Turkey Hits Rock Bottom.

Dear Abdullah Gul,

Is it me or has October been a particularly bad month for you and your country? First, the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States House of Representatives voted to condemn as genocide the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during the First World War. This made you guys so enraged you recalled your ambassador to the US and threatened to stop supporting the US occupation of Iraq. As if all this weren’t enough bad press for your country, you have been threatening to send troops into northern Iraq to attack Kurdish insurgents. And, just when you didn’t think things could look any worse, President Bush had this to say in your defense:

Congress has more important work to do than antagonizing a democratic ally in the Muslim world, especially one that’s providing vital support for our military every day.”

President Gul, it saddens me to see that you have fallen so low as to have George Bush defending your democratic credentials! After all, this is the guy whose administration came to power after disenfranchising Black voters in Florida; he cut funding for social programs and vetoed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, despite its popularity; his administration openly supported the illegal and short-lived overthrow of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez; based on false and falsified evidence, he launched an illegal invasion and occupation of a sovereign country in spite of his people’s opposition to it; and his government arrests and tortures people in contravention of the US Constitution and international law. Your government could not have found a worse defender of your “democratic” credentials even if you had resurrected Attila the Hun himself!

Clearly, Mr. Gul, you and your government are clueless when it comes to public relations. But fear not, all is not lost! As a longtime supporter of Turkey’s attempts to join the European Union—and simply out of common decency—I cannot let you continue to damage your country’s image and reputation. Instead, I will break my rule against giving free advice to governments and give you some tips on how not to make yourselves look like a callous, genocide-denying, bunch of thugs. You’ll thank me for it.

1. Stop denying the Armenian genocide. It makes you look worse than evil. It makes you look stupid! I don’t know which dictionary you’ve been reading but when a government deliberately and systematically kills 1.5 million people of the same ethnic or national group, it’s a genocide no matter how you slice or dice it. Whether it happened in times of peace or war, in Namibia, Cambodia, Poland, Rwanda, or the Middle East, it’s still a genocide. No country that committed a genocide can ever hope to claim international respectability by continuing to deny it—unless that country is the US, of course, which Turkey clearly isn’t. Admitting genocide is easy and it will do wonders for your international image. After you acknowledge that the mass exile and killing of Armenians was a genocide, apologize for it. Express your deepest regret for the atrocity, build a monument in Ankara and also in every place that is in any way tied to the exiles and killings. Declare a day of commemoration and atonement. Make it a national holiday. Open your government archives and invite scholars to research, write, and speak about the genocide.

2. You modern Turks have been obsessive about distancing yourselves from the Ottoman Empire. You banned the fez, declared Turkey a secular state, and founded your legal and educational systems on European models. These are all very good decisions. Now you have a golden opportunity to further distance yourselves—in a huge way—from the Ottoman Empire. Acknowledge the genocide but make it perfectly clear that it was an Ottoman genocide, not a Turkish one. Emphasize the fact that modern, secular, fez-less Turkey is incapable of committing such a heinous crime. It will pay off. For example, France has declared genocide denial a crime. This means that France alone can keep you from entering the EU as long as you continue to deny the Armenian genocide. Is that what you really want? Think about how badly you want to join the EU. Think about how much you have already done to get into the EU. Although it must have been very difficult, you abolished the death penalty and un-banned the Kurdish language. These are both big steps. It won’t be a much bigger step to acknowledge and apologize for the Armenian genocide, and it’ll bring you closer to fulfilling your dream of EU membership.

3. Whatever you do, DO NOT invade and occupy northern Iraq! In fact, keep your army where it belongs; in Turkey. Between you and me, you guys haven’t exactly been the most popular country in that part of the world. I mean, your Ottoman predecessors occupied your Arab neighbors so they don’t like you very much. Not to mention, you control Syria’s and Iraq’s water supply. You were also a constant thorn in the side of the Russian empire and it’s successor, the Soviet Union. And, let’s not forget you killed 1.5 million Armenians during WWI so they’re not too crazy about you either. Let’s see . . . what else? Oh yes, you’ve fought Greece and you continue to occupy part of Cyprus, and Iran’s not too happy about having you as a neighbor either. And it seems your NATO allies dislike you more than everyone else because they are the most opposed to letting you into the EU. You must have noticed too that even NATO’s erstwhile Eastern-Bloc enemies—Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania—are already in the EU. Come to think of it, it seems your strongest ally is all the way in North America. It doesn’t look too good, does it, that you don’t get along with a single country that shares a continent—or even a hemisphere—with you? So what will people think if you start flexing your military muscle against Kurds in Iraq? I’ll tell you what they’ll think. Greece is going to be reminded of the times they were at the receiving end of your military might. Iran’s going to think, “Hmmm . . . we have Kurds too. What if the Turks decide to go after our Kurds?” As for Russia . . . well, let’s just say Vladimir Putin is not going to need much of an excuse to do something crazy. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, he was just in Iran expressing his opposition to Washington’s threats against that country. So, if you’re really concerned about maintaing normal relations with your neighbors, you’d stay out of northern Iraq.

