A Bit of This and Some of That

Hillary Clinton has a new BFF.

It’s only her campaign, not her, but I still feel a surge of sympathy. I can identify with anyone, anywhere, who can’t pay their bills.

The Draft Gore voices in the Democratic Party are either getting louder, or more numerous.

He survived the killing fields, but succumbed to pancreatic cancer at 65. Rest in peace, Dith Pran. You have earned it more than most.

Andrew Sullivan writes about Thomas Merton’s idea that doubt is the essence of faith.

Can we call the Bush administration the moral equivalent of Hitler and Stalin now?

Tolerance 2

I think the bigger danger we face is not inter-faith disagreements but the powerful intra-faith divisions. For example: In its earliest years, the Christian religion was divided into three major religious movements: the Gnostics, Jewish Christians, and Pauline Christians. The Gnostic Christians almost disappeared, but is experiencing a period of rapid growth today. The Jewish Christians — the original form of the religion — were largely wiped out by the Roman Army and eventually disappeared from the scene. Almost all current Christian groups trace their lineage back to the Pauline Christian movement.

From “The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain”

Even when political and ideological circumstances are characterized by strife, artistic and intellectual life prospers and reinvents itself in spaces created by cultural tolerance. And once a cultural intertwining follows from that tolerance, who can say that there will not be a better way to find solutions for seemingly intractable ideological and political differences? The Andalusian story reveals the inevitable tensions between our desire for cultural coherence, on the one hand, and the excitement and vitality of contradictions in ourselves and in our midst, on the other.

The Andalusian moral, in that sense, is that there are Judah Halevis within each of us, and thus within our communities. Halevi turned against his own and others’ poetic triumphs because he believed in an ideology that shunned the languages of a foreign God, and for us it may as easily be the architecture of a tyrannical state, or the statues of pagans, or the novels of an oppressive culture that make us uneasy. Does poetry or language or philosophy or music or architecture, even that of our temples, really need to dance to the same tune as our political beliefs or our religious convictions? Is the strict harmony of our cultural identities a virtue to be valued above others that may come from the accommodation of contradictions? The Andalusion stories allow us to glimpse one long and extraordinary chapter of our history in which the three major monotheistic faiths struggled, successfully and unsuccessfully, with the question of tolerance of one another. Just as important, certainly, is the kindred question, for those three faiths so dominant in our culture, the tolerance within themselves and their always variegated communities of believers; and this, too, was a question asked insistently in al-Andulus. Other questions echo endlessly: Can Muslims be successfully integrated into contemporary and secular European nations? Should fundamentalist Christians have to expose their children to the teachings of reason as well as those of faith, to evolutionary theories as well as scriptural truth? Can Catholic Croatians, Orthodox Serbs and Muslim Bosnians coexist in the Balkans? How can tolerance and intolerance coexist?

That is ancient history. Today, just in one of the monotheistic Abraham-derived religions, Christianity, we have major divisions: Catholics and Protestants. Catholics are divided into Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Protestants are divided into an Evangelical wing, a Mainstream wing and a Liberal wing, which is further sub-divided into a Progressive Christianity wing and an Evolutionary Christianity wing.

Some folks tend to be tribal or clannish, surrounding themselves with people that think exactly the way they do. Others are, perhaps, more inquisitive and have a desire to see and understand how others view the world.

All three branches of these monotheistic religions have peace, brotherhood and tolerance as bedrock principles. However, all three religions have groups that will resort to force and violence to further their aims and in a grab for power.

It would seem that if one is secure in their beliefs, they should have no fear of being exposed to another’s beliefs. If my neighbor is in a long-term homosexual relationship, I fail to see how that can affect my forty-seven plus year marriage. The same is true if my neighbor speaks Farsi or Spanish, worships one God or many Gods, listens to old time rock ‘n roll or digs rap.

It is not difficult to live in peace and harmony, to be tolerant. If our neighbor walks to the beat of a different drummer, maybe we can, at least, listen to that different drumbeat.

Winners and Losers and Spin

Don’t you think it’s a telling commentary when al-Sadr calls for Iraqis to stop killing each other, and the right calls that surrender?

