Flawed arguments, on repeat

Bret Stephens just reminded me there's a reason why I usually don't read opinion articles from mainstream media: they pretend to postulate theses against the Beltway conventional wisdom, but really only reiterate the ignorant crap that hinders productive conversation.

Today in the Wall Street Journal, Stephens writes the reason "they" [the Jihadists/Arabs/Muslims...which he conflates into one] really hate us [Americans] is because of scandalous temptresses such as Lady Gaga, and not the Israeli settlements on Palestinian property. I'm serious.

His source is Sayyid Qutb, the radical Islamist Egyptian thinker whose written philosophies in the 1950s influence the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Qaeda. Stephens sites from Qutb's relatively less popular essay "The America I have seen," which was written after his stay in conservative Greeley, Colorado, and most likely as a response to a changing and "modernizing" Egypt (points that Stephens forgets to mention):

"The American girl," he noted, "knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it." Nor did he approve of Jazz—"this music the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires"—or of American films, or clothes, or haircuts, or food. It was all, in his eyes, equally wretched.

...

Bear in mind, too, that the America Qutb found so offensive had yet to discover Elvis, Playboy, the pill, women's lib, acid tabs, gay rights, Studio 54, Jersey Shore and, of course, Lady Gaga. In other words, even in some dystopic hypothetical world in which hyper-conservatives were to seize power in the U.S. and turn the cultural clock back to 1948, America would still remain a swamp of degeneracy in the eyes of Qutb's latter-day disciples.

This, then, is the core complaint that the Islamists from Waziristan to Tehran to Gaza have lodged against the West. It explains why jihadists remain aggrieved even after the U.S. addressed their previous casus belli by removing troops from Saudi Arabia, and why they will continue to remain aggrieved long after we've decamped from Iraq, Afghanistan and even the Persian Gulf. As for Israel, its offenses are literally inextricable: as a democracy, as a Jewish homeland, as a country in which liberalism in all its forms, including cultural, prevails.

Not sure what to tackle first. Let's start with geography. Stephens is absurd in assuming that Qutb, who encouraged Sharia Law, shaped Jihadists' ideology across the Middle East, when the role of religion and politics developed quite differently and distinctly from Gaza to Saudi Arabia to Iran. If Stephens needs any reminding (sad that he would), Iran is a Shia state - with an Islamic government, yes, but one that is quite distinct from a state with Sharia Law. Shia and Sunni political ideology has manifested throughout history, which is why constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran is unprecedented - not Sharia, but an experiment.

A quick note about his timeline: it's incredible that Stephens believes there was no push for "modernism" or any influence of American and/or foreign culture in the Middle East before Elvis or birth control pills. The 1950s and 1960s was a vulnerable and formative period in Middle East history. Not only were countries and socieities struggling to balance modernism with religion, but also a new nation-state system with forces of monarchy and foreign governments that were willing to "buy" out ME states for their support in the Cold War. It wasn't the American temptress that citizens were worried about, but their ownership of land and identity being stripped away from them.

Flawed history: Stephens must be zoned into an obscure news source, because in the real world, the U.S. has in fact NOT left Iraq, Afghanistan or the Persian Gulf. And if not militarily, then it certainly holds influence in countries monetarily and through the CIA. The U.S. presence in the Middle East hasn't been doubted for the past 50 years.

What's disgusting of all, is that by claiming that Jihadists are obsessed with the "American temptress" image, Stephens dismisses the legitimate arguments of those Jihadists, Muslims, Palestinians, and others, who do find fault in Israel's settlement activity. Just because Jihadists use a simplistic "down with Americanization" argument does not mean that Israel's hostile tactics are not a legitimate concern. The fact that Biden's and Patraeus' remarks were in fact met with hostility means that the settlement issue is not readily accepted in conventional wisdom as a reason why "they hate us" - as Stephens states. [As a side note, using the "modernism" argument to theorize "why they hate us" was used 9 years ago and thrown out as flawed over the course of several years...not only is there nothing original in this article, but the argument is incredibly archaic]

Just a final point, trying to use the Israel/ME issue to censor Lady Gaga because she makes you uncomfortable is pathetic. Here, 1st amendment rights should ring a bell. Besides, I'm not even sure if Qutb would actually call her the "American temptress." Hell, even Americans can't figure her out. Btw, Bret Stephens: have you even seen Arab music videos? Next time you insinuate that there is no sexuality or seduction in the Middle East, you may want to look one up on Youtube.

The only thing that makes me feel slightly better about WSJ having printed this worthless article is the hope that they were following the new media business model: clickability.

