Genocide

My senior year in high school I took a course entitled Facing History and Ourselves, in which we learned about all of the injustices that have plagued the history of the world. At the time, I was much more of an optimist, and still believed that politics and diplomacy could fix everything. I've now realized just how much it takes to get anything done, and how careful of a line politicians must walk. Though it is horrifying that there is still a genocide going on in Darfur, no one is doing anything. If America is to take the role of world hegemon when it comes to WMD or countries that we have economic or political interest in, it is not surprising that the world expects us to come to the rescue of others. But if America were to stretch itself even more thinly, we would not have anything left for domestic problems, and someone would always be complaining about something. And so, even though I am a member of STAND and a national organization against genocide, I find myself understanding where the politicians are coming from when they just sit behind their offices and do nothing. If we fix every problem in the world, there will be nothing left for us.

April Fools

Just in case you had been fooled, the paper is NOT in fact doubled in length--it's still, thankfully, 2000-2500 words.

Don't you wish you had gotten to hear the lecture on Just War and 90s sitcoms?

How "nationalist myth-making" made me an Israeli

It never occurred to us in my first grade Hebrew School class that the Palestinians were actually people. They had become to us more of an idea that could be equated with evil. No complexity accompanied our view of the Palestinians and the struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians seemed to us a struggle of good versus evil, black and white. The thing is, though, none of us had ever actually been to Israel. In fact, I doubt any of us were actually descendents of Israelis. As a descendent of Russian and German Jews, I have no familial ties to Israel. Somehow, however, I became Israeli and, though I have since changed my viewpoint, I came to believe the typifications that accompany this identity.
My early childhood demonstrates the power of constructing identity. The collective identity of Jews as Israelis tied together groups of people previously only loosely connected. Jews from different geographic origins had very different traditions, yet somehow they become part of a single entity with the rise of Zionism- if not to themselves, then to those who worked for the creation of a Jewish state. The Jewish identity creates a unique situation in which a religious group is referred to as an ethnicity by many and is equated with a state- Israel. Kaufmann discusses how constructivists believe that identity is fluid and can be created and destroyed, as well as manipulated. The creation of the Jewish and Israeli identity (a single identity as they have been tied together) is a case in point. Ethnicity implies something you are born with as part of some kind of line, but applying this label to a group that incorporates such a variety of people has gained legitimacy to many. To many, Jews are not simply connected by religious ties; they are an ethnic group. Rarely do we refer to Catholics as an ethnic group, yet somehow, in this situation, we’ve equated religion with ethnicity.
What does this kind of identity mean for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Tilly touched on the importance of foreigners in supporting internal ethnic conflicts. The Tamils in Sri Lanka, for example, receive support from ethnic Tamils all over the world in their struggle for independence, which poses challenges to the Sinhalese government. If a good portion of the Jewish population as a whole believes itself to be ethnically connected to the Israeli population, a large and lasting support base is created. It is likely, then, that Israeli claims will be supported and echoed by people all over the world who seem to have little in common, and their demands will remain important for a long time. In addition, because this “ethnic group” is far from contained and has members in every continent, it will be almost impossible for a third power to intervene without either historical biases or local populations playing a biased role.
Another interesting implication of this creation of ethnicity relates to what Kaufmann says about the inclusion of people who otherwise would be indifferent to conflict. Opposing groups can often impose identity on others; thus, a single identity can be imposed by the enemies of Israel on the Jewish population as a whole. Additionally, and equally importantly, ethnic groups can impose identity on those they consider part of an in-group even if these people do not consider themselves part of this identity. That is why I am often considered in the same ethnic group as Israeli Jews even though I feel little connection to them and am aware that, in my own definition of ethnicity, even the population of Israeli Jews contains diverse ethnic groups.
And of course, as the anecdote with which I began demonstrates, the creation of this identity causes widespread dehumanizing of opposing groups among those who do not have the capacity to think for themselves before it is too late. Jewish children all over the world come to see the Palestinians as the opposite of good even though they are, in my view, mostly outsiders to the conflict. Such strong views based on constructed identity will impede progress as an outside support groups for either party in the conflict remains strong and as children, rather than being educated on the issue, are only taught the situation in terms of what is “right” and what is “wrong.”
Kaufmann at varying points also refers to the Israeli-Arab conflict to support his ideas; however, this particular conflict shows that his solution of separating ethnic groups (if we assume both are ethnic groups) is too simplistic. In this case, it is not intolerance of another group that is the only issue at hand. Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis at this point will be happy with just any territory, even if it is sufficient to support them. Kaufmann does not consider religious significance and the power it has over such conflicts. He seems to disregard the fact that territory can hold as much significance to an ethnic group as the ethnic group itself. Religious, historical and traditional considerations concerning land are not factored into his analysis of ethnic conflict. If religion was not an important part of this struggle, why would Jews who have never been near Israel care so deeply about holding on to that territory? In fact, why would Jews in other lands come to identify themselves specifically with Israel in the first place?

