Close Reading
I've sort of laid off the Spine-blogging, since if Martin Peretz doesn't own The New Republic anymore it's not obvious what his significance is, but I guess he's still got the editor in chief title and his latest post is a very nice example of deliberate efforts to foster anti-Arab sentiments in the United States. The post begins with some rhetorical questions: "Is there no limit to the barbarity of which Iraqi Arabs are capable? None?" Peretz then offers up a story of behavior that really is awful. Why, though, is this supposed to tell us specifically about the bararism level of Iraqi Arabs? Why not Iraqis? To be sure, it wasn't done by a Kurd. But neither was it done by the overwhelming majority of Arab Iraqis. And, certainly, we know that Germans are capable of running a concentration camp, that Russians will run a GULAG, that Americans will enslave millions and exterminate a continent's native inhabitants. The human capacity for "barbaric" behavior is, in short, quite large and Iraqi Arabs, like the rest of us, sometimes do awful things.
To Peretz, though, this is not an illustration of a point about humanity or of a point about this particular war that he helped unleash, but specifically a point about Arabs. "This, of course, is a result of Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians," he snarks at the end. It's clear, though, that nobody of consequence is making the argument Peretz objects to here. Rather, it's Peretz who wants to drag the Palestinians into the conversation, advancing his view that Palestinians, as members of the larger and uniquely barbaric Arab tribe, must be treated roughly by civilized folk.
Comments
If Israel didn't exist, Peretz would have to come up with some other reason to hate Arabs.
Considering that Palestinians and non-Kurd Iraqis are Arabs, it isn't unreasonable to expect there to be some cultural and political similarities between the two. This doesn't mean that either Palestinians or Iraqi Arabs "must be treated roughly by civilized folk", but it does highlight the difficulty Arabs have had in creating decent societies like civilized folk (as opposed to, say, the Kurds).
It's a little late for Marty Peretz to lament the failings of Iraqi Arabs, but it's also a little late for Matt Yglesias to gloss over them. As Steve Sailer pointed out, an objective evaluation of the Iraqis would have led to lowered expectations for them.
You know him by his company. He can natter on for hours about his progressive values, but judge him by his fans. Reading his comments you can see that his supporters are bigots and neocons who think swinging a big dick and killing as many foreignors as possible are the winning elements to a successful foreign policy. judge the man by the company he keeps and you will recognize that all his progressive natters is shuck and jive designed to obscure his bigotry.
Duss, I disagree completely. The only reason Peretz writes - or, for that matter, owned TNR - was and is to produce pro-Israeli, anti-Arab propaganda.
I'm pro-Israel and despise Muslim and Arab barbarity - of which there is plenty these days - as much as anybody. But there's a big difference between a reasonable position like that and the categorical anti-Arab rantings of a bigot like Marty Peretz. Marty does this, he feels, on behalf of Israel, and only on behalf of Israel. Israel doesn't need friends like this, but Marty doesn't see that.
Marty Peretz is a raving lunatic bigot.
Slippery Pete, I was half-kidding. But only half.
the difficulty Arabs have had in creating decent societies like civilized folk
Leaving aside the bigotry and staggering historical ignorance required to dismiss the Arab people as "uncivilized," I suggest that any comment which appeals to the authority of Steve Sailer can be dismissed out of hand.
Up until this point I never knew that gulag (or GULAG I guess!) was an acronym. Weird.
Martin Peretz is like a barely post-pubescent teenage boy who has just discovered Penthouse. But rather than showing us the latest dirty pictures from the skin magazine he shows us the latest filthy story about Arabs pulled straight from the pages of MEMRI.
Martin Peretz is a pornographer of bigotry. Almost every blog he writes is about how evil the Palestinian, the Arab or the Muslim can be. Martin Peretz revels in these stories because his bigotry is orgasmic. And he just keeps spurting them out in The New Republic fouling what should be a clean and reputable magazine.
We can but hope that Franklin Foer can convince CanWest to offer Martin Peretz a "special project" that will occupy his time sufficiently that he will no longer waste ours with his bigotry.
And then there's Andrew Sullivan yesterday:
"What a lovely moral code they live by over there."
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/03/male_facial_mut_1.html
The "they" and the "over there" are wonderfully all-encompassing.
Meanwhile, "the difficulty Arabs have had in creating decent societies like civilized folk" apparently has nothing to do with, oh, centuries of rule by non-Arab empires, followed by decades of Western military dominance and propped-up autocrats, etc. Your right. It's all an ethnicity thing.
Up until this point I never knew that gulag (or GULAG I guess!) was an acronym. Weird.
Re: "GULAG," it's the Chief Directorate of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies which, obviously, comes out differently in Russian. I should probably just write "Gulag," though, since it's pedantic to do otherwise.
Now that's pedantry!
Ryan:
"Meanwhile, 'the difficulty Arabs have had in creating decent societies like civilized folk' apparently has nothing to do with, oh, centuries of rule by non-Arab empires, followed by decades of Western military dominance and propped-up autocrats, etc. Your right. It's all an ethnicity thing."
