Archive for the ‘Middle East’ Category

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Thank You, WikiLeaks

October 25, 2011

 
Julian Assange                                       Bradley Manning

The admirable Glenn Greenwald has written an aritcle about why the Obama Administration’s efforts to extend the occupation of Iraq failed. It seems that the release by WikiLeaks of a cable that revealed a war crime by the U.S. military turned the Iraqi parliament against the idea of giving legal immunity to U.S. troops. Greenwald explains:

    That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, “provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.” The U.S. then lied and claimed the civilians were killed by the airstrike. Although this incident had been previously documented by the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the high-profile release of the cable by WikiLeaks generated substantial attention (and disgust) in Iraq, which made it politically unpalatable for the Iraqi government to grant the legal immunity the Obama adminstration was seeking. Indeed, it was widely reported at the time the cable was released that it made it much more difficult for Iraq to allow U.S. troops to remain beyond the deadline under any conditions.

This is why, as I explained in an earlier post, leftists are opposed to government secrecy. When people know what governments are actually trying to do, they will tend to oppose those actions.

Game over in Iraq. Unfortunately, the imperialist beast is still far from dead.

Posted in Imperialism, Iraq, Middle East, WikiLeaks | Leave a Comment »

Incendies

September 6, 2011

Incendies is a film by Canadian director, Denis Villeneuve, based on the play, Scorched, by Wajdi Mouawad. It is in French and Arabic. It was nominated for an Academy Award for best foreign language film, but it lost to In a Better World. I find this baffling, for Incendies is clearly a vastly superior film.

Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal) is a Lebanese immigrant living in Montreal, where she works as a secretary for a notary, Lebel (Rémy Girard). After Nawal dies, Lebel reads her will to her twin children, Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette). She tells them that their father is still alive and that they have a brother. They had previously not known about these things. She tells them that before they can place a marker over her grave, Jeanne must find her father and Simon must find his brother. Simon refuses to go along with this, but Jeanne decides to go to Lebanon to find her father. The film jumps back and forth between scenes from Nawal’s life and Jeanne’s search. The story is complicated, and I won’t go into any more detail about it except to say that it combines the themes of how the past remains with us, the desire for revenge, and the need to find love. I found this film powerful and moving, and quite unlike any other movie I’ve seen.

In his critique of this film, As’ad AbuKhalil claims: “Arabs in the movie come across as barbarians”. That was not the impression that I got from watching this film. Yes, there are some Arab Christian militiamen who do behave like barbarians. (“Barbarians” is actually putting it mildly.) However, most of the Arab characters in this film come across as sympathetic. Nawal is actually portrayed as a heroic person. (Strangely, AbuKhalil says nothing about the fact that this film is based on a play by a Lebanese.) AbuKhalil also complains that the characters never mention Israel. This is true. It is, for example, implied that the prison in which Nawal is raped and tortured is run by the Israelis, but the film never makes this explicitly clear. I suspect that these omissions may have something to do with the fact that most of the scenes were shot in Jordan, which has a tense, but “friendly”, relationship with Israel. (I suspect that the reason this film failed to win an Academy Award is that some academy members picked up on the anti-Israeli implications of the prison scenes.) AbuKhalil also complains that the film contains “disturbing thoughts and twists”. Well, yeah, but the same could be said about King Lear and The Sound and the Fury. We live in a world in which disturbing things happen, so art inevitably reflects this. AbuKhalil often makes valid criticisms of the way Arabs are portrayed in the Western media, but in this case I think he went off the rails.

I highly recommend seeing this film.

Posted in Cinema, Lebanon, Middle East | Leave a Comment »

The Libyan Revolution

August 26, 2011

Some on the left (Glen Ford, for example) have taken the view that the Libyan revolution is nothing more than a NATO-driven coup d’etat. I cannot share this view. Clearly, the rebels could not have succeeded without support from a substantial portion of the Libyan population. One thing we learned from the Afghanistan war is that dropping a lot of bombs and sending in special operations forces do not guarantee a victory. Civilian support – which the U.S. clearly lacks in Afghanistan – is an important factor.

No doubt the Western governments will try to profit as much as they can from the current situation in Libya. Some members of the ruling class are openly calling for a U.S. occupation of Libya. Richard Haas has written in the Financial Times:

    Nato’s airplanes helped bring about the rebel victory. The “humanitarian” intervention introduced to save lives believed to be threatened was in fact a political intervention introduced to bring about regime change. Now Nato has to deal with its own success. Some sort of international assistance, and most likely an international force, is likely to be needed for some time to restore and maintain order. Looting must be prevented. Die-hard regime supporters will have to be defeated. Tribal war must be averted. Justice and not revenge need to be the order of the day if Libya is not to come to resemble the civil war of post-Saddam Iraq in the first instance, or the chaos (and terrorism) of Somalia and Yemen