American Foreign Policy Project has released a joint statement by experts (including J. Cole and B. Rubin), containing recommendations for President Hussein’s future Iran policy:

Open the door to direct, unconditional and comprehensive negotiations at the senior diplomatic level where personal contacts can be developed, intentions tested, and possibilities explored on both sides. Adopt policies to facilitate unofficial contacts between scholars, professionals, religious leaders, lawmakers and ordinary citizens. Paradoxical as it may seem amid all the heated media rhetoric, sustained engagement is far more likely to strengthen United States national security at this stage than either escalation to war or continued efforts to threaten, intimidate or coerce Iran.

More on the site. The “myth” section is a great addition. I kinda want to write a Pakistan version.

Moacir has already called out the media on their triumphalism. While I assert that Obama’s transformative election cannot be held hostage to the likes of Chris Matthews, I see his point. Tom Friedman has already written some jaw-droppingly dumb column about this being the end of the Civil War or something.

Rebirth is a cornerstone of American mythology. To many, this election is a rebirth of the nation – whether in the context of the America’s slave-holding past, or in the context of America’s imperial wars of the last eight years. There is an overwhelming sentiment that by electing Barack Obama, America has somehow redeemed itself from Iraq. That we will now have a fresh, new start. Except the craters from the bombs remain. Hundreds of thousands are still dead in Iraq. Tons are being killed daily from drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is no rebirth, gentle readers. This is no fresh start.

Running parallel to this effluvia of American triumphalism is the despair of some others on the Left. They rightfully point out that Obama seeks to continue the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan – in fact, to fortify our efforts there. Sure. Obama was never opposed to all wars – he was only opposed to the Iraq War. I have previously said much on this – and you are welcome to go read it again. But, perhaps a larger sigh of despair came about with the announcements of Emanuel and Shah. (Neither are terribly surprising. Rahm Emanuel is a central figure in Democractic politics – rumored to become the next Speaker of the House before he took his job. And Google’s Eric Schmidt has been a prominent member of Team Obama and I expect many other Googlites to follow suit. Also, funny.) But do these associations necessarily translate into the end of Palestinian hopes or the equivalence of Hindutva policies from the W.H.?

I, at least, don’t think so. Why?

I return, again and again, to these two images:

This man is a child of the global south who worked as a community organizer on the southside of Chicago. And the foremost skill of being a community organizer – I was told the other night – is to “listen”, to not assert your own agendas, your own pre-conceived notions onto others. That this lesson is an integral part of Obama’s intellectual composition is apparent from reading Audacity of Hope. I see no reason to doubt that this capacity will remain a function of his administration.

I care about the war in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I care about a foreign policy that engages with that region. To me, the fact of advisory hawks is not a deterrent. I do not believe that the Hussein White House will be enthralled to a small clique of inspired chickenhawks. I honestly believe that there will be space for dialogue and persuasion, come January.

The question is, how will we participate in this dialogue. How will we – the community – make the Community Organizer-in-Chief listen to us. I hope we can rise to the challenge.

Rahm Emanuel: “In an interview with Ma’ariv, Emanuel’s father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son’s appointment would be good for Israel. “Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel,” he was quoted as saying. “Why wouldn’t he be? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to clean the floors of the White House.” Jerusalem Post.

Sonal Shah: “Her father Ramesh Shah, who hails from Gabat village in Sabarkantha, has been associated with Vishwa Hindu Parishad for the last 30 years. The family is now settled in Houston, Texas, where Shah founded the Gujarati Samaj.” Times of India.

courtesy e!

Actual Professors in Hyde Park

Now, this Khaleeede guy. I have, I am forced to admit, taken classes with him. He led me to believe that he was just some generous-hearted, razor-sharp intelligent, thoughtful, New Yorker who cared deeply about his scholarship as well as his students. I even held him to be a “role-model”; someone to emulate. I was obviously brain-washed.

I will, certainly, undergo the hundreds of hours of “Re-education” that is needed. And I will do it with a smile.

Others, like Juan Cole, can spin a masterful defense of the “idiotic wind” that went through my neighborhood. I will just focus on cleaning up the name of these fair grounds.

PS: You can also see Scott Horton and Barney Rubin‘s defense of Hyde Park.

PPS: By default, anything Daniel Pipes says is bullshit, but, um, here: Khalidi and the PLO, if you must.

Update: Sadly, the Obama campaign can only manage a how pro-Israel we is defense, instead of pointing out the racism of McCain’s attack.

“I make no claims that I can comprehend the mind of a terrorist, but as a Muslim I think I have a handle on bin Laden’s twisted view of Islamic eschatology.” – Rany Jazayerli at 538.com.

Why? Why is the fact of being a Muslim qualify any one for anything? Seriously. I would really like to know. Are there other “Muslim only” minds we can inhabit by the mere fact of saying the shahada? What is so well-established about “Islamic eschatology”? World War III? Let me lay down just one, single, fact about “Islamic eschatology”. It’s all bull. shit. There is no such thing. Perhaps Jazayerli can elaborate on which particular strand of eschatological beliefs UbL subscribes to, or what the metrics of “end times” are which determined his strike.

