Is Lt.-Gen. Flynn Right that Islam is not a Religion?

By Juan Cole | Nov. 20, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

The new National Security Adviser to incoming President Donald J. Trump, Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn, has called Islam a “cancer” and maintained that it is a “political ideology” masquerading as a religion. He made this generalization about the religion of 1.6 billion people out of the 7.4 billion humans on the planet, i.e. 21.6% of everyone alive. Moreover, because of high birth rates in Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, the proportion of the world that is Muslim will increase dramatically through the 21st century, so likely they will be a third of humankind.

Michael Flynn: Islam Is A ‘Cancer,’ ‘Political Ideology’ That ‘Hides Behind’ Religion

One of Flynn’s arguments is that Christians don’t kill people in the name of Christ. But of course they do. Christian president George W. Bush said God had made him president, and Bush told French president Jacques Chirac that he went to war in Iraq because Iraqis are the Gog and Magog of the Bible, barbarian hordes menacing Christendom. I wrote at the time of this revelation,

“a bewildered French President Jacques Chirac told a journalist in a book published this spring that Bush had tried to enlist him in the Iraq invasion one last time in February, 2003, by emphasizing that the threat of Gog and Magog had gathered in the Middle East against the West and only overthrowing Saddam would forestall a catastrophe of biblical proportions . . .

“Chirac called a Swiss theologian to have him explain what this Gog and Magog was whereof Bush spoke. Chirac complained that the problem with people in the Bush administration was that none of them knew anything about the really existing Arabs. Chirac reads Arabic, and he used to ask the Bush people he dealt with to name one Arab poet. None could. France has been directly involved in the Arab world since Bonaparte invaded Egypt in 1798, so French political leaders could only lament the earnest evangelical nonsense spewed by crazies who had taken over Washington.”

A majority of US air force pilots who bombed the bejesus out of Iraq for 8 years thought of themselves as Christian warriors putting down a Muslim horde, just as Bush did. Indeed, American evangelical militarism is well-documented by social scientists.

I’m not sure why it is worse for American Christians to kill Iraqi families from the skies than for Muslim fanatics to wield less high tech weapons.

I have also pointed out that the Christian “Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda initiated hostilities that displaced two million people . . .”

As is common among these Washington gadflies with extreme views such as Flynn, he is not consistent. He seems to be in the back pocket of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan , a big supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood and of Hamas in Gaza, and leader of a country of 75 million . . . Muslims. (There is nothing wrong with all this, it is just weird that Flynn supports Erdogan and Turkey’s pro-Muslim Justice and Development Party or AKP, while demeaning all Muslims as a “cancer” and denying they belong to a religion).

So is Islam a religion? I guess it would depend on how you define a religion and who gets to do the defining. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz put it this way:

“A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”

Islam would obviously fit this definition.

In American law and practice, it is the Internal Revenue Service that defines a group as a “church,” i.e. organized religion, because it has to determine whether groups are eligible for tax exemption. These are the criteria the IRS uses:

”
Distinct legal existence
Recognized creed and form of worship
Definite and distinct ecclesiastical government
Formal code of doctrine and discipline
Distinct religious history
Membership not associated with any other church or denomination
Organization of ordained ministers
Ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed courses of study
Literature of its own
Established places of worship
Regular congregations
Regular religious services
Sunday schools for the religious instruction of the young
Schools for the preparation of its members”

Again, Islam obviously meets these criteria, with a recognized creed (“there is no god but God and Muhammad is is prophet”), forms of worship (5 daily prayers, Friday communal prayers), forms of religious governance (mosque congregations), formal code of doctrine, distinct religious history (I have written a lot on this subject), clerical corps who undergo seminary training, literature of its own (Qur’an, hadith), mosques, regular religious services (communal prayers), and schooling for youngsters.

In fact I am not aware that the IRS ever had any question but what Islam is a religion (“church”) according to American law.

Not only is Islam a religion, but the US courts have even recognized Santeria as a religion, and overturned municipal statutes forbidding adherents from practicing animal sacrifice. Santeria is an assimilation of Yoruba religion to Roman Catholicism in the Caribbean, and if it is a religion in American law, then Islam certainly is.

Ironically, Flynn’s line on Muslims being a political movement rather than a religion is exactly the one the ayatollahs in Iran use to deny Baha’is their religious rights.

So everything Flynn said is false. Christians have made piles of bodies as high as mountains in committing violence against non-Christians, ever since they took over the Roman Empire. Islam is experienced as a moral and spiritual good by over a fifth of humankind, not as a cancer. Muslim radicals are a tiny fringe and not representative of the religion as a whole. And the religion is really a religion by any definition you would want to pick, not a political grouping.

You only hope that all these crackpots Trump is elevating to the highest offices in the land have been shining us on all these years with their lunatic theories and that once in power they’ll start acting like responsible adults.

Posted in Donald Trump,Featured,Islam-hatred,Republican Party | No Responses | Print |

Why Internment of Japanese Americans is an outrageous Model for registering Muslim-Americans

By Juan Cole | Nov. 18, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Trump adviser Carl Higbie told Megyn Kelly on Fox “News” that the new administration wanted to create a registration list of US Muslims, and he compared this step to the interment of the Japanese Americans during WW II:

“It is legal. They say it’ll hold constitutional muster. I know the ACLU is going to challenge it, but I think it’ll pass,” Higbie said. “… We did it during World War II with Japanese, which, you know, call it what you will, maybe —”

What is truly weird is that Higbie volunteered to compare such a registration list to the internment of Japanese Americans. It raises questions of just how far zealots such as he are willing to take this hatred of Americans of Muslim faith.