President Gul, you and your administration need to get with the program. Times have changed, the world has changed, and Turkey has demonstrated its interest in being part of that changed world. Civilized countries are no longer impressed by cross-border demonstrations of military power. Stay out of northern Iraq. Also, you need to stop denying the Armenian genocide because it won’t win you any friends. Just remember, there’s life after admitting genocide. Look at Germany. Most importantly, accepting the genocide will help you recover from your post-Ottoman Self-Image Disorder, something I know you are very interested in. After all, acceptance is the first step on the path to recovery.

I wish you all the best in the coming days and months. I trust you will make more and more of the wise decisions that have characterized your rule thus far.

 Sincerely,

 Abdul Kargbo

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Iraq Pulls the Plug on Blackwater.

It looks like the Iraqi government has grown a pair of cojones and decided to take a firmer role in administering its territory by revoking the licence of the private contracting firm, Blackwater. The decision came after Blackwater soldiers killed Iraqi civilians in the aftermath of a car-bomb attack against a convoy they were escorting.

Unfortunately for the government of Iraq—and for anyone who believed the US was not running the show in Iraq—Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other power players in the US government are already turning up the pressure on Iraq’s Prime Minister to reverse the revocation of Blackwater’s license.

Iraqis will soon learn who is really ruling their country.

Read more here.

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Where There is Fear, There is Also Hatred.

The Columbus Dispatch recently ran a cartoon depicting Iran as a sewer with cockroaches crawling out of it and infesting neighboring countries. Enough has been written about how racist this cartoon is—and how reminiscent it is of Nazi and Hutu genocidal propaganda—so I won’t spend any time on that. What is missing from the hoopla surrounding this cartoon is any talk of how national–security rhetoric generally and inevitably dehumanizes entire nations.

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush repeatedly assured Americans and the world that his beef was not with the entire Muslim or Arab world, that his quarrel was not even with the people of Iraq. Rather, we were told Iraq would be a stage of the global War on Terror because its leader was a dictator who was collaborating with Al Qaeda and could potentially put his arsenal of chemical and biological weapons at the disposal of international terrorists. Of course, we now know that there were no WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam Hussein—brutal and murderous though he was—had no links to Al Qaeda. Today, all Iraqis have to show for our trouble is a destabilized and increasingly violent country in which people have to do without recently available basic services like round-the-clock electricity and sewage treatment. Iraqi women are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being raped or worse, men are routinely kidnapped and murdered simply for going about their lives, and sectarian violence yields ever-increasing death tolls.

Yet the majority of Americans continue to hem and haw about the best way out. Opinion is divided on whether to send more troops, withdraw some troops, pull out entirely, and when and in what manner to pursue or abandon any course of action. The arguments over what to do or not do mostly revolve around the number of American casualties, how much the war is costing, and whether Americans are now more or less likely to be the victims of a terrorist attack. In other words, very few Americans are basing their opinions about what should be done on what’s best for the Iraqi people. The rightness or wrongness of this war is almost always judged from Americans’ point of view and almost never from Iraqis’ vantage point. One exception is the argument that if US troops were to leave Iraq, their departure would be followed by a bloodbath. But although this argument is constantly put forward, we never see any Iraqis who support a continued US presence in their country.

Why is this? Because what Iraqis think doesn’t matter to us. In the process of convincing ourselves that Iraq posed an existential threat to the US, we forgot that Iraqis are people too. National–security discourse is concerned mainly with the protection of one state’s population against attack by another state, so it’s inevitable that the people of the other state will gradually become devalued and eventually dehumanized. Take two hypothetical states, A and B, locked in a war of words. As the people of State A are whipped into a frenzy of fear and paranoia by continuous official reminders that State B poses an imminent threat, they can’t help but begin to fear, and then loathe, the people of State B. Having been convinced that they have to choose between their own survival and that of their “enemy,” the people of State A will not only ignore, mitigate, or deny violence done to ”the other side,” they will eventually welcome and celebrate it.  It becomes a matter simply of kill or be killed because the people of State A now believe that in order for them to live, others must be killed. Hermann Goering, Reichsmarshall and head of the Luftwaffe summed it up:

. . . voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

Once the people of State B have been defined as a threat, it’s a short rhetorical step for them to be equated with other threats like viruses, cockroaches, snakes, poisonous mushrooms, etc. State B is a threat so it’s people are dangerous. Viruses and snakes are dangerous too. Ergo, the people of State B are viruses and snakes. What do you do to snakes and viruses when you want to protect yourself? You kill them. But such analogies are seldom made by official spokespeople. Rather, that task is left to journalists and radio personalities.