The "Civil War" Taboo

The inability to form blanket hypotheses on the causes of "civil wars" or uniform solutions to conflicts tagged with this distinction calls into question the efficacy of a term laden more with political baggage than analytical utility. The debate over "civil war" in the most apparent conflict today, Iraq, is not presented as a matter of finding a cause or solution, but instead, the term is deployed as a political weapon in the wider debate over Iraq. This rose to the surface in late 2006, with an ironic explosion of media coverage over the media itself when NBC announced that it would, against the orders of the Bush administration, begin using the term "civil war" in its stories covering Iraq. It was soon followed by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and other predominantly liberal news media corporations making similar announcements. Instead of becoming an argument over descriptive accuracy, the move was widely accepted as move against the Bush administration intended to shore up public opposition to the war. Why should the American public support its soldiers and tax dollars being wasted on the internal conflict of another country? As James Steinberg, dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas wrote, “If Iraq is a democracy struggling against insurgents and you describe it that way, people might still support you. If it is a civil war, it is indisputably the case that Americans will say, 'What are we doing in the middle of a civil war?” Even those who support the move can’t deny its political motivation. Nothing happened in November of 2006 to prompt a sudden collapse of Iraq into civil war. The symbolic nature of the ordeal was clear as Matt Lauer broke from news coverage on the Today show not to announce a certain deterioration in the Iraq conflict, but NBC’s new formal policy of using the term “civil war.”

The term “civil war” now has less analytical use than political use. The New York Times made this apparent when they pledged not to overuse the term for “dramatic effect” noting that the conflict also contained elements of “an insurgency, an occupation, a battle against terrorism and a scene of criminal gangsterism.” These clearly informal terms illustrate the general preference for media exceptionalism over any alignment with military strategy or international relations theory. Even more striking is that the pentagon was the first to use the tool for similarly political purposes; with General John Abizaid threatening that Iraq may “collapse into civil war” if more troop deployments weren’t authorized. Passed using the same rhetoric for a political purpose, the General’s comments indicate his assumption that the civil war is something that can be identified, avoided and cured. Even the man who at the time was the highest ranking US commander in the Middle East assumed a general category of civil war. This generalization avoids any analysis of the specific causes of what may or may not be rightfully determined a civil war in Iraq, and thus negates any possibility for considering the most correct solution. This term, loaded with hundreds of years of political and historical symbolism, is an example of political rhetoric crowding out analytical efficiency.

Remembering the Afghani People

I found this article this morning on CNN.com. It goes right along with what we discussed last week in section:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/02/bush.nato.france/index.html

Last Friday we talked for most of the last half of section about the peacekeeping, occupation, and nation building going on in Afghanistan, and what, if anything, the United States and her allies could be doing to better serve the native Afghani people and protect themselves. I think this article is telling us just how complicated a question this is. About five and a half years after the War on Terror began with the invasion of Afghanistan the member-states of NATO are still increasing their troop presence and vowing to extend their commitments. It would almost seem as though we’re simply throwing as much manpower as we can into the country and hoping that eventually everything just works itself out. Every single recent news article I found about Afghanistan pertains to one of three subjects: Increased troop deployment (see above), casualty counts for skirmishes with the Taliban, or how Afghanistan is being used as a pawn in US-Russian conflicts and Georgia and Ukraine’s bid to join NATO (again, see above). It leads one to wonder if we’ve lost sight of the fact that there are actually, non-terrorist people living in Afghanistan, and that our top priority should be their well being after our disposition of the Taliban regime, and NOT our political agendas. We did, after all, invade their country, the least we could do is be polite houseguests.

The fact that NATO strategists feel we need more troops isn’t just unsettling because of the ever increasing death counts. It tells us that about five years after the Taliban fell and democracy was instituted, the elected officials, backed by the combined armies of the west, don’t have control yet. The “hearts and minds” of the majority of the people may have been won over, but the Taliban will continue to operate without the hold over the populace they once had, and as long as they do, we’ll just keep sending troops. So where did we go wrong? One may say that the framework wasn’t in place. The Taliban kept order through fear despite waning infrastructure, something a legitimate government is hard pressed to do, and though the people would rather be governed democratically, it just can’t be done properly until the basic necessities of their country are met. With the Taliban attacking all attempts that NATO and the US make at creating such infrastructure, a stable state could be a distant hope.