The internment of Japanese-Americans was not a policy precedent but a massive crime against innocents who had not been proven to have done anything wrong. Many Japanese-Americans fought bravely in the US military even while their families had lost their homes.

This is sort of like saying, of course the Federal government can commit genocide. Why, we did it to the Native Americans.

Just on moral grounds, Higbie’s proposal is creepy, and it immediately harmed the morale of Muslim-Americans and harmed the image of the US in the Middle East.

Here are the reasons Higbie is wrong and likely such a registry would be struck down by the courts:

1. Islam is a religion. No one reasonable person denies this simple fact. The first Amendment of the constitution forbids the Federal government to prohibit the free exercise of religion or to favor one religion (Establishment) over another. So you can’t register one religious community without the others. That would be a de facto Establishment of e.g. Christianity. Moreover, making members of only one religion register would interfere with their free exercise of their religion. The only way the government got away with the internment of Japanese Americans was by a specious argument from national origins, suggesting that Japanese-Americans could not remain loyal when their two countries were at war. If the Roosevelt administration had tried to round up all Buddhists in the country, that measure would have been struck down.

2. The Right wing talking point that non-citizens in the US are not protected by constitutional rights is a falsehood, as demonstrated by a series of Supreme court rulings.

3. The Supreme Court case Ex Parte Endo found that the US government had acted improperly and that individuals could not be removed from their homes unless there was proof that they as individuals had acted disloyally. In other words you can’t punish a whole community out of mere suspicion.

4. A raft of lawsuits by Japanese-American victims in the 1970s and 1980s, although they narrowly failed in the courts, put pressure on Congress, which awarded the equivalent of $40,000 per person in reparations in 1988. This law was an admission of guilt and can now by cited in court by Muslim Americans.

Actually, if the Trump administration does anything about a registry, it will likely just reinstate the Bush administration program of requiring registration of certain categories of non-citizen immigrants from select countries. Of Bush’s 25 countries, 24 were Muslim-majority. Since everyone from the designated countries had to register, it was not discriminatory and affected some Christians. Only about 80,000 people were registered in this way. The program probably harmed US security since the government sometimes used the registration to deport people who, e.g., slightly over-stayed their visas. The knowledge of these practices appears to have made Muslim-Americans afraid to talk to the authorities for fear they would make themselves a target. So the community as a source for crucial intel was taken off the table.

This latter step could be taken, but registering Muslims in general, and especially citizens, almost certainly would not be allowed by the courts. Even the registration of immigrant non-citizens from select countries will have adverse effects on our security. The policy could also harm Americans traveling abroad for e.g. business, since often such policies are reciprocal and there could be a tit for tat.

But actually, Higbie’s suggestion is just completely morally wrong. Very few long-term Muslim residents or citizens of the US have been involved in terrorism, and their numbers are dwarfed by the violence of far right wing white people, whom Higbie is not proposing to register.

——

Posted in Featured,Islam-hatred,Muslim-Americans,racism | 22 Responses | Print |

Syria’s al-Assad: Trump “a natural ally”

By Juan Cole | Nov. 17, 2016 |

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In an interview with Portugal television Wednesday, according to al-Hayat, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad said that Donald Trump will be “a natural ally” for Damascus if his administration fights “terrorism.” Asked if he was prepared to work with Trump, al-Assad said, “Naturally, I say that is a promise, but can achieve that? Can he go in that direction? What about the powerful forces inside the administration, what about the chief media who were against him? How will he be able to deal with them? . . . For this reason, we view it as a matter hedged by doubts, whether he can fulfill his promises or not.”

In the past, Trump has asserted that Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) is a far bigger danger to the US than the al-Assad regime.

In a telephone call on Monday, Russian president Vladimir Putin told Trump of the necessity to redouble efforts to fight enemy number one, terrorism and international extremism.

At the same time, al-Assad sharply criticized Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, saying that the Turkish troop presence on Syrian soil is an incursion, and warning Ankara that Syria has the right to defend itself. He said all the foreign fighters or terrorists who had come into Turkey come through Syria. Nowadays, he said, fighting these “terrorists” is just like fighting Erdogan’s army (he made a distinction with regard to the Turkish army and Erdogan’s army.

Al-Assad also rejected any American military intervention in Syria. He said that over the past 50 years the US had repeatedly intervened in the Middle East. “They are very good at creating problems,” he observed,” but not at solving them.”

In the meantime, al-Assad and his Russian allies are continuing their assault on the rebel stronghold of the East Aleppo pocket. Some 4000 rebel fighters, about a fourth of them al-Qaeda, are nested in a civilian population of about 250,000. On Wednesday, Syrian fighter jets bombarded East Aleppo indiscriminately, leaving over 80 persons, many of them noncombatants, dead. Russia has also been targeting rebel positions from its aircraft carrier in the Mediterrean. A rebel attempt to break the siege of East Aleppo appears to have failed. Alarabiya is reporting that an infantry and armor assault on rebel positions, in an attempt to take back all of Aleppo (the regime has the more populous and more prosperous west) seems imminent.