Ultimately, the essential ingredient for war is fear. Without fear, there can be no hatred. Without hatred, there can be no dehumanization. And without dehumanization, there can be no war. To be sure, organized international terrorism is a legitimate threat but international politics—constructed as a system of states versus states—makes no room for nuance so states can only make war on states. The human tendency to generalize also gets some of the blame. Thus, a nation that produces a handful of terrorists is seen as a nation of terrorists, in the same way that a nation run by a brutal dictator is seen to be brutal. In the international sphere, states derive power and legitimacy from their people. In order to break the power of a state, its power base (i.e., people) must be broken, and there are few better means than war for accomplishing this. Hateful propaganda, like the cartoon in the Dispatch, plays a pivotal role by paving the way to war. Long before the first bomb is dropped or the first shot fired, the people are primed to fear, primed to hate, and primed to tolerate unspeakable violence against their enemies. In other words, they are primed for war.

The cartoon in the Columbus Dispatch clearly shows that some in the US have decided that Iran is enough of a threat to justify a dehumanizing comparison between its people and cockroaches. We can only hope that as a nation, we Americans do not fear Iran enough to allow our government to start yet another war in the Middle East.

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Ignorance Loves Company: Miss Teen South Carolina Knows Little but She’s Not Alone.

During last week’s Miss Teen USA pageant, eighteen-year-old Lauren Caitlin Upton—now better-known as Miss Teen South Carolina—fumbled her way into infamy with a rambling, disjointed, and generally appalling response to a simple question, demonstrating to me that she is neither well-informed nor well-educated. But Caitlin Upton is merely a symptom of a larger problem.

That larger problem, my friends, is that Caitlin lives in a country where knowledge—especially the kind that may be acquired through schooling—is not valued. That’s why the most popular kids in school are never the top students. That’s why the smart kids get picked on. That’s why millions of people who can’t name the capital of Burundi flock to their TVs to watch beauty pageants instead of the international news. And that’s why, as a nation, Americans are woefully deficient in their knowledge of the outside world. Only 21 percent of Americans follow international news closely, while 65 percent admit they lack the background to follow overseas news. Ignorance is part of the American way of life and people like Caitlin Upton merely serve to illustrate this.

Basically, Caitlin’s ignorant because she can get away with it. How else could she have reached the age of 18 without having acquired sufficient English or logic or rhetoric or whatever other foundational skills one needs to answer a question as simple as the one she was asked? Clearly, she’s never had to! She’s pretty, she’s blonde, and that’s enough to have gotten her this far. Her inability to think or articulate opinions is irrelevant to her day-to-day life. As the Young Turks point out, Caitlin took fourth place in the pageant, despite her moronic response!!! Obviously, the message is that nobody cares that this woman is an idiot, as long as she’s pretty. Millions of Americans are getting that message loud and clear.

Caitlin is not unique. She’s not a bad apple or an anomaly or a black sheep. On the contrary, she’s a typical American teenager. Even worse, she’s an archetypal American teenager. She is the American teenager that millions of other American teenagers aspire to be like. And our values do little to help. Beauty pageants are elegant, elaborate affairs that showcase beautiful people wearing exotic costumes. Geography bees, on the other hand, are far less glamorous and receive far less publicity. How many high schoolers would rather win a geography bee than be Miss Teen USA?

Popular culture provides even more prosaic examples. Take country music legend Alan Jackson, for example, who proudly proclaims in a hit song that:

I’m just a singer of simple songs.
I’m not a real political man.
I watch CNN, but I’m not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran.

But country singers are by no means the only Americans who revel in knowing nothing about the outside world. The system is rotten from the top down, and even political figures go out of their way to prove how provincial they are. How many of our political figures can speak a language other than English? How many of them have lived or traveled abroad? In fact, to have done so is considered a political liability. Remember Sen. John Kerry, who challenged George Bush for the presidency in 2004? He caught flack for having lived in Europe, for being a Europhile, and for “looking French.”