And really, that analysis of the prescient, omniscient “bin Laden” (here is another Muslim tip, his name is Usama not ‘son of laden’) is so riddled with contradictions that I don’t know why I picked on the above statement, alone.

Or Nobody! Ha!

Anyways, before the great proletariat revolution consumes us all, I wanted to tip the hat towards Matt Taibbi’s breathless putdown of this Palinesque exurbia, The scariest thing about Sarah Palin isn’t how unqualified she is – it’s what her candidacy says about America:

In her speech, Palin presented herself as a raging baby-making furnace of middle-class ambition next to whom the yuppies of the Obama set -who never want anything all that badly except maybe a few afternoons with someone else’s wife, or a few kind words in The New York Times Book Review – seem like weak, self-doubting celibates, the kind of people who certainly cannot be trusted to believe in the right God or to defend a nation. 

It is a classic.

“Obama, doesn’t understand” our grecian world.

The golden age of political signage is upon us. [HT, wonkette.]

I don’t really need to analyze and parse what Barack Obama said last night- countless others will do it for you. I will just tell you, in my opinion, that in its mundane parts it was easily the best political speech of this genre, i.e., politician wanting to get elected, narrates positions; in its best parts, it transcended all standards by which such things need to be measured. 

I will do my part – in Ohio, no less.

Since I will be publicly auditioning for this job, I present this without comment.

August 26, 2008

Dr. Randy Diehl
Dean of Liberal Arts
GEB 3.216
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712

Dr. Itty Abraham
Director, South Asia Institute
WCH 4.132B
University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712

Dear Dean Diehl and Dr. Abraham,

We the undersigned South Asia faculty at the University of Texas, Austin, write to express our strong objection to the university’s decision to establish a “Charlie Wilson Chair in Pakistan Studies.”

While Hollywood may profit from valorizing Mr. Wilson’s role in the Soviet-Afghan war, the concerns of a flagship, state-funded academic institution should be to maintain high scholarly standards and to avoid participating in historical caricature. The cold war in South Asia, which saw the United States shore up decades of military dictatorship in Pakistan against the democratic aspirations of its people, cannot be construed as a triumph of “good” democracy over “evil” communism. Mr. Wilson’s record as the key Congressman who sent monies and munitions to the anti-Soviet mujahideen groups underscores the worrisome role the U.S. played in escalating the Soviet-Afghan conflict, with devastating consequences for the peoples of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the United States.

“Charlie Wilson’s War,” or the “largest covert action program since World War II,” channeled more than two billion dollars to the mujahideen in the 1980s; by 1987 the CIA was supplying 65,000 tons of armaments to the mujahideen. During the 1980s, Osama bin Laden from his base in Peshawar (Pakistan), used his family’s wealth to build a series of camps where the mujahideen were trained by the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). These CIA-funded, ISI-supervised mujahideen operations targeted airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges, and roads, destroying vital civilian infrastructure in Afghanistan. The mujahideen, while advocating a narrow and extreme version of Islam, were also brutal killers who preyed upon the Afghan people and trafficked heroin to finance their activities. Between 1979 and 1992, thousands of Afghans died, and six million more became refugees—the largest refugee population in the world–many of them living in mujahideen-run refugee camps in Pakistan. Out of the rubble of a decimated Afghan society and the misery of these camps emerged the second generation of mujahideen: the Taliban. Space does not allow us to detail the myriad forms of cold war “blowback” that have continued to affect India, the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, and resulted in the events of September 11, 2001. These facts are, however, well-known. Mr. Wilson’s central involvement in the cold war in South Asia does not warrant the honor of establishing a University chair in his name.

A named chair sends a public message that not only the holder of the Chair, but its donor, represent standards to which the university and larger community should aspire. To endow a chair in Mr. Wilson’s name implicitly endorses an ideological and romanticized vision of his legacy, ¬and thereby of South Asian history as well. Mr. Wilson is not a role model for what we should teach students about the struggle for democracy in South Asia. It is also hard to imagine that any credible scholar of Pakistan could be recruited to fill a chair named after Mr. Wilson.

If Mr. Wilson and the Temple Foundation want to support research on South Asia, they can be encouraged to make an unmarked and unrestricted donation to the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas. We support the idea of establishing a Chair in Pakistan or South Asian Studies named after a person of integrity and principle that would allow UT’s South Asia program to recruit from among outstanding scholars in the field. We are happy to be consulted and to provide suggestions for a named chair that will enhance and not compromise the reputation of South Asian Studies at the University of Texas.