It begs the question, what’s the point? Our leader has placed our armies in the middle of a vicious cycle. We leave until there’s stability, we can’t have stability without infrastructure, we can’t have infrastructure until the Taliban is gone, and the Taliban won’t be gone until we send many more troops, the opposite of us leaving. Perhaps it could be worth it if it really was stopping terrorism, but since 2001 we’ve seen many more instances, most notably in the transit systems of London and Madrid. US forces are in Afghanistan for the long haul, with neither their physical or ideological goals within reach. In order to best serve the needs of the Afghani people, which should be our main objective now that the Taliban regime is disposed of, we must either reassess our situation and role as occupiers and peacekeepers, or face a never ending cycle of war and death which will hurt us as much as them.

One last note I thought of while typing this. In Afghanistan, the people were very supportive of us, and the United States had and still has numerous allies trying to make things right. And yet, the War on Terror will be entering into its sixth year with no end in sight. What does that say about Iraq, where the people are much less cooperative, we have no allies, and there’s significantly more resistance?

China Provides Information about Iran

On Yahoo! News today, I read an article discussing intelligence that China gave the U.N. about nuclear activity in Iran. I found this article very interesting for several reasons.

(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080402/ap_on_re_mi_ea/nuclear_iran;_ylt=Anumkftz0gNFoF1Ox6AV9P8UewgF)

Firstly I was quite surprised that China was publically taking any action at all against Iran. This is, after all, the same China who had vehemently stated its disagreement with US nuclear containment policy regarding Iran, and who, with Russia, fought against attempts to penalize Iran for defying the U.N. Security Council. The fact that China is willing to provide evidence which would most likely aid the US in its efforts to impose penalties on Iran seems a little odd.

As the article states however, this move by China appears to show a growing wariness about Iran’s determination to become a nuclear stronghold. In my opinion this apparent change of heart on China’s end could have occurred for several reasons. One potential explanation is that China considered the fact that if Iran obtained nuclear weapons it could increase the instability of the already tumultuous Middle East. Possession of nuclear weapons by Iran might cause Israel to feel more threatened than it already does, and/or it may cause other countries in the area to attempt to develop nuclear technology to balance against Iran. I would assume however that Israel is not the biggest concern of China.

Another possibility could be that China questioned Iran’s ability to control their nuclear weapons, should they have the chance to obtain them. The “crazy colonel” idea that was discussed in lecture could be applied here, for if Iran is willing to defy the U.N. who knows what its leaders would decide to do with their nuclear weapons. Furthermore, since Iran is a somewhat turbulent country located in a very turbulent area, there would be no way to gauge what safety precautions would be taken to ensure there were not any accidents with the weapons. While I think this may have played a role in China’s decision, I believe there is an even more pressing issue that influenced China’s actions.

The more likely possibility in my opinion is that China took into consideration the threat of terrorism. If Iran is going to have nuclear weapons, there’s a strong chance they would be tempted, or simply be perfectly willing, to provide various terrorist organizations with them as well. This would pose an immediate threat since once a terrorist organization has nuclear weapons to use little can be done to stop them. I would imagine that thinking along these lines is what prompted China to take an interest in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, for terrorism is one of the few things which would affect the global community on an equal level, and not purely the interests of the US. My question now is will Russia follow China’s lead?

al-Qaeda and the UN

Articles: The New York Times and CNN

The articles above report about a 90-minute clip released by the second-in-command of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, defending the suicide bombings of UN offices in Algiers. It reminded me of Tuesday's lecture on just war theory, especially in regards to the shifting international environment, where the validity of the standards being applied to state actors is being called into question in light of the increased importance of non-state actors.

However, at least in this particular case, al-Qaeda seems intent on presenting its efforts in a traditionally legitimate sense. For example, al-Zawahiri accuses the UN of taking away Muslim territory through the creation of Israel and other means (righting a wrong). He then claims that they have never taken an innocent life (discrimination). As he is quoted in the article, any killing of innocents was due to "'unintentional error'" (necessity/utility).

As a tie-in to the terrorism lecture/reading, al-Zawahiri also shifts the blame for deaths in the conflict to al-Qaeda's opponents. This reflects the idea presented by Hoffman that terrorists will never identify themselves as terrorists--that in fact "terrorist" is often a relative term to be applied to one's enemies.

This is taken even further by al-Qaeda's openly-declared antagonism against the "collective authority" of the UN. This suggests that despite whatever pretty words and "just" reasons they may give, al-Qaeda recognizes no higher authority than its own judgments. While the ideas of a "just war" can be used in theory to determine whether it is right for a war to be fought or not, those same justifications can often be reduced to mere propaganda. This is how I see the case with al-Qaeda to be, although there is always the possibility of severe self-delusion. (The implication that enemies of al-Qaeda hide among Muslims only to use them as "'human shields'" gives credence to this, and I'm being at least half-serious.)