely accepted axiom for the Middle East. For all Arafat's many flaws and bad decisions, I'm not sure this is entirely accurate.
I too appreciate principled discussion (which is hard to find given the cable tv shouting matches and "angrily tell me everything I want to hear" blogs). However, blogs like Phil's and others, plus conservative magazines like Chronicles (link to
or the American Conservative, for which Phil has written (link to
offer in my opinion the best-reasoned critiques of Bush's disastrous policies, not leftists like Michael Moore.
"I want to seduce these people. I want them to fall in love with western freedoms."
What makes you so sure that will happen? What if a significant number of Westerners, disgusted by "Western freedoms," fall in love with their restrictions? (Specifically with respect to women.)