Anyone who follows the news closely in Iraq knew this day would come. The British left a power vacuum behind in the south that the Baghdad government could not fill at the time, and Sadr and the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council’s Badr Brigades filled it instead. They have fought each other and some smaller Shi’ite groups for control of the streets ever since 2005, as Steven Vincent tried to warn people just before they murdered him in Basra. The Iraqi government had no choice but to challenge the militias for control of Basra and the surrounding areas, but they waited until the Iraqi Army had enough strength to succeed.

Did our media give anyone this context? No. They reported it as some kind of spontaneous eruption of rebellion without noting at all that a nation can hardly be considered sovereign while its own security forces cannot enter a large swath of its own territory. And in the usual defeatist tone, they reported that our mission in Iraq had failed without waiting to see what the outcome of the battle would be.

Sadr now wants to disavow anyone with a gun. The Mahdis, which found themselves on the short end of the stick, have just watched their Fearless Leader surrender — again — and this time leaving them twisting in the wind. That isn’t the action of a victor. Perhaps our media would like to explain that in the context of their clueless reporting so far.

One might also say that a nation can hardly be considered sovereign when 140,000 members of a foreign military are occupying it. One might add that a government that was installed by another country and that has no legitimacy or support beyond its own followers and the superpower backing it, is not a sovereign government at all.

Here is a more nuanced view:

Some will claim this is a Sadr climb-down. I doubt he cares much what the American Right thinks, though. For others, following on from a reported snub of the guy Maliki sent to try to get Sadr to negotiate on Maliki’s terms, and his statement to his followers not to hand over their weapons, this will be seen as Sadr trying to claim the moral high ground while still retaining the ability to start up hostilities again if needed. Obviously, the Mahdi Army’s stand-down is conditional on Maliki standing down his own forces too. Since Sadr was always the one saying they should ceasefire and talk, while Maliki’s been strong on the “never give up, never surrender” rhetoric the last five days, it’s also obvious who Iraqis will think “won” if Maliki complies.

Even the right-leaning Michael van der Galien sees this as more of a defeat for the central government than for the Sadrists (emphasis mine):

The peace offer isn’t an offer by someone who’s losing: it’s an offer of someone who believes he’s winning but who’s done fighting. Someone who may be winning, but prefers ‘peace’ in so far that the government withdraws completely from Basra and leaves Basra in the hands of its (the government’s) enemies.

Al-Sadr’s offer makes one thing very clear, I think: if al-Maliki accepts it, it’s al-Sadr who has shown his own government and the Americans who’s in charge of Basra. And it ain’t the latter two.

Here is al-Sadr’s nine-point statement:

Due to our responsibility to protect Iraqi blood, to protect the reputation of Iraq and its unity, in preparation for its independence and freedom from the armies of darkness, and in order to put down the fire of sedition that the occupiers want to light between the brothers of the Iraqi people, we call upon the Iraqi people to be responsible and stop shedding Iraqi blood and to protect the country’s stability and independence. Therefore, we have decided the following:

Number one, ending all JAM (Mahdi Army) military presence in Basra and the rest of the provinces

Number two, stopping all random and illegal detention and arrests

Number three, calling on the government to implement the general amnesty law and releasing all detainees not convicted, especially the Sadr Trend detainees

Number four, whoever raises arms and targets the government and state offices, organizations and the services and the political party offices is not one of us

Number five, cooperation with the government in preserving security and targeting criminals through legal procedures

Number six, we confirm that the Sadr Trend does not possess any heavy weapons

Number seven, efforts should be made to return the displaced people to their original homes which they left because of the security situation

Number eight, we call on the government to take into consideration the human rights and all its security measures and procedures

Number nine, the effort should be focused on reconstruction and services projects in all provinces of Iraq

So, what was Maliki’s response to this?

… Hazem al-Araji, an aide to Sadr, told reporters in Najaf that “We confirm that there were guarantees taken from the Iraqi government to fulfill all the points in this statement.” Even the one about Maliki leaving Basra, trailed by his Ministers? Wow.