If Aleppo falls, the regime will have gained a fragile victory over the rebels, whom Damascus, Moscow and now Trump all characterize as terrorists.

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Posted in Donald Trump,Featured,Russia,Syria | 8 Responses | Print |

Will Trump do a deal with Iran or try to Overthrow its Government?

By Juan Cole | Nov. 16, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

For all his bluster about renegotiating the Joint Plan for Collective Action regarding Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, which the members of the UN Security Council plus Germany signed off on in summer of 2015, Donald Trump didn’t menace Iran itself during his campaign. He lamented Iranian influence in Iraq, but seemed to feel that the pro-Iranian government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was better than a the Sunni fundamentalist regime likely to be erected by the country’s rebels.

Now we are hearing that Trump may choose Rudi Giuliani or John Bolton for secretary of state. Giuliani has taken money from the shadowy Mojahedin-e Khalq (People’s jihadis) or MEK, a Marxist Muslim group dedicated to using terrorist tactics to overthrowing the ayatollahs in Tehran. Bolton, one of the advocates for Bush’s Iraq War, urged bombing Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities (which would have released massive amounts of radioactive material on the major city of Isfahan).

So as usual with Trump, he is all over the place. The National Iranian American Council, which represents many Iranian-Americans, has some advice for him in a new report signed by 76 national security experts (I am among them).

NIAC argues that the nuclear deal with Iran was a positive, and reduced tensions in the Gulf. After all, instead of dickering, Dick Cheney and his crew had wanted a war on Iran.

Moreover, despite the skeptics, every evidence is that the agreement is a success. Iran has met all of its obligations. It concreted in its planned heavy water reactor at Arak, which could have been used as a breeder reactor to produce fissile material. It got rid of its stock of uranium enriched to 19.5%. It greatly reduced the number of centrifuges it runs. It accepted thoroughgoing inspections by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency.

NIAC observes that the deal had the added benefit of demonstrating that diplomacy can work with Iran, despite the inevitable attempts of Iranian hardliners to sabotage any improvement of Iran’s relations with the West and despite the deep suspicions of Iran’s clerical Leader, Ali Khamenei.

What that means is that a President Trump can also resolve further outstanding issues with Iran by using diplomacy. He says he is all about the art of the deal, so the biggest deals to be made are with Iran.

Moreover, despite the severe disagreements between Washington and Tehran on some issues, there are other matters where their interests overlap. The US frankly needs Iran to defeat ISIL, and if Trump wants to crush what is left of that organization, he’ll have no choice but to cooperate with Iran (just as Obama has, behind the scenes).

The new NIAC report looks at US-Iran relations with regard to the regional concerns such as the Syrian civil war, rebuilding a viable Iraqi state, stabilizing Afghanistan, the issue of the Saudi-Iran cold war, and energy security. It also covers human rights in Iran and the continued unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States (which are now costing American companies billions of dollars in lost business, and allowing European competitors to clean up.)

One area of urgent cooperation between a Trump administration and Iran will be putting Iraq back together again. Iraqi elites need to realize that they need constitutional reform to reconfigure political parties away from an ethnic basis, which divides the country rather than uniting it. Iraq’s army needs to be rebuilt with mixed units of Sunnis and Shiites. After ISIL is defeated, the pro-Iran Shiite militias need to be demobilized. If they remain standing forces beholden to Iran, it could destabilize Iraq again in ways that will disadvantage Iran.

NIAC is the most effective of the lobbies of Americans of Middle Eastern heritage. Its positions are judicious. They will be disregarded by the Giulianis and the Boltons. But those two don’t want to do a deal. Maybe Trump does. If so, he’d get a better backgrounder from NIAC on how to accomplish that than he would from anyone on his current team.

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Posted in Donald Trump,Featured,Iran,Muslim-Americans,Republican Party | 16 Responses | Print |

Neofascist Trump Appointee Bannon: “Anger is a Good thing” “if you’re Fighting to Take this Country Back”

By Juan Cole | Nov. 15, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Donald Trump named Neofascist Stephen Bannon as his White House strategist, a co-equal with incoming White House chief of staff and former RNC head Reince Priebus. Bannon has espoused large numbers of crackpot conspiracy theories and has talked about how good anger is in the effort to “take back our country” (i.e. to assert white supremacy). He has alleged that Hillary Clinton was entangled in a conspiracy with the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn he appears to think is plotting to pollute the purity of his precious bodily fluids.

Here are some scary quotes by or about Bannon:

STEPHEN BANNON: “By the way, I think anger is a good thing. If you`re fighting — this country is in a crisis. If you`re fighting to save this country, if you`re fighting to take this country back, it`s not going to be sunshine patriots. It`s going to be people who want to fight.

BETSY WOODRUFF, The Daily Beast: “Our reporting has shown that Peter Brimelow, who is one of the most influential leaders in the white supremacist movement, he told my colleague Gideon Resnick that he actually met with Bannon last month and those two men complimented each other on their work. Brimelow also he also said that he sees Breitbart as a competitor. He sees his project, running a white supremacist website, as competing with Breitbart for kind of the same marketshare.”