When accountability is a sham

On November 19, 2005, a group of Marines was attacked in Haditha, Iraq by a roadside bomb that killed one soldier. The squad leader, Sgt. Wuterich, started shooting at Iraqis fleeing the scene. His team followed suit. By the end of the episode, 24 Iraqi civilians - including women and children - were dead. Wuterich later claimed that he believed his squad was in danger and does not regret shooting at the Iraqis.

The "Haditha massacre" became a humiliating blotch for the U.S. military during the Iraq War. But five years and a long court process later, it may not amount to much of anything. A military judge tomorrow may clear Wuterich - the only defendant left - of the charges against him.

Let me just simplify how this ruling speaks to me: the U.S. is willing to try terrorist suspects in military tribunals, and are willing to allow them to undergo torture and the death penalty for possible ties to Al Qaeda, but are not willing to apply the rule of justice to cases of U.S. soldiers unfairly killing Iraqi civilians.

Is this because American civilians are more valuable than Iraqi civilians? In a war, unjustified killings of civilians on either side is considered a crime. Not only is Iraq in war, but the U.S. is as well. Sadly ironic is that while Iraqis get the battleground, Americans get to maneuver the "rules of war," which apparently allows them to kill Iraqi civilians, and illegally imprison suspects for years.

I've heard the argument that in a war, there is no justice. I find it weak, and frankly disgusting. If the U.S. plans on ending this war soon, it needs to return back to a state of normalcy, which requires that criminals be held accountable for their actions. U.S. troops are already leaving Iraq, but where is the rule of law?

KSM trial suggests the GOP is the party with power

They may be incessantly trying to obstruct any measure of progress in Washington this year, but one can’t help but admire the GOP for discussing national security as if it was still 2002 - the year when fear tactics were enough to convince an entire Congress to invade Iraq (despite public protests), to pass the Patriot Act, and to violate the civil rights of potential “suspects”.

Eight years later, mounting evidence suggests that such actions led the U.S. to violate several international laws and human rights, not to mention be responsible for rising monetary and human costs of war. Such evidence has been surfacing throughout the years: the 9/11 Commission Report pointed out security and intelligence failures on the part of the U.S., almost immediately into the Iraq War it was confirmed that the alleged WMDs and Al-Qaeda connection was a farce, President Bush revealed the country had been housing suspects without charges for years in Guantanamo Bay, which may have caused the deaths of three inmates (the official line claimed they were suicides), and that water-boarding was not just a “dunk in the water” as Dick Cheney once suggested but actually a meticulous and lengthy torture process.

But such gaping flaws in national security procedures didn’t weaken or silence the party that spearheaded them. Instead, Republicans are still taking the lead on how to deal with “terrorist threats” in the post-9/11 U.S. Although Democrats gained control of the Executive and House in 2008, they are struggling to take control of the national security discussion.

But eight years later, it is difficult to believe that the GOP, that wants more of the same flawed procedures from the past decade, isn’t more concerned with gaining political points rather than actually protecting the country. The debate over Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trials suggests enough.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11, has been under U.S. custody for seven years, under which he has been regularly waterboarded – as many as 183 times in one month. In February 2008, he was charged with murder for September 11 attacks, and in October 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the U.S. would try KSM in a civilian court. The loud outcry from the GOP and conservative leaders broke out in February 2010, spurring a heated debate in the political sphere about where his trial should be held and causing the White House to seriously consider a military tribunal for KSM – with a suspect military legal framework that was created in 2006 alongside Guantanamo Bay.

While some did protest Holder’s announcement in October, it wasn’t until a couple of months ago that the debate entered the fray. Incidentally, around the time when GOP poster boy Scott Brown was elected to the Massachusetts Senate seat and voiced his disapproval of civilian trials, when Liz Cheney helped organize families of 9/11 victims in rallies against the Attorney General, and after midterm elections came into the fore of national politics. It isn't difficult to imagine that Republicans are playing a political game.

Let’s assume Republicans are really invested in the KSM trial because they are genuinely concerned about how his trial would affect national security. Even then, their arguments don’t make much sense:

1. Argument: A civilian trial for KSM would provide him a public platform to recruit other terrorists.
There isn’t exactly a lack of incentives for terrorists or potential radicals to turn against the U.S.: Israel’s recent announcement of new settlements, drone attacks in Pakistan (besides Al Qaeda, LeT is probably the biggest threat from South Asia), and obviously the continuous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are enough to anger even moderate citizens in those countries. If the goal is to keep people freom becoming terrorists, it is U.S. foreign policy rather than a public trial that may need to be reconsidered.

