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• Afghanistan

  December 2, 2009 @ 2:04 pm | by Bryan

  

  I can only imagine what George Orwell would make of difference between America’s response to Afghanistan’s elections, and to those in Iran. The thought brings a smile to my face.

  There is another discrepancy which is much more serious. What George Bush termed the ‘war on terror’ was at heart an ideological matter. The groups that engage in activities like flying hijacked planes into buildings claim their legitimacy and material support primarily on the back of US foreign policy. Military action against these groups inevitably spills over, affecting innocent people. This only serves to bolster the arguments of the likes of the Taliban. No speech, no matter how elegant, is going to mask the fact that the US President is sending a little army to Afghanistan in order to support the dodgy dictator his predecessor installed ‘for the good of the people’. Again, I can only imagine what Orwell would make of it all.

  So what should America do? Not only should they ‘turn the other cheek’, but they should also ‘bless (materially) those who curse’ them. The only way the ‘war on terror’ ends is if the accusations made against the US are disproved beyond a shadow of a doubt. The way to do that is not with tanks and armed helicopters, but with tangible, material assistance – food, drugs, infrastructure development.

  But, when you have a whole bunch of tanks, helicopters, remote controlled planes which can drop real bombs, and a pile of guns so big you don’t know what to do with it, the Jesus/Gandhi approach doesn’t look very attractive, does it?

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• National Sovereignty Day

  June 30, 2009 @ 1:28 pm | by Bryan

  There was a lot of speculation at the time of the invasion of Iraq that oil was a significant motivating factor in that conflict. It’s ironic that on the day that security for urban Iraq was handed over to local forces, oil reserves were being auctioned off to foreign firms. Mission accomplished?

  The day has been declared a public holiday, ‘National Sovereignty Day’, no less. I’m not an economic nationalist. Well, not an extreme one anyway. But isn’t celebrating this day as a mark of sovereignty incredibly cynical? Yes, US troops have left the cities, but they’ve just moved into the countryside. Should violence flare up again, they’ll be back. Also, how do you define sovereignty? It has been reported that a sizeable proportion of Iraqis aren’t happy with the idea of their oil fields being sold to foreign firms. The auction is an admission of the country’s inability to extract and make adequate use of its own national resources. It hardly strikes me as a day to jump up and down for joy at the thought of your sovereignty.

  I would far rather be under the domination of Exxon Mobil than Saddam Hussein. And who knows, Exxon Mobil may leave enough crumbs for many Iraqis to benefit from their presence – although the fact that they are already haggling over prices is worrying. Still … the fact that there has been a significant improvement in the country’s security situation should be celebrated. Only, let’s not call it National Sovereignty Day. It’s quite clear that Iraq is anything but a sovereign state.

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• Iran’s elections

  June 16, 2009 @ 12:22 pm | by Bryan

  

  I don’t know what to make of Iran’s elections and their fallout.

  The problem is that like most people who live this far away from Iran, my knowledge of the country and its internal dynamics is ridiculously limited. It boils down to the odd news clip here and there, the sum total of which tell the story of a dangerous psychopath on the verge of creating a nuclear weapon and destroying the world. There’s also the bit about supporting terrorism, destabilising Iraq, treating women very badly and generally having a disregard for human rights, as well as a fundamentalist take on religion.

  Some, maybe even most of those things, could be true. I just don’t know. But if past experience is anything to go by, at best the international media construct of Iran is oversimplified. At the same time, I wonder how much that international media influenced Iran’s view of itself. I wonder the degree to which, over time, that country internalised those external critiques, owned them and turned them into what is now called the ‘reformist agenda’.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s support base supposedly lies with the poor. They are less likely to be influenced by what the international media have to say about their leader because they can’t afford access to it. I’m not suggesting that the middle and wealthy classes or Iran are so dense that they have their opinion formed for them by the press. But if they are exposed to it, like the rest of us they must be influenced, to some degree by it. Looking back over the history of political change in Zimbabwe, I think international opinion was a definite catalyst. I remember the urban electorate’s frustration with their rural counterparts for their perceived ignorance.

  I wonder if globalisation means that just as it is impossible to have an Ireland that is completely ‘Irish’, Iran’s elections are bound to be influenced, to an increasing degree, by international commentators and opinion. I wonder if that is what Barack Obama means when he speaks of the ‘tide of history’.

  That frightens me a little. I’m not a fan of Ahmadinejad, but I feel I have a stake in the continued existence of Iran’s political system. If they can have a system of which the part of the world that creates conventional wisdom disapproves, that is proof that alternatives can exists. If, on the other hand, the tide of history is washing that system away, Ahmadinejad first, then I’m not so sure.

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• Ticking time-bomb

  May 14, 2009 @ 5:06 pm | by Bryan

  US President Barack Obama has reversed his earlier decision to make public photographs detailing the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. The change followed intense pressure from the military and intelligence communities.