The imperialism excuse rings a little hollower than usual in the case of Arabs. The "non-Arab" empire that most recently ruled them was the that of the Ottoman Turks, whose rule over their co-religionists was largely absentee and benign. Neither can post-Mandatory autocracy really be blamed on the West. The French established republics in their Arab Mandates; the British established constitutional monarchies; the Arabs turned both into autocracies. I never claimed it was an "ethnic" thing, but there are dysfunctions that the Arab world seems to share.
M.Duss:
"I suggest that any comment which appeals to the authority of Steve Sailer can be dismissed out of hand."
That would certainly be easier than reading the article critically and responding to it intelligently, no? So much for liberals an open-mindedness, I guess.
an objective evaluation of the Iraqis would have led to lowered expectations for them
Wonder what an objective evaluation of Americans around the turn of the century (1900) would have told. Turn of the century circa 1800?
What are the expectations of a society that enslaved millions, committed mass genocide and just fought a brutal civil war over the issue of preserving slavery - only to go about implementing institutionalized racism and de facto slave-like conditions for the "emancipated."
Nice moral code we got over here.
That would certainly be easier than reading the article critically and responding to it intelligently, no? So much for liberals an open-mindedness, I guess.
Funny thing is, you probably think you invented this cliche.
"I never claimed it was an 'ethnic' thing, but there are dysfunctions that the Arab world seems to share."
I'm trying to figure out whether the term "oxymoron" applies to this sentence. Self-contradiction? To stretch a point somewhat: "I never said it's a racial thing, just there are many negative attributes blacks seem to share."
To reiterate Duss's point about "historical ignorance": the Arab world spent a few centuries behaving in a far more "civilized" manner than the European world. History is a funny thing.
"Semite" 1. A member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including . . . Hebrews and Arabs."
Why . . . why . . . Mr. Peretz you're an antiSemete!
Neither can post-Mandatory autocracy really be blamed on the West.
You're right, it can't, so long as you pretend certain things didn't happen. Like, oh I don't know, the U.S. military aid and protection for Saddam Hussein, the Saudi monarchs, Hosni Mubarak, the Kuwaiti emirs, et al for all those decades... One could go on, but really, why bother?
"That would certainly be easier than reading the article critically and responding to it intelligently, no? So much for liberals an open-mindedness, I guess. "
Posted by: Susie
'Open-mindedness' does not mean 'giving respect to those who've demonstrated that they don't deserve it'.
Ryan:
"You're right, it [Arab autocracy] can't [be blamed on the West], so long as you pretend certain things didn't happen. Like, oh I don't know, the U.S. military aid and protection for Saddam Hussein, the Saudi monarchs, Hosni Mubarak, the Kuwaiti emirs, et al for all those decades... One could go on, but really, why bother?"
Sure, why bother when you can just blame the U.S.? If you are going to do that though, at least get your facts straight and be consistent. Is the United States to blame both for deposing Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 and not deposing it before? Which one is it? Are we to blame for liberating Kuwait from Iraq? For making the Saudis rich by finding and helping them extract their oil (even though they essentially ripped us off by nationalizing Aramco in the 1970s)?
Are we to blame for 50 years of autocracy in Egypt or just the years since the Carter administration when we started giving Egypt aid in return for signing the Camp David Accords (and later, participating in Gulf War I)? Are we to blame for defending Saudi Arabian oil fields from invasion by Saddam's Iraq -- is that what you meant by "propping up" the Saudi monarchs? Those troops are no longer in Saudi Arabia, are we still propping them up?
Do Arabs bear any responsibility for their own plight? How is it that El Salvador is more democratic than any Arab country?
Barry:
"'Open-mindedness' does not mean 'giving respect to those who've demonstrated that they don't deserve it'."
How has Sailer demonstrated that he doesn't deserve respect? Care to back that up with a fact or two, or does saying it make it so?
Is the United States to blame both for deposing Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 and not deposing it before?
Whoah. Is there an option "C"?
For making the Saudis rich by finding and helping them extract their oil (even though they essentially ripped us off by nationalizing Aramco in the 1970s)
Ripped us off? That's amazing. Wow. Try reading Robert Vitalis' latest book on the subject and then get back to me Susie. Ripped us off. The mind, it boggles.
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=5446
Those troops are no longer in Saudi Arabia, are we still propping them up?
Those troops aren't, but others are. Not in the same numbers, but we haven't pulled out of SA completely.
Are we to blame for 50 years of autocracy in Egypt...
You do realize that we have manipulated and interfered with the political situation in Egypt repeatedly since before WWII when we decided that young upstarts, democrats, nationalists and others posed a threat to vital resources in the region. Coups and the like. So, in part, yes.
Sure, why bother when you can just blame the U.S.?...