2. Argument: A civilian trial tells the world that Obama is “soft on terror”
The President increased troop levels in Afghanistan, drastically increased the number of drone attacks in Pakistan as well as weapons and military aid to the country in order to fight terrorists. Obama is not quitting the war on terror anytime soon.

3. Argument: An enemy combatant should be tried in a military court
The military court system in Guantanamo was created recently and there is no guarantee that it would provide due justice. Such claims suggest Republicans doubt the effectiveness of the civilian court system in the country, a system that has tried and convicted 150 terrorists in the past decade. More terrifying, “enemy combatant” is a vague term that can be applied loosely to try suspects in a military court who may not be guilty. This isn’t such a stretch of imagination – many detainees housed in Guantanamo are not guilty or even charged with crimes.

While many Republicans have been quick to criticize the Obama administration’s handling of the KSM trial, not many are concerned with real national security risks: the recent arrest of “Jihad Jane” indicates that terrorists do not dress or look the same, as our current airport security system believes. Yet, there is no debate on how to resolve security flaws that overlook such threats.

It’s not hard to believe, then, that Republicans are using the KSM debate to paint the Obama administration and Democrats as weak and apathetic towards national security. The tactic worked successfully in 2002 when it helped push Democrats to support the Iraq War, and it may prove effective this year to help Republicans win key seats during midterm elections. After carrying the burden of the tarnished reputation of George W. Bush, the Republicans are expertly trying to reclaim the glory days of the past, when they were the ones seen as the aggressive protectors of the country.

The tactic is universal: tea partiers are protecting the constitution, conservative media is protecting values, the recent Texas Education decision is protecting "real history." This is no different. KSM military trials will protect national security. They are all ludicrous notions, but Democrats haven't dismissed them as such. Instead, these notions have put the majority party on the defensive.

Being brown on bad TV

You know, after all those Metro PCS commercials (rant below), desi cameos in TV sitcoms, and Russel Peters jokes, I've come to accept that brown people are going to be ridiculed in this country for a good laugh. And ok, I laugh too. But there's an art to all the racially-regressive crap they spew out that at least makes the jokes bearable. If you're going to stereotype groups of people, at least make it funny. SNL didn't get that memo.

So here's a breakdown: young Indian boy (who is played by a girl) has started his own talk show due to his father's encouragement (read: orders). Alright, that's an entertaining premise. The Indian boy also seems to be very knowledgeable about everything (registered: the model minority stereotype). But then it just goes haywire.

Enter Jude Law with a clumsy and pointless role as the talk show's guest. The camera randomly turns to a sardar-ji uncle wearing a messy turban and drinking alcohol. The skit fails, miserably. The humor is lost (the audience didn't laugh), the American-raised desi boys has a heavy and painful Indian accent, the dad and uncle are both played by non-South Asian actors that don't add anything except to try to fill the role of an overly-zealous father and alcoholic uncle (as a side point: why is the uncle a sardarji when no one in the family is?). There was nothing to laugh about. Not even a "that's racist but so hilarious" moment. And just to make me cringe some more, in the last 10 seconds, three desi people entered the scene for a family portrait. Oh, and the Indian woman was carrying a baby.

I appreciate the effort, but really, couldn't SNL have at least TRIED for some humor? I'm not even sure whether to call it racist or just really really bad comedy.

________________________

Rant about Metro PCS:

Somewhere, some teenage boy is sitting on his couch, laughing hysterically at the Metro PCS commercial that has just come on TV. The commercial itself isn’t particularly funny, but the two Indian men enunciating every word with thick accents are comical. And it manages to provide enough sound bites to mimic later: “There is always a penalty” and “Cold…like an ice lolli.”

But because they are lacking in creativity, what Metro PCS really has going for them is mocking Indian men who accent every syllable of their 30-second script and reference stereotypes of Indian culture (for no obvious reason that I can find). In other words, Metro PCS tries to create humor by racially stereotyping Indians.

The cell-phone company features Ranjit and Chad in multiple commercials, and the scenarios are similar: the duo hosts “Tech and Talk” and informs their callers that Metro PCS is the best and most affordable cell phone plan on the market. That’s about 10 seconds of the commercial. The rest is a bizarre blend of exaggerated music and attempted humor that relies on making fools of the two hosts.

All of these commercials include stereotypes associated with a rural India: a snake charmer, heightened shame (over choosing the wrong cell phone plan), and even calling a newspaper “hot and spicy.” At one point, Ranjit admonishes a consumer by telling him, “You’re like my uncle’s goat, tied to the post, milking at regular intervals.” (What does that even mean?)