One of the propaganda talking points for defenders of Bannon and of Neofascism generally is that he doesn’t agree with everything that appears in the the web magazine he runs, Breitbart.com, a translation into English from the original German of the Völkischer Beobachter . For instance, there was the article that called conservative William Kristol a “renegade Jew.” But Bannon told Lou Dobbs in 2012 that he was enthusiastic about the content of his magazine:

“Lou Dobbs Tonight

November 20, 2012 Tuesday

Joining us now executive chairman of Breitbart News Steve Bannon. It’s good to have you with us Steve.

STEVE BANNON, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, BREITBART NEWS: Thanks for having me back, Lou.

DOBBS: First of all how is Breitbart.com and all your sites — how are they doing?

BANNON: I think they are doing excellent. We’ve launched a new site right before Andrew passed away that with — you know the technology and new content I think one fire up almost 10 million unique and close to 80,000 page views per month. So we put a hundred new pieces of content up every day and the team at Breitbart and Joe Pollack and (inaudible) these guys are on fire.

So Bannon didn’t reluctantly publish the most often false and heavily neo-fascist articles to which objections are now being raised. He said the people commissioning and writing this tripe were “on fire.” He approved of the hatred of minorities and the lunatic conspiracy theories appearing there. Of course he did. He was the executive chairman.

In the same interview, Bannon revealed that he has some sort of odd conspiracy theory about the Fed and low (white) birthrates: “BANNON: Lou look at — the birth rate in 2011 is the lowest birth rate the country has had in recorded history. Corporations are sitting almost on a $1 trillion of cash and they’re not reinvesting in America. The signals are out there by people’s decision that they don’t have faith in the political class. And particularly people like Chairman Bernanke to right this economy.”

The US is growing population-wise because it brings in 1 million immigrants each year. It is only the native-born (“white”) birth rate that is basically at replacement rates. Bannon is only interested in one segment of this demography. That campaign ad that Trump brought out just before the election attacking prominent Jewish figures at the Federal Reserve almost certainly was the work of Bannon and his clique.

Here is Bannon being interviewed by Lou Dobbs in 2012 on his hit job “documentary” about the Occupy Wall Street movement (September 20, 2012 Thursday LOU DOBBS TONIGHT 7:00 PM EST):

“STEPHEN BANNON, DIRECTOR, “OCCUPY UNMASKED”: Code Pink, Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans — the Code Pink crowd — Lisa Fithian, the Anarchist, SCIU, this is a witches brew of groups. This is not college kids and hippies. This is very serious players they are looking to destroy the American government and destroy the American capital system. And they are very upfront about their goals and objectives.

And we — we’ve unmasked here in combination with Anonymous, a very dark sinister group. . .

BANNON: This is the difference, look at how they changed the conversation from deficit and debt in the summer of 2011 to income and equality and the one percent versus — and class warfare. That is a very effective weapon that politicians used.”

I think we know what he meant by calling Code Pink “witches.” And trying to link it to Anonymous? This isn’t political discourse, this is raving.

Then there is this from Mother Jones:

“For nearly a year before Trump hired Bannon to run his campaign, Bannon hosted a daily radio show where many of his guests instigated fear and loathing of Muslims in America. According to research by Mother Jones and the Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund, Bannon conducted dozens of interviews on his SiriusXM show, Breitbart News Daily, with leading anti-Muslim extremists. The collective interviews, steeped in unfounded claims and conspiracy theories, paint a dark and paranoid picture of America’s 3.3 million Muslims and the world’s second-largest faith.

“One of Bannon’s guests on the show, the high-profile Trump surrogate Roger Stone, warned of a future America “where hordes of Islamic madmen are raping, killing, pillaging, defecating in public fountains, harassing private citizens, elderly people—that’s what’s coming.”

“Bannon often bookended these interviews with full-throated praise for his guests, describing them as “top experts” and urging his listeners to click on their websites and support them. Bannon also occasionally offered his own comments demonizing Muslim Americans, such as when he referred to a moderate Muslim advocacy group as a “front group” and “a bunch of lies,” and when he warned about the threat of “Shariah courts” taking over Texas.”

Even Joe McCarthy would have thought Bannon a bit too suspicious, and Trump has put him into the White House. I suspect he’ll have the authority to have government agencies spy on Americans in contravention of the First and Fourth Amendment. And we could well see Stalinesque show trials of his critics. Some have been looking for evidence that Trump was just kidding when he hit Neofascist high notes, this appointment puts paid to that hope.

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Posted in Far Right,Featured,Islam-hatred,Muslim-Americans,Republican Party | 46 Responses | Print |

A Gwen Ifill Interview with Juan Cole on Iraq & US Withdrawal: In Memoriam

By Juan Cole | Nov. 15, 2016 |

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Gwen Ifill/ Juan Cole | (PBS NewsHour) | – –

Gwen Ifill, long-time co-anchor of the PBS Newshour, is dead at 61, after a battle with cancer. She was an expert interviewer, and she discussed Iraq with me many times on the NewsHour. I was so lucky to have been on with her. Ifill was the daughter of an NYC preacher and her parents were from Panama and Barbados, respectively. She became host of Washington Week in Review in 1999, becoming the first African-American to head up a significant political discussion show on television.