Kathryn Hansen, Professor of South Asian Studies, Director, Center for
Asian Studies (2000-4)
Akbar Hyder, Associate Professor of South Asian Studies
Judith Kroll, Associate Professor of English
Shanti Kumar, Associate Professor of Radio-Television-Film
Janice Leoshko, Associate Professor of Art History and South Asian Studies
Gail Minault, Professor of History
Carla Petievich, Visiting Professor of South Asian Studies
Stephen Phillips, Professor of Philosophy
Sharmila Rudrappa, Associate Professor of Sociology
Martha Selby, Associate Professor of South Asian Studies
Stephen Slawek, Professor of Ethnomusicology
Kamala Visweswaran, Associate Professor of Anthropology

Over the weekend, in Hyde Park, I received a flyer from a gentleman of indeterminate age. He was dressed in a garb unfamiliar to me. In his hand, he carried a strange device that, I later learned, recorded his words and deeds for his followers.

When he approached me, I was hesitant. And I tried to hurry myself around him. Yet, something in his eyes arrested me, as I slowed down and extended my hand to receive his flyer. He smiled and said, I have long planned our meeting, here. I nodded my head, as in agreement, though I had no comprehension. I didn’t read the flyer, stuffing it in my pocket, and wiping my fingers on my trousers. The ink left a small stain.

He briskly walked away before another word came out of my mouth. And I continued on to mine home.

I have read the flyer and found it to be an inspired work. I attach it below for my gentle readers. Perhaps I will try and find my new acquaintance, once again.

Scan of the Flyer: side 1 and side 2.

also, here:

Use the slider/zoom to read.

Thanks to Moacir, I watched the documentary Kabul Transit. Eschewing the usual talking heads approach – or even much of a linear narrative at all – it allows us to follow some people in Kabul for short periods of time. An entrepreneur, some government officials, some Canadian force members of NATO-ISAF, a yunani physician, some Kabul University students, either tell us directly what they think, what they remember and what they see in Kabul or we learn it from their conversation with others. 

It is a powerful work, though it takes a while before you sink into that world and I am undecided on whether the lack of narration and the lack of some explicit structure hurts or help. As someone who knows a little bit more about the history and languages of Afghanistan, I was soon immersed but the people I was viewing with had a harder time contextualizing what was on the screen. 

In the Director’s Statement, David Edwards concludes: “Kabul is an ancient city in which one is continually made aware of how the past shapes the present and intimates the future. History in the film had to seem to emerge out of psyche and experience, as it does when one lives in a place. We vowed not to impose a history upon the place as is done so often in many documentaries…Our goal was to allow insight to emerge out of experience, to reveal rather than describe, and to listen rather than speak.”

Well, sure. I agree. But, there are happy mediums. Since the documentary is indeed geared towards US audience, I don’t see any good reason not to, at least, locate their audience. Tell them what year it is, or why we only see Canadians giving out shovels and building sewage, or how much history lies buried in the rubbles of Kabul. As it is, the people remain nameless even – we only learn their names in the credits – and their personal histories unknown, except for those that share them. The camera obscures far more than it ever reveals.

In any event, it is something that you should try and catch. You can buy the DVD at their site. There are some clips that didn’t make the cut, and best of all, here is Alexandr Rozenbaum’s amazing Monolog Pilota – set to the best sequence in the whole documentary.

Having not heard or read this point anywhere in the cacophony over the New Yorker cover, let me add it myself.

The reactions to the cover have been in two camps: 1. It is satire. Grow a sense of humor. Or at least, recognize that this is a distillation of what red state people think (Obama/Osama). 2. It is humorless and crystallizes all the worst assumptions and offensive to Obama.

I am not going to debate with either of those. My post below, the “Finally”, refers instead to a different crystallization.

This cover, my gentle readers, renders absolutely the full melding of “terrorist” and “muslim” in American cultural conscience.

The rumors (or smears) on Obama were never that he was a terrorist but that he was a Muslim. Go back to early 2007 and trace it on freeper boards or hannity forums. You will only find insinuations about Obama attending madrasas or having been to mosques. As the rumor progressed, its apogee was reached in the NYT wherein Luttwack declared that the only thing mattered is that Muslims think he is a Muslim.

So here we are, in Bill Burton’s cover, and he starts from the assumption: Rumors are that Obama is a Muslim. Now examine that depiction; note how a “Muslim” is shown. Obama is clad in what seems to be Tabligh’i garb, there is a portrait of Osama b. Laden and a burning American flag. The transference of Obama to Muslim and Muslim to Terrorist is not only seamless, but, also immediate. The “terrorist fist jab” is another point in case. When that characterization took place (Hezbollah does that!), the readings on Debbie Schlussl and Michelle Malkin etc. was not that Obama or Michelle were terrorists. Taking my reading a tad further, the Michelle is obviously an add-on (Dear Wiki, if all Muslims are terrorists and which Black folks are also terrorist?).

Of course, I do think that the cover is funny – insofar as we all assume that all Muslims are terrorists. Which I habitually do. The New Yorker can elide all differences between a Muslim and a terrorist because those associations are realistically generalizable. Our rumor-based society gets what it deserves.

related: A Muslim Like Obama.