Just to create a further bizarre world, which starts to look more like a circus after about 15 seconds, one commercial concludes with two Indian women, clad in elaborate clothes, dancing around a white customer. [Check out the videos below]. Sure, some of it is funny, but the rest is completely unnecessary and offensive. Why does Metro PCS think it’s OK to exploit the stereotypes imposed on a certain group for comedic effect?

But if that wasn’t enough, Metro PCS goes one step further. It creates humor that relies not just on Ranjit and Chad making jokes, but also on the two humiliating themselves. In one commercial, for example, Chad displays his “dancing skills” that are purposefully abominable, and in another, both men are donning large sunglasses and feminine hats (quite randomly), which just ups the ridicule factor.

The portrayal of Indian men as socially awkward and heavily accented, with thick mustaches and who are completely oblivious of people laughing at them is…well, it’s racist. It further perpetuates an almost circus-like persona to a group of people, most of whom look and sound little like Ranjit and Chad.

I love diversity on TV, and wouldn’t mind seeing more South Asians on screen, but I find it hard to believe Metro PCS couldn’t think of a better storyline that used brown people in their commercials without requiring them to make fools of themselves and their culture. How about a bit more creativity than that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuSI0WSFok&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFytHoXdG3E&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CErb461jHA&feature=related

Education protestors are whiners, while tea partiers are a movement

This country, at times, seems like it’s teeming with barrels of monkeys who are more inclined to spout nonsense than engage in productive dialogue. Take Peter Robinson, a fellow at Stanford University, a former White House speechwriter, and a regular columnist for Forbes.

On March 5, a day after thousands nationwide marched to protest funding cuts in education, Robinson wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal that only indicated just how out of touch he is with reality. Labeling the protesters as the “Me generation,” he argued that these students were selfish and self-absorbed for demanding money when so many families have been hit badly by the recession. In short, they carry a false sense of entitlement.

Never mind the irony that Robinson himself received a top-notch education from prestigious institutions: Dartmouth College and then Oxford University, and that he also works for an elite university where many enrolled are a product of privileged legacies. But wait, according to Robinson’s logic, it is those students protesting for a fair chance at a public education that are entitled.

There are many glaring flaws with Robinson’s piece. First, the generation he calls entitled made up only a portion of the protesters last Thursday. The rest were an equally frustrated group of parents concerned about their children’s futures and teachers who have been fired due to cuts.

Second, his definition of “entitlement” is skewed. Not only because Robinson overlooks his own privileged background, but he also doesn’t acknowledge that the idealism that these students espouse is not an aberration from the idealism they have vigilantly and regularly fought for. It is this generation who strongly opposed the Iraq War in 2003, and who just recently began a series of protests against racist incidents at UC campuses. Indeed, the generation he calls “self-absorbed” is very likely to work in developing countries, raise funds for natural disasters and engage with their local communities.

Most glaring of all, though, is that Robinson seems to find all the faults in these young protestors who are fighting for an affordable public education as they have been promised, but tea partiers, who claim they are trying to save their country, are heroes.

In a Forbes article in January, Robinson fought for the little guy – the tea partiers who have led the front in protesting Obama’s stimulus package and healthcare reform that would unfairly penalize these Americans, and who are due credit for their efforts while supine GOP counterparts merely observed. Unlike the students, when tea-partiers protest against health care reform that would benefit millions n the U.S., they are not self-absorbed, just patriotic.

The sentimental end is what really drives Robinson’s point home (cue in blaring trumpets): “But I do know this – and by now Obama knows it, too: The most potent political force in America is still an ordinary citizen who has finally had enough.”

Here, Robinson makes the most interesting point in his writing – one he probably did not mean to: the ordinary citizen who has had enough is a label only reserved for a select few. More specifically, the political force in America who should be heard is a small group of Americans afraid of an imagined monster – socialist in the White House, not a generation across the country who has tangible reasons to be upset. So, who really is the entitled one?

Regardless of one’s position on education funds and whether demands of these education protestors should be met, it is difficult to argue that hundreds of thousands of people are frustrated, upset at the lack of resources distributed to them, and probably at the lack people listening to them as they attempt to hold their government accountable.

Yet, the idiocy that Robinson argues is a shared sentiment among many – both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives – who have been quick to recognize the Tea Party as a legitimate movement and yet disregard the education protests (among others) as a product of either entitlement or banal whining. While Tea Partiers are running as third candidates in many states, an entire group of citizens is being ignored in the national political discourse.

The recession has not just hit middle America, and certainly not just a group of conservatives who still question where our President was born. It has also severely jostled job and health care security for a younger generation who now has to worry about completing their education because of rising tuition costs. And if anyone needs a reminder, it is this generation whose endless campaigning hours and efforts helped lead the Obama movement into the White House. Not only are they citizens, but they are effective citizens.