Here is one of our many discussions, this one about former Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki’s demand in summer of 2008 that US troops leave Iraq, part of the politics around the Status of Forces Agreement then being negotiated by the Bush administration. Bush afterwards committed to leave Iraq in December of 2011, a task he bequeathed to Barack Obama, who carried out Bush’s agreement and took some blame for it that actually rests with Bush. I’ve edited the exchange down to Ifill and myself for the most part. Gwen, RIP.

PBS NEWSHOUR

TOPICS > Politics
In Policy Switch, Iraqis Push for U.S. Withdrawal Timetable
July 8, 2008 at 6:30 PM EST

For the first time this week, Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki said that he expects a pending troop deal with the U.S. to include a timetable for withdrawal. Two Iraq analysts weigh the state of U.S.-Iraqi relations.

GWEN IFILL: The debate over when and how U.S. troops withdraw from Iraq has become central to the U.S. presidential campaign, as well as to the political future of the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

For the first time, Maliki this week has begun calling for timetables for pullout, a position that puts him at odds with the U.S., but could help him at home. What’s going on?

For that, we turn to two veteran Iraq analysts. Rend al-Rahim Francke is a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace. She also served briefly as Iraqi ambassador to the United States. And Juan Cole is a professor of history at the University of Michigan.

Welcome to you both . . .

GWEN IFILL: Juan Cole, is this a balancing act or is this a significant shift in approach?

JUAN COLE, University of Michigan: Well, it’s certainly a significant shift in rhetoric. Maliki has never before called for a timetable for U.S. withdrawal.

His national security council adviser today made an even stronger statement that any memorandum of agreement between the United States and Iraq on the status of U.S. forces in that country would have to include a timetable.

He said that right after meeting with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf, the spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shiites. There were big demonstrations, thousands strong, on Friday organized by the Sadr movement, which is still a vital political force, against the Status of Forces Agreement.

And the deputy speaker of parliament today said that he can’t imagine the parliament agreeing to a Status of Forces Agreement that allows the U.S. troops in Iraq to function with immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts. So al-Maliki is…

GWEN IFILL: Well, so, Professor Cole, why now? What’s the timing about? Is it about internal politics, external politics?

JUAN COLE: It’s frustration over the status-of-forces agreement. The U.S. and Iraq were supposed to sign those by the end of July. There are still many issues that have not been resolved in the negotiations.

Iraq is very eager to come out from under Chapter 7 of the United Nations charter. It wants to regain its sovereignty, but it doesn’t want to do so at the cost of giving up sovereignty to the United States.

And so Maliki is, as the ambassador rightly said, between a rock and a hard place. He wants to move forward. He wants to maintain Iraq’s sovereignty. He wants to maintain the alliance with the United States, but what the U.S. is demanding of him are things that he probably just can’t get through his parliament.

GWEN IFILL: Professor Cole, it seems a year ago, probably we were talking to you, when we talked about Nouri al-Maliki, we talked about how weak he seemed and how there was so much speculation about whether he would survive as prime minister. What has happened? He seems to be in a much stronger position now.

JUAN COLE: Well, he’s certainly grown into the job. He came to be prime minister from a background, really, in conspiratorial politics in Damascus for 20 years.

And I think initially he just didn’t understand what it meant to be a prime minister. He wasn’t meeting with the Sunnis in his government. He alienated a lot of people. And he was running interference for the Mahdi Army. Initially, he came to power backed by the Sadr movement.

So as he broke with the Sadrists, as he made a closer alliance with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, he gained a source of local support that wasn’t quite so rejectionist. And he was able to move forward.

I think his military also has improved in its capabilities. He’s gained in confidence. So a lot of things have come together. I think also the decline in — relative decline in violence has given him more room to operate.

GWEN IFILL: Let’s talk about the decline in violence. To what degree is he responsible for that? And does that mean that, now that Iraq has the capability to step in, should the U.S. decide to step back? . . .

REND AL-RAHIM FRANCKE: The people around Maliki have said repeatedly that they believe that the army and the police have the capability to step in, perhaps not immediately, but gradually, over a short period of time, they can take over. . .

GWEN IFILL: Let me quickly ask Juan Cole that same question. Briefly, do you believe that they’re ready to step in should this withdrawal threat or promise be serious?

JUAN COLE: Well, they’re increasingly ready. It should be remembered that the United States military has all but withdrawn from large numbers of provinces in Iraq and that Iraqi police and military are doing the day-to-day security details in places like Najaf and Karbala, even now in Diwaniya.

There are still some very troubled provinces, Diyala province, Salah ad Din, and even Mosul itself, where I think the Iraqi military is untried.

GWEN IFILL: OK, Juan Cole, Rend al-Rahim Francke, thank you both very much.

Via PBS NewsHour

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Posted in Iraq War | 4 Responses | Print |

Sting & Gandhian anti-Terrorism: Your Paris vacation can help cripple ISIL

By Juan Cole | Nov. 14, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Sting, 65, played a concert at the Bataclan Theater where ISIL terrorists killed 90 innocent people a year ago, in one of the worst attacks in the West in recent years. Although the attackers appear to have told their victims the strike was in revenge for French intervention against Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) in Syria, in fact it was probably the other way around. France only started flying missions against Raqqa, Syria, in late summer of 2015 because it got word that the organization was planning such an attack, and hoped to disrupt it.

In part, Daesh was hoping for a white backlash against French Muslims, which might drive them into the arms of the radicals and sharpen contradictions.