  Following US commentary on this issue, it’s interesting to see how often the ‘ticking time-bomb’ hypothesis comes up. It asks what you would do if there was an imminent terrorist threat. Let’s say some group hides a nuclear weapon somewhere in Dublin and all the intelligence community knows is that it is set to go off soon and they have captured one of the terrorists. Assuming that the terrorist refuses to co-operate, and millions of people are in imminent danger, would you torture the suspect on the grounds that they might give you the information necessary to find and deactivate the bomb?

  Some months ago, a human rights lawyer with years of experience working in the middle-east posed the same question to a group of us. My initial, somewhat callous response was to enthusiastically call for the suspect’s torture. It seemed like a no-brainer. Things couldn’t get any worse if the suspect wasn’t tortured, and as for the brutal nature of the process of extracting information, anyone who goes around bombing people deserves what he or she gets.

  The lawyer soon set me straight though. What if the suspect wasn’t saying anything because he was being wrongly accused of something he had nothing to do with? Also, evidence suggests that torture doesn’t work nearly a well as traditional interrogation techniques. And even though we like to think that television is just entertainment, 24 has probably got a lot of people believing that the ‘ticking time-bomb’ hypothesis is a reasonable starting place for a discussion on torture, when in fact real life seldom works like that. But most important is the fact that there are serious long term implications to a decision like instituting state sanctioned torture.

  That’s were the White House finds itself today. The release of photographs is being blocked because, as some have speculated, we would all then realise that prisoner abuse went beyond the actions of a few bad apples. They would also go a long way in wrecking the illusion of the US as some sort of guardian of moral uprightness. Worst of all, those photographs could sow the seeds of further violence and other forms of retaliation.

  I don’t really care about what memos are declassified and which photographs end up in the public domain. I’m not even interested in whether or not they one day lock up Dick Cheney. What I want to know is if in the wake of the next big attack or scare things are done differently, or will short term gains be placed above their potential long term consequences again?

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• Obama’s message to Iran on Nowruz (Iranian New Year)

  March 20, 2009 @ 3:55 pm | by Bryan

  

  This is definitely a shift from the Bush doctrine! Any thoughts?

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• Transcultural understanding

  March 10, 2009 @ 2:41 pm | by Bryan

  

  Mary Fitzgerld has written a fascinating series of articles from Saudi Arabia titled Inside the desert kingdom. Today’s article, What do Saudi women want? is extremely thought provoking. When this type of issue is tackled, there is usually an obvious bias and a fair degree of pontification. Fitzgerald’s account is balanced and careful, and still very interesting.

  In spite of that, I was still troubled after I read her piece. I’ve spent months in an academic institution grappling with ideas about social change, representation, self determination, cultural domination and power in general. The one sure conclusion that I have come to is that these ideas interact in a very messy way and it is often very difficult to separate one from another. Reading about Saudi women’s right to drive, or lack thereof, only confirmed that conclusion.

  Personally, I don’t like the idea of some rules applying to only some segments of society. I think there is only a very fine line between that and exploitation. And like most people from societies in which women have the right to drive, I think it is wrong to deny them that right. That said, as Fitzgerald points out, the driving issue is only symbolic of a deeper one – the role of women and the place occupied by Islam in Saudi Arabia.

  Which brings me to my personal discomfort with regards to her article. I am a strong believer in the right to self determination. I am also a collectivist. I come from a culture in which individual rights at times must give way to collective rights. The atomistic view and emphasis on individual rights in the Western world is based on Western philosophy much of which came out of the Enlightenment. In the same way that I respect and admire the Western world for having come up with a value system that works, albeit imperfectly, I strongly feel that the rest of the world has the right to choose their own value system – regardless of how that goes down in the Western world or anywhere else.

  Fareed Zakaria, in this week’s edition of Newsweek, argues that regardless of how most of the outside world views radical Islam, it exist and is probably here to stay. He differentiates between groups who want to live according to Sharia law and those who want to set off bombs. The former may be radical Islamists, but generally just want the right to live as they see fit in their locations. The latter, a minority, are dangerous extremists. Zakaria argues for dealing with the latter while working with the former. I think his rationale is that the people living under radical Islam will tend to either be okay with it, or will find ways of circumventing it.

  Both Fareed Zakaria and Mary Fitzgerald do a brilliant job of bringing up a subject that will probably grow in importance in the future. Personally, in addition to their their contributions so far, I would like a better understanding of those who, like the protagonist in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, feel like they’re fighting a losing battle against cultural domination.

  I can’t wait for tomorrow’s installment from Fitzgerlad on Saudi youth.

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• Iran’s satellite

  February 4, 2009 @ 11:56 am | by Bryan

  

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s ruling class know how to push all the wrong buttons!Ahmadinejad especially seems to enjoy sticking it to the West whenever he gets a chance.

  The routine that accompanied the launch was almost amusing – one side with the implausible claim that it was an entirely peaceful event, and the other with a thinly veiled threat to militarily crush what is being framed as the greatest military threat of our time.