The March 4th protest was not the first education protest, and it certainly is not the last. California has already scheduled another round for later this month. And yet, there is an invisible barrier that somehow separates these frustrated citizens from the political discussion about the nation’s priorities amid mid-term elections. Perhaps those like Robinson, so concerned about the rights of the ordinary citizen, should listen to their own arguments for including the American public in the larger national discourse. At least I’d like him, the man who once wrote the famous Berlin Wall speech, hear his own words: “tear down this wall!”

Calling Israel an apartheid system just fuels our imagination

As college campuses across the country recognized Israeli Apartheid week this week, they sparked debates in the media on whether the term is used fairly to describe the situation in Israel. In a recent Washington Post article, Roger Cohen argues that Jimmy Carter label of Israel as an apartheid system was an exaggeration, especially given that the situation in the West Bank is not reflective of how the rest of the Israeli state functions.

Thankfully, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald had a fantastic comeback, in which he sites one of Cohen’s glaring omissions: that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have both attributed the term apartheid to Israel.

But does the racial segregation that shaped South Africa’s political system effectively explain how Palestinians and Israelis are living?

Not exactly.

As a system, apartheid does reflect what is taking place in Israel now: the forced segregation of Israelis and Palestinians, and systematic practices that separate a group of people and limit their civil and political rights.

What Greenwald and others overlook, though, is that the term “apartheid” has inherited a weighty historical context. Many, including Nelson Mandela, liken the Palestinians’ plight in Israel to apartheid in the South African context, claiming it is similar to – if not worse than – the systematic racial segregation in South Africa.

But the racial dynamics between the oppressors and victims that were real in South Africa are imagined in the context of Israel. Israelis do not consist of one racial group, and the majority of the Israelis – those who did not migrate to the state – have inherited the same racial features as Palestinians.

According to the 2009 Israeli Census, the country’s Jewish population by continent of origin is as follows:

Israel: 37.5%
Asia: 12.2%
Africa: 15.5%
Europe-America: 34.8%

Although the number of Europe-Americans Jews migrating to Israel is consistently increasing, they still make up a minority of all the Jews living in Israel – a white minority. And yet, they have come to symbolize the identity of the Israeli population in the minds of most Americans, and sometimes even shape how locals perceive the conflict.

In March 2009, Swiss artist Oliver Suter published an advertisement in Haaretz newspaper that called for lookalikes to the 8 people featured in the advertisement. The eight were Palestinians. Among the photos that Suter received, he matched up an Israeli girl to a Palestinian boy, surprising both families by their impressive similarity and prompting the girl’s father to say: “[David] Ben-Gurion was right when he said ‘The Palestinians are not our cousins, they’re our brothers. Turns out, they could be twins.’”

Incredibly, amid the tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, the racism that occurs among Israelis is often neglected in U.S. media. According to the Israeli Census, Mizrahi Jews (those of Arab origins) and Jews from Africa often fall behind Ashkanazi Jews in education and employment. This is in addition to the racist backlash against Ethiopian and Asian Jews [here I wish I could provide data or first-hand accounts, but I am deferring to stories of friends who have visited Israel].

But racism is not a taboo topic in Israel. Haaretz, among other publications, and Israelis have discussed the growing racial tensions within the country. However, when it comes to the U.S., Americans have imagined a different Israel altogether, one in which the Israelis do not look or act like the other – the Palestinians.

The term “apartheid” perpetuates this imagined identity, and I myself doubt if we can use such a loaded term without framing it according to the South African context from which it originated. Yet, the debate about the term poses a rather interesting question about not what Israel is, but how we perceive this conflict, and who Israel belongs to. Who really owns Israel?

Well, here's a different take

Republican Senator Gary Nodler from Missouri has his own reasons for why Don't Ask, Don't Tell should not be repealed. According to him, doing so "would offend the terrorists" and would also be a "cultuaral [sic] affront to the Muslim in who's [sic] country we are opening."

He tried to make sense of his argument later when a blogger told him that U.S. allies do not have similar policies. Nodler's responded by implying that the UK has a high casualty rate in Afghanistan and Iraq because gays serve openly in the British military.

I may have respected Nodler a bit more if he had just come out and said he disagreed with repealing DADT because he doesn't want gays serving openly. At least, I hope he has a better argument than "I don't want to offend the terrorists and Muslims," because I'm pretty sure what's offensive to them are the bombs dropped on them.

Personally, what I find an affront are Nodler's weak spelling skills.