In part, such terrorism aims at hurting a powerful enemy. Terrorism is a weapon of the weak. Daesh doesn’t actually have many positive assets, though it can cause destruction. It just has a few tens of thousands of fighters and is already in the process of losing most of its territory. Its leaders wanted to raise the cost for France of intervening against it in Syria, Mali and elsewhere. Hitting a country with a big tourism industry (7% of the French economy) with a terrorist attack on places like a Cambodian restaurant and a music venue is intended to inflict long-term economic harm. Moreover, they hoped to make an object lesson of France, in an attempt to intimidate other powers.

The terrorists did succeed in harming the Paris economy, which attracted 1.8 million fewer tourists this year than last, a loss of about a billion dollars. Hotel room occupancy was down 12% in the capital. The French government will also probably end up paying, over their lifetimes, some €300 mn. in health benefits to those wounded in the attacks of 2015.

It is easy to talk tough about carpet bombing the terrorists, but these were petty criminals from the slums of Paris and Brussels, and can’t be hit from the air. Even bombing Raqqa is fairly useless unless it is in support of advancing ground troops.

It is also easy to blame all Muslims for the actions of a tiny fringe and to talk about barring Muslims from traveling, though if you did that systematically you’d cut 1.6 billion people out of the global travel industry and that would bankrupt some of these companies. Moreover, hating on Muslims is precisely what the terrorists wanted you to do, so why be their patsies?

One step anyone who can afford it and who feels strongly about pushing back against al-Qaeda and Daesh terrorism can take is to plan the next vacation in Paris. Paris is perfectly safe, safer than most American cities. You are much more likely to fall down in your bathtub and hurt yourself than you are to encounter terrorism in Paris. And by having a nice vacation in the French capital, you can defeat the dastardly Daesh plan of harming that country.

While you’re at it, make a side trip to the beautiful Tunisia, and spend some money there, too.

We can crowdfund an effective response to terrorist attacks on the economy aimed at harming tourism. That is part of what I mean by Gandhian anti-terrrorism tactics.

Here is what I wrote in this regard last summer:

“Reject fear and reject hate. Find a local Muslim and shower that person with love and respect. Speak out against Islamophobia. Work to strengthen democracy and inclusiveness and basic human rights. Stand up for the raid on the Bastille of 1789, and the freeing of prisoners of conscience. Invest some billions, not measly tens of millions, in success stories like Tunisia, to promote democracy and economic growth.”

So if you were planning a vacation abroad anyway, make it Paris instead, or Tunis. Undo the terrorism by having fun and spending a little money. Turn the world cheerful and bright and chase away the shadows of fear. A great man said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

——

Posted in Counter-Terrorism,Featured,France,Nonviolence,Peace | 5 Responses | Print |

As Der Donald-inspired Hate Crimes grow, US Universities at Risk

By Juan Cole | Nov. 13, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

A tsunami of reports about hate crimes directed at minorities are coming in from all over the country in the wake of Der Donald’s presidential win. African-Americans have also been targeted, as with students at the University of Pennsylvania. As have Latinas/ Latinos.

Ann Arbor, my town, was shaken when word got out Saturday that on Friday evening a man approached a veiled Muslim University of Michigan student and demanded she take off her veil or else he would use a cigarette lighter to set her on fire. She complied. I understand that she has now flown back to her country of origin.

Alert Date: Nov. 12, 2016
Alert ID: 2016-13/AAPD#16-51924

CRIME ALERT

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DIVISION OF PUBLIC SAFETY and SECURITY

Date of Incident: Nov. 11, 2016, between 5:30 and 7 p.m.

Location: 600 block of East William near S. State St., off-campus

Offense: Intimidation

Summary: As told to the Ann Arbor Police, a student was approached by an unknown man, who demanded she remove her hijab or he would set her on fire with a lighter. She complied and left the area. The Ann Arbor Police are actively investigating.

Suspect: (as described by witnesses): White male, 20-30 years old, average height, athletic build, bad body odor, unkempt appearance, intoxicated with slurred speech

If you have any information, please contact the
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DIVISION OF PUBLIC SAFETY and SECURITY at (734)763-1131
or the Ann Arbor Police Department Tip Line at (734)794-6939 or tips@a2gov.org

In Wisconsin, a Saudi student was recently beaten to death.

There are about 1 million international students studying in American universities– nearly 5% of the country’s undergraduate population. Very large numbers of them are on government scholarships or are from wealthy families in their home countries, and the bulk of them pay full tuition. But they also rent apartments and go out to eat, and shop. These international students bring in $30 billion a year to the US economy.

At the University of Washington, the 18% of the student body who are international are the ones who pay so much in tuition (3 times the in-state rate) that they support the 25% of mainly American undergraduates who are given full tuition scholarship by the university.

Let me repeat that. One of the few ways American undergraduates at our universities are avoiding crushing debt is by getting scholarships, and in some universities it is the tuition paid by international students that generates the money the university then gives out.

Some 80% of my university’s operating budget comes from tuition, since ALEC-like lobbyists have convinced the state to cut its support of higher education to a minimum. There are virtually no real state universities any more. Many of the wonderful scientific inventions created at universities are made possible in part by the tuition paid by international students.

It isn’t only veiled Muslim women who are afraid. Racial bigotry is indiscriminate. Sikhs have been attacked, and any person of color could be, in this atmosphere.