Our ignorance of the outside world is not only a part of our way of life, it is an essential component of our very understanding of how we live. Ignorance allows Americans to believe that the US healthcare system is the best in the world, despite studies that rank it far behind those found in other countries. If the majority of Americans don’t even know the names of other countries or where on the map to find them, how can they be expected to know about social and economic systems in those countries? This same ignorance allows us to defend our petroleum-based economy while the rest of the industrialized world is exploring clean and renewable energy alternatives.

Most seriously, this ignorance enabled the Bush administration to successfully conflate Osama bin-Laden’s Al-Qaeda network with all Muslims and all Arabs. Only ignorant people could have been led to believe that a secular Ba’athist like Saddam Hussein would ever collaborate with a theocratic zealot like Osama bin-Laden. Yet this is precisely the argument put forward by the Bush Administration as a pretext for invading Iraq, and the majority of Americans—knowing next to nothing about the Arab and Islamic worlds—swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. Today, the people of Iraq are paying the price for our ignorance and gullibility.

In Caitlin’s case, the worst consequence of her ignorance was humiliation. For millions of other people the world over, the consequences of Americans’ ignorance may be far more dire.

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Islam, as Seen from a Muslim Woman’s Point of View.

I have always been annoyed that many non-Muslim Westerners, who know not even the first thing about Islam, vociferously proclaim the religion to be misogynistic, oppressive of women, and generally anti-woman.

Now I’m no expert on Koranic laws vis-a-vis women but I agree with Unique Muslimah that a lot of the misogyny in Muslim societies is more the result of ethnic and cultural traditions than of religious obligation.

Read the full post here.

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Um . . . anybody seen my guns?

About 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armour and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi forces cannot be accounted for by the US military.

Hmmm . . . and here’s the Bush Administration blaming Iran for supplying the weapons that are being used against US soldiers. Would it be too much of a leap of logic or imagination to say that some, if not many, of those weapons probably wound up in the hands of Iraqi militants?

Good thing the US government didn’t give any really good weapons to the Iraqi military.

Read the full story here.

And, let’s not forget that in the absence of the WMD that formed the basis of the argument for the invasion of Iraq, it’s now looking increasingly like the whole war was nothing more than an oil grab.

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Mombasa Prostitutes Get No Breaks!

According to the BBC, prostitutes in the predominantly Muslim city of Mombasa, which sits on the Kenyan coast, are increasingly ditching their typically revealing work attire in favor of traditional head-to-toe garb.

Some of the prostitutes say they do it to hide their identities because they are ashamed to be seen plying their trade, which they consider to be a sin. Others choose to fully cover themselves to avoid arrest because police can not distinguish them from non–working women.

But the switch to more modest attire has not been met with universal approval. Local women who are not engaged in sex work complain that they now feel there is nothing to distinguish them from prostitutes.

To these women I say, “Too bad!” Isn’t it bad enough for the prostitutes that they have to sell sex and risk their lives and health just so they can earn a living? I mean, give these poor women a break! Don’t you think it’s hard enough to go against the rules of tradition and religion in pursuit of a living? Now you’re unhappy because they dress like you? Come on! Maybe you hoity-toity women would prefer prostitutes to endure further humiliation in your conservative society by openly identifying themselves as sex workers.

But I am curious about how customers know who is a prostitute and who isn’t?

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He did it again.

So, the President used his executive power to commute ‘Scooter’ Libby’s sentence because, in his opinion, the 30-month sentence handed down by the jury in Libby’s purgery case was “excessive.”

Big surprise!

I mean, did anyone really think this administration was going to obey the spirit—if not the letter—of the law and let one of their own go to jail? I certainly didn’t. This administration doesn’t exactly have a very good track record of . . . how shall I put this . . . adhering to the rules of transparency and accountability.

The Bush administration came into office under the cloud of controversy surrounding the 2000 election and the Florida vote recount, after it came to light that scores of Black voters had had their eligibility to vote challenged or outright denied. Then the Vice President held secret meetings with big energy companies and refused to release the proceedings of these meetings to the public. Then there was the 9/11 Commission interviews during which the President and Vice President refused to testify under oath.

What else? Illegal wire taps, sneak and peak, extraordinary rendition, reading Americans’ mail, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, firing federal prosecutors . . . the list of this adminstration’s transgressions seems endless.

But perhaps worst of all was the case for invading Iraq, which we now know—and some of us were saying back then—is based on lies. UNMOVIC just wrapped up operations in Iraq, stating that there are no weapons of mass destruction in that country, contrary to what our government told us. In order to bolster their case, the administration relied on flimsy information from the Blair government claiming that Saddam Hussein had attempted to acquire uranium from Niger in order to build a nuclear weapon. It was all a pack of lies.