I guess it might not apply since they're Persians, not Arabs (though Peretz doesn't seem to mind the conflation), but wouldn't we be remiss if we failed to point out that the US does deserve a bit of the blame for that whole usurpation of democracy in Iran circa 1950. You know, Mossadegh and all that, guns, guns...
Damn those North Koreans, killing their own people. They show no Korean can be civilized! If only there were another civilized Korean nation that could prove me wrong!
Democratic revolutions often require a particular meeting of certain forces that come along rarely and are often messy and incomplete. For example, we have whitewashed our history of street-level politicide against Tories during the revolution while ignoring the fact that many Tories fled the colonies in fear during the revolution. Egyptians attempted to have a democratic revolution in the 1890's, but the British crushed it. The crimes of imperialism aren't only how imperialism rips apart local societies and puts them back together in perverse ways (such as the racial identification laws of the Belgians in Rwanda) but also all the lost years and murdered leaders that past by during imperialism. One of the great tragedies of modern history has also been the fact that decolonization took place at the same time as the rise of communism, which helped to lead to the proliferation of ideas like Arab socialism throughout the newly independent world.
Susie, I applaud your mastery of the talking points. Brav-O! Let's reduce the grand question of the sources of political/economic/whatever underdevelopment (I'm guessing, since you've never said what you mean by "decent" and "civilized") in the Arab world to a binary 'who's most to blame?' game!
"Get my facts straight?" Do you deny the U.S. did any of the things I said it did? Do you deny that those policies had the effect of powerfully inhibiting the development of whatever the hell it is you mean by "decent", "civilized" societies in the affected countries?
I didn't think so.
Your original tidy little narrative of the Middle East's "post-Mandatory" history ('We left them republics! They broke 'em!) entirely omitted anything the Western powers have done in the region since the mandates ended. That is, quite frankly, laughable history. The West's continuing powerful role -- call it informal imperialism or what have you -- needed to be acknowledged. It's not about blame, it's about accuracy. The Cold War, the strategic importance of the region and its resources to the West, the usefulness of despotic allies, the later perceived threat from Iran, the desire to bribe Egyptian leaders into making peace with Israel... read up on it if you're unfamiliar, I'm sure you can find a textbook.
Returning Kuwait to the emirs' control, removing Saddam Hussein from power, removing U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia to across the border... In terms of your metric (which I'm guessing means turning Arab countries into something like Belgium), so far these steps have paid few if any dividends. So yes, if you insist on framing in terms of blame: Yes, the U.S. deserves blame for propping up Saddam Hussein, AND it deserves blame for getting rid of him in a manner that hasn't improved much of anything. Get back to me when it does and I'll gladly start applauding.
Susie, you don't by any chance know a lady named Mary Rosh, do you?
Can the bulk of the blame for the persistence of autocracies in certain countries be placed on the West? Are Arabs and Pakistanis so burdened by a pernicious legacy of Western statecraft? More so than Indians, Taiwanese, South Koreans, or Salvadorans, all of whom now boast stable democracies?
No, he shore don't like them A-rabs! Nosiree.
Susie boasts that India is now a stable democracy. Can we all pretend that two Indian Prime Ministers have not been assassinated in the last 22 years.
There's Malted Milk (JG) and this other schmendrick Peretz. How old is Peretz- 70? And what's Goldberg- 30somethin'? Is there some schmo in the middle you can add to the mix? Then, at least you could have a sitcom- "Manny, Moe, and Hesh" A heartwarming three J-Generation sharing their love of gefilte, strawberry shiksas. and spilling Arab blood.
With many of the faux-liberals with reactionary or just conservative agendas (like Kinsley or Broder),it is clear they do their distortions knowingly and intentionally for political effect. They are not stupid. Peretz really is as stupid and as racist as he appears to be; the obnoxious, vile, fascistic persona is thereal Peretz. I remember his infatuation with Lyndon LaRouche.
The Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth of the number that Greece translates. The cumulative total of translated books since the Caliph Maa'moun's [sic] time (the ninth century) is about 100,000, almost the average that Spain translates in one year. (The United Nations Arab Human Development Report, 2002, p. 78)
"Can we all pretend that two Indian Prime Ministers have not been assassinated in the last 22 years."
One prime minister and one ex-prime minister. That has very
little to do with the stability of Indian democracy, no
different than the Kennedy assassination. Or the assassination
of the Swedish premier, Olof Palme.
Hint: Overthrowing a democratic regime is very different
from some random guy killing a government leader.
And yet, 'stalag' isn't an acronym, so it gets even confusinger.
From Wikipedia:
"Stalag is an abbreviation for "Stammlager", itself a short form of the full name "Mannschaftsstamm und -straflager".
You'd think that Sailer would've come up with a better pseudonym than "Susie."
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And yet, 'stalag' isn't an acronym, so it gets even confusinger.
From Wikipedia:
"Stalag is an abbreviation for "Stammlager", itself a short form of the full name "Mannschaftsstamm und -straflager"
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