Creating a negative atmosphere for Muslims, African-Americans and Latinos in our country is a good way to hand ourselves an extra $30 billion bill for higher education. It is our traditions of openness and relative tolerance that have allowed us to reap this benefit, and it is often the children of the white working class who most benefit from it.

Some of these students end up staying after graduation, becoming scientists, physicians or entrepreneurs and contributing further billions to the US economy.

A significant percentage of our physicians is Muslim, and immigrant physicians are the ones most likely to service more rural areas. Likewise our math teachers are often immigrants.

Those international students who go back to their home countries can become lifetime ambassadors for their American experience, helping create a positive view of our country abroad.

But the young woman, and for all I know she was my student at some point, who was threatened with death in our town, may never return to graduate and won’t be able to report a positive experience of the US back home.

We should all be ashamed that these incidents happened in our country, and Der Donald most of all should be ashamed of himself, for not condemning this or any of the other hate crimes his inflammatory and vicious speeches have provoked.

Posted in Featured,racism,Republican Party,women | 23 Responses | Print |

How can Progressives get through the Next 4 Years? Organize!

By Juan Cole | Nov. 11, 2016 |

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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Anti-Trump demonstrations have broken out all over the country in the wake of his surprise victory on Tuesday. Latinos are afraid he will deport their undocumented relatives, breaking up millions of families. Women are afraid for their basic rights to control their bodies, a right Trump and his tiny hands clearly do not respect. Environmentalists are afraid he will ramp up carbon emissions, spelling curtains for planet earth. Muslim-Americans are afraid he will make them register, sort of like Jews had to register in Nazi Germany before the Holocaust (registering was the prerequisite for the Holocaust, along with removal of citizenship rights). African-Americans are afraid he will revive the KKK.

I have been asked on several occasions in the past couple of days about how we can possibly get through these next four years. I agree that it is an urgent question, and I disagree with the Pollyannas who maintain that everything will be all right. It clearly won’t be all right. The rights of millions of people will be injured. Racist gangs will target people of color because they think they have impunity. It is already happening. Critics could be targeted for dirty tricks. It isn’t hard for a government agent to sneak up behind someone at the airport and slip a bag of cocaine into their luggage. Nixon actually had an office of dirty tricks, and I expect most of the White House to be taken up with the vindictive and petty Trump’s such office. If you don’t know how Nixon did a number on rival Ed Muskie with the Canuck letter and allegations that his wife was a pill addict, look it up. Muskie could have defeated Nixon in debates and at the polls, if Nixon had played fair. Some people are incapable of playing fair.

So how can we get through all this? Do something. Organize! Individuals are weak. Organizations are strong. If you have the opportunity to join a union, do so. The decline of unionized workers, at which the corporations connived for decades, is a big part of our current problem. But nowadays we also have new forms of organization including crowdfunding, e.g. of political campaigns. The early 20th century labor organizer Joe Hill, castigated as a radical “wobbly” and ultimately framed by conservative officials for a murder he did not commit, then executed, inspired the famous song that Joan Baez song at Woodstock.

Joan Baez Live @ Woodstock 1969 Joe Hill.mpg

The song writer was wise, and any social scientist will tell you, was right. Organize!

We have a first past the post political system, which means that the winner takes all. That fact underpins our 2 party system. The only vehicle we have to oppose Trump on the national stage effectively is Democratic Party activism. Of course, that is at the level of the legislatures, e.g. Other kinds of organizing are also important. Here are some suggestions about what to do.

1. Speak out against the corporate media’s normalization of Trump. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, ABC and CBS are culpable in having given him billions of dollars of free air time. After the election the anchors suddenly started fawning on him. It isn’t all right to have an alt-Right president. Racism isn’t all right. Sexism isn’t all right. Religious bigotry isn’t all right. All those media have contact pages. Write them. Pressure them. Get up advertiser boycotts of the biggest ass-kissers. Organize pressure groups to make sure that Trump-inspired racist intimidation and violence is covered by the corporate media and not swept under the rug. Make sure that climate change is covered (it isn’t, presently). These are money-making enterprises. Hit them where it hurts. Threaten not to buy the products advertised on their shows unless they change their ways. This way of proceeding is contrary to liberals’ first instincts, since they believe in airing a variety of opinions. But some opinions are beyond the pale, and if we don’t draw a line in the sand here, white nationalism will become our reigning ideology and many of us will be jailed. There are some baby discourses that must be strangled in the crib.

2. Work toward a consumer boycott of corporations that gave money to Trump’s campaign or who support his presidency. Do some web searches to see which consumer companies have a history of belonging to ALEC and supporting right wing causes. Find ways of publicizing Trumpish leanings among them and embarrassing them.

3. Speak out! Everyone can now be an op ed writer. Social media is everywhere. Start a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a blog, and update it at least weekly. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get many hits at the beginning. If you are regular and keep at it, it may well grow. Try to develop a “beat”– cover something no one else is paying enough attention to, and show the ways Trump’s reign is harming the country. Corporate media will try to crowd out our voices and normalize Trump and Trumpism. Don’t let them invade our social media space.