  The whole thing is ridiculous. And because this spat seems like it shouldn’t turn into anything more than a spat, I have a very bad feeling that things will escalate. As a presidential candidate Obama once said that America took countries like Cuba and Iran too seriously and that a sense of perspective was needed. I wonder if President Obama will take Senator Obama’s advice.

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• Change the rules

  January 19, 2009 @ 11:55 am | by Bryan

  When I was young, the kids in our neighbourhood often played all sorts of games together. When it became obvious that the teams were unbalanced or the rules were not fair, we changed things around. I’m thinking of looking up the people from the neighbourhood I’ve lost touch with because it seems to me that there’s a bunch of rules that is in serious need of rethinking.

  Two cases come to mind: Israel/Palestine and Mugabe/Tsvangirai.

  Let’s start with Israel and Palestine. Deaglán has a really good post up on the madness of the whole thing. What really saddens me is the fact that on both sides, people don’t seem to realise that their so-called leaders are exploiting their anger and hatred of the other side for cynical, personal gain. The icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned is the manner in which the whole thing has been perfectly choreographed to end in time for the US presidential inauguration. Someone obviously did their calculations and concluded that the PR and political costs of sullying an historic occasion were too high to pay. The lives of hundreds of innocent bystanders, on the other hand, were obviously deemed by both sides to be much less significant.

  And then there is Zimbabwe. Although I have a lot of sympathy for Morgan Tsvangirai and very little for Robert Mugabe, both have put the country and its people second. Both have prioritised, to very different degrees, ‘winning’. The result is that even if today’s talks prove to be a success and a ‘government of national unity’ is put in place, there isn’t going to be much for them to govern. What these two have done is similar, in principle, to what Israel and the Palestinians have done over the years – both sides have put winning, at times winning at all costs, before the greater good.

  In both cases, the impotence of the ‘international community’ has been glaringly obvious. I know there are no easy answers or quick fixes, but I think it’s long past time the ‘rules’ governing how the international community operates were reassessed. I have no idea what that would look like in reality, but something has to give.

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• In search of sanity

  January 14, 2009 @ 10:35 am | by Bryan

  3 Rockets were fired into Israel from Lebanon this morning. That got me thinking about an interesting conversation I had with a lady who lives in my neighbourhood over the weekend. As far as she was concerned, Israel is more than justified in attacking Hamas militants, and the civilian casualties are an unfortunate reality of war. This lady, who would describe herself as a realist, took it a step further. She believed that unless Hamas is crushed, innocent Israeli civilians would have to endure rocket attacks and live in constant fear. The thing to do, she concluded, was to come as close as possible to wiping out Hamas regardless of the collateral damage.

  Perhaps the greatest difficulty when it comes to issues involving the Middle-East is that people see conflict there from radically different perspectives. As a result of that, they make very different moral judgements. It’s not surprising then that a friend told me about being in a place where there were simultaneous demonstrations – one crowd in support of the Palestinians and the other, about the same size, in support of Israel. Unless cool heads intervene and prevail, the cycle of violence is bound to continue. That’s the conclusion former Jimmy Carter advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, came to, saying that it is quite obvious that Israel and Palestine will never be able to solve their disputes without outside mediation.

  Now that elements from Lebanon have decided to get involved in this mess, you can bet that the different sides will hold onto their positions stronger than before. There will be those who will see Israel as a nation under seige trying to defend itself, while others will see the attacks as an inevitable consequence of Israel’s aggression. Unless the focus is maintained on the civilian suffering, there won’t be a viable solution any time soon.

  Everyone needs to put the outrage and anger aside, and see the situation as it is. Then, hopefully, food, water, medical help and comfort can be given to those who desperately need it.

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• Who cares?

  January 9, 2009 @ 5:09 pm | by Bryan

  A friend of mine is heading off to a vigil somewhere in Dublin for the people in Gaza. It’s a pity I couldn’t be there because I’m really curious about whether people actually care about the loss of life in this conflict. And by people, I especially mean those of the non-Jewish and non-Muslim variety.

  Apart from the usual suspects – tree hugging lefties and Muslims in this case – who really cares about the civilian loss of life in Gaza? Who care about the women and children that have been killed? What about men who have nothing to do with Hamas? If the UN decides that Gaza is too unsafe for its people, what about the children who live there and have nowhere else to go?

  The politics of this conflict aside, why hasn’t there been a more vocal response internationally? Yes, everyone has said the right things and there has been a UN security council resolution (which will probably be ignored), but… I’m not convinced the response is as vocal as it would be had Hamas killed the same number of Israeli women and children. I don’t get the sense that Palestinian lives matter in the great scheme of things as much as they should. The major talking points from a media perspective have been about the historical antecedents to this war, the political stakes, and so forth. What the implications of having no water, very little food, and a very real fear of death mean for the children of Gaza is glossed over.

  Were I an Arab, I’d be furious. Regardless of whether or not Israel was justified in setting off on this course of action, the longer they stick with it, the longer they will be fighting beyond this particular conflict.

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