Former Ambassador Wilson thought he was doing the right thing by trying to keep the country from embarking on a foolish military adventure in the Middle East. He traveled to Niger and proved that the uranium claim was false. For his troubles, the Bush Administration—in a stunning display of uprightness and moral fortitude—revealed that his wife was a CIA operative, thereby destroying her career.

Scooter Libby was intimately implicated in this plot to defraud the country and go to war on a false pretext. For his role in this scam, Scooter Libby was prosecuted for purgery and obstruction of justice but, thanks to the President, he will not be serving any time.

Which is just as well because, with a name like Scooter, I don’t think he would have fared very well in the big house.

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Latest U.S. Strategy in Iraq: Arm Sunni Tribal Militias!!!

Yesterday, when my friend told me about the latest U.S. plan for combatting the insurgency in Iraq , I assumed she was joking. It sounded just like something the Onion would have published. But she was not kidding!

In an effort to counter the violence and influence of insurgents, “US commanders on the ground have been authorised and encouraged to enter into truces and agreements with local Sunni factions wherever possible, even if they are suspected of using arms against US forces in the past.”

Hmmm . . .

Sounds like a classic case of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” Now don’t get me wrong, I’m open to new and innovative ways of solving the Iraq debacle but this isn’t exactly the kind of original thinking that’s going to fix that mess. In fact . . . hang on . . . I’m getting a vague sense of déjà vu. It’s almost as if the U.S. has tried something very similar before. But where . . . ?

Of course!!! How could I forget. Afghanistan!! During the Soviet invasion of that country (1979–89), the U.S. supported the “Mujahideen,” who included the Taliban and the “Afghan Arabs.” This latter group counted among their number the then-obscure scion of a powerful Saudi family who went by the name of Osama. No prizes for guessing what his family name was. At the time, the Soviet Union was our enemy so their enemies in Afghanistan were automatically our friends. It’s a simple matter of logic.

Then there was Iran. The 1979 Islamic Revolution saw the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi and the siezure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Enter Saddam Hussein, the erstwhile leader of Iraq who, in 1980, decided to attack his Iranian neighbors. Armed and supplied by the U.S. and other Western countries, Saddam spent eight years battling Iran while Western countries supported one or the other side, and sometimes both simultaneously. It’s a gross understatement to say there was much death and destruction on both sides.

Flash forward to this latest U.S. plan. In Iraq, tribal sheikhs are pledging to “police” their own territories against domestic insurgents and foreign elements linked to al-Qaeda. Certainly, some of the facts in this case are indisputable. It’s obviously a fact that the insurgents and al-Qaeda elements in Iraq are our enemy. It’s also a fact that many tribal leaders are now opposing these insurgents’ violent attacks against their territories.

The best part of the latest arrangement is that the U.S. is prepared “to empower and arm Sunni Arab tribes and factions” in exchange for a “plegde” from these tribes and factions that they will “resist outside militants like al-Qaeda.” Sounds pretty straightforward to me! If the sheikhs promise to be our friends, that must mean they are our friends, right?

But with the benefit of hindsight, aren’t we being a bit naive to assume that tribal sheikhs will stay on our side because they are our enemy’s enemy. I say not at all!! I mean, they did make us a promise after all, right?

What’s that saying about people who don’t remember history being doomed to something or other? Let’s hope history chooses not to repeat itself this time around.

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I am ashamed to be Sierra Leonean.

OK, that’s not entirely true. But I am ashamed of my government.

You see, the Sierra Leonean parliament recently passsed a child rights bill that outlaws the marriage of under-aged girls. But they also removed a provision in the bill that would have made Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) illegal.

FGM, euphemistically known as female circumcision, may involve as much as the total or partial removal of the clitoris and other external parts of the female genitalia. Throughout much of Africa, girls undergo the procedure upon entering puberty. The resultant decrease in sexual sesitivity is not the worst consequence of this violent and barbaric practice. Women who undergo this practice may also get infections in the cut area and develop scar tissue, which isn’t as stretchy as normal skin and may tear during intercourse and childbirth, leading to further risk of infection and other reproductive complications. Another health hazard is the spread of HIV through the use of unsterilized cutting instruments.

While parliament deserves some credit for raising the age of marriagability, it is disappointing that they chose not to outlaw FGM. The opposite course of action would have struck a blow for women in Africa and given me a reason to be proud of my government, especially at this time when there is less and less for Sierra Leoneans to be proud of.

Sierra Leoneans have a rich and old culture with many, many positive aspects. FGM is not one of them. We do not need to mutilate our women to preserve our culture. We can afford to let go of this monstrous practice.

Read more on this story here.

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