There’s more (emphasis mine):

Al-Maliki, in Basra to oversee the six-day-old operation, has ordered Mahdi militia fighters there to lay down their arms and has extended a 72-hour deadline until April 8 for them to turn over heavy and medium weapons in return for cash.

Al-Sadr aide Hazem al-Araji said the fighters would not hand over guns. “The weapons of the resistance will not be delivered to the Iraqi government,” he told journalists.

However, some Iraqi army fighters have turned over weapons to al-Sadr:

It appears that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s ultimatum to Shiite Muslim militiamen to surrender to the Iraqi government might not be working precisely as he had intended.When nobody had turned up by Friday, Maliki gave members of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia 10 more days to turn in their weapons and renounce violence.

Instead, about 40 members of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army and National Police offered to surrender their AK-47s and other weapons this morning to Sadr’s representatives in the cleric’s east Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City.

One of the police officers told journalists assembled at Sadr’s office that he was heeding a call by an Iraqi cleric based in Iran, Ayatollah Fadhil Maliki, to stop fighting fellow Muslims.

“We came here to tell our brothers, the followers of Sadr, that we will not be against you,” said the officer, who was dressed in civilian clothes and had his face covered with a scarf and dark sunglasses.

Sadr’s representatives refused to take the men’s weapons, saying they belong to the government. Instead, the representatives offered the men olive branches and copies of the Koran.

Juan Cole has a photograph.

Via Cole, Ned Parker of the Los Angeles Times cuts through the media static to the essence of what the violence is about: a power struggle between two political factions within the Shiite grouping, one of which is associated with the U.S. occupation and the other opposed to the U.S. presence.

The biggest surprise about the raging battles that erupted last week in southern Iraq was not that the combatants were fellow Shiites, but that it took this long.

Enmity has long festered between the two sides: one a ruling party that has struggled against the widespread perception that it gained power on the back of the U.S. occupation, the other a populist movement that has positioned itself as a critic of the U.S.-backed new order.

There is also the oil factor: The region in which Basra is located is lousy with oil. The Bush administration wants the U.S.-backed Maliki government, rather than the anti-U.S. and fiercely nationalistic Sadrist faction, to control Iraq’s oil wealth. But at the same time, our government does not want to piss off al-Sadr or his followers, because they are the reason for what Bush, Petraeus, and the putzes at the American Enterprise Institute like to call the “success of the surge.”

In an ominous sign Saturday, Sadr in a rare TV interview praised armed resistance. Separately, he urged his followers to defy Maliki’s ultimatum to surrender their weapons.

Iraqi forces battling the Mahdi Army called in U.S. airstrikes Saturday in Basra, and two American soldiers were killed in a mostly Shiite area of east Baghdad.

Sadr’s cease-fire, which he imposed in August after his loyalists clashed with the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council’s militia in the southern city of Karbala, was widely credited with helping calm Baghdad.

The U.S. military now risks forfeiting gains with the Sadr group, arguably the most popular Shiite political movement across Iraq. Already, U.S. officers have reported an increase in the number of attacks against them in Baghdad, where soldiers had benefited from the Mahdi Army’s tacit cooperation.

“It would be disastrous if the United States ended up as supporters on a crackdown on the Sadrists for reasons mainly to do with internal Shiite politics,” said Reidar Visser, editor of the southern Iraq-related website historiae.org.

“The fight in Basra shows the folly of trying to control all the Shiites of Iraq through a small minority, which appears to be the current U.S. policy.”

Iran wants the fighting to stop, because it only helps strengthen the U.S. occupation forces:

The Iranian foreign ministry called Saturday for an end to the fighting, saying that it strengthens the US hand in Iraq and may have the consequence of prolonging the US presence. Iran tends to back the Da’wa Party of Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki, and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, so it is significant that Tehran is criticizing this push by those two to destroy the Sadr Movement. I take them at their word. They are genuinely afraid that al-Maliki’s poorly conceived campaign will backfire and that Bush will use it to insist on keeping troops in Iraq.

Thought of the Day

If you want to truly understand something,

try to change it.

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