4. Mobilize to ensure the Democrats take the Senate in 2018. That is a tough proposition, since only 8 Republicans are up for reelection, mostly in reliable red states, whereas 25 Democrats face a contest, and some of them may be in trouble, as in Missouri. But this configuration is a challenge, not an insuperable problem. It needs money and effort. Republicans often do better in the midterms because only a third of people vote, and they are disproportionately older and whiter and wealthier, as compared to presidential election years. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s aim for a massive voter turnout in the 2018 midterms. For instance, Arizona could be trending blue, with a significant increase in the number of Latino voters and more importantly in the number of registered Latino voters. This trend could make Sen. Jeff Flake vulnerable in Arizona. Likewise, Latino voters are key to bluing Nevada and defeating Sen. Dean Heller. But it isn’t just Latinos. White workers and millennials and middle classes at risk from Trump’s policies are even more numerous. But youth in particular tend to stay home in off-year elections. They can’t afford to do that if they want health care and want a liveable planet. Despite gerrymandering, there isn’t actually any barrier to the Democrats taking the lower house, as well, in 2018, if enough people get of their duffs and devote resources to it and actually go out and vote. Walk your neighborhood. Donate to the progressive candidates. Mobilize.

5. Latino-Americans who worry about Trump and his policies toward them haven’t registered to vote should think seriously about a) registering and b) voting in 2018 and 2020. And, Democratic activists need to volunteer their time for voter registration drives in minority neighborhoods. Some 71% of registered Latino voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama in 2012. Only 65% voted for Hillary Clinton. While in crucial Florida Clinton actually did better with Latinos this time than Obama had in 2012, she lost Cuban-Americans compared with Obama and she didn’t pick up as many Puerto Ricans as she needed to in order to take Orlando. Trump couldn’t have won without Florida, so it matters.

6. Where you can vote for judges, mobilize to elect progressive ones who will strike down Trumpist legislation.

7. Take risks. If Trump follows through and tries to register Muslim-Americans, insist on being registered along with them. Muslim with a large “M” means a follower of Muhammad and someone who practices Muslim faith and law. But in the Qur’an, the Muslim scripture, “muslim” with a small “m” actually just means generic believer in God. Abraham was a “muslim,” it says, and even Jesus was. The small “m” “muslim” could even be understood as someone who accepts Reality as it is. So in this sense, everyone can be a “muslim.” The Federal government doesn’t have the right to Establish an official religion or tell us what to believe, by dint of the First Amendment. Let’s all be “muslims.” Let’s all register. If he tries to keep Muslims from entering the country, let’s tie up the bureaucracy by saying we are “muslim.”

The Republican Party will expect the scattered protests to die out. They and their corporate backers will expect people to go back to being couch potatoes and letting the grown ups run the government. They will expect us to be silent when goons beat up Latinos or African-Americans or Muslims or liberals. Only sustained activism and organizing and effective steps to change the balance of power in Washington and in the statehouses can actually challenge Trumpism.

Let’s foil their expectations.

Posted in Democratic Party,Featured,The Left,women,workers,Youth | 46 Responses | Print |

Putin targets East Aleppo rebels; Did Trump’s Election doom them?

By Juan Cole | Nov. 10, 2016 |

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by Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – –

Some 2,000 rebel fighters, most of them Muslim fundamentalists, others remnants of the Free Syrian Army, are trying to break the Syrian regime’s blockade of East Aleppo. But they may soon face cruise missiles launched at them from Russian submarines in the Mediterranean, along with other air strikes coming off a Russian aircraft carrier battle group that has reached the Syrian port of Tartous.

Aleppo is divided into two cities. The Western neighborhoods may have as many as 600k to 1 million inhabitants. They are better off than those in the east and are under Syrian government control. From all accounts they are able to live relatively normal lives, though under a one-party state at war. East Aleppo was long more slummy than the west, and as a set of districts with a lot of have-nots it is not surprising that it rebelled in 2011 and then became a rebel stronghold.

But that stronghold is now under a pretty effective siege, which the rebels outside the city have been trying to break.

Gazeta.ru, via BBC Monitoring, confirms that:

“A Russian Navy carrier group headed by the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and the heavy nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky are preparing to conduct a strike in the very near future against insurgents in the province of Aleppo, a source in Russia’s Ministry of Defence confirmed to Gazeta.ru. An attack using Kalibr cruise missiles and carrier aviation will be conducted on insurgents at the approaches to the city, but not against residential areas, the source affirmed.”

The Russians are announcing that they (unlike the regime of Bashar al-Assad) will avoid bombing non-combatants in the midst of the densely packed eastern city.

But Gazeta.ru notes that the Russian surface ships now assembled in the Mediterranean do not have the Kalibr cruse missile in their arsenal. There are reports of 3 Russian, nuclear-powered submarines in the same part of the sea, who do indeed have this capability. Cruise missile strikes is one of the more effective weapons against the militias, according to Russian sources.

Russian fighter jets taking off from the aircraft carrier will soon also hit rebel positions around East Aleppo.

The Obama administration has slammed the Russian air help given to the al-Assad regime and its Shiite militia allies fighting rebeles at East Aleppo. But with Obama a lame duck and Trump a buddy of Putin, Russia and Syria may feel they have a free hand to defeat the rebels complete in east Aleppo.

In one of his campaign debates a year ago, Trump said “Aleppo basically has fallen.” It wasn’t true then, about the east of the city; it might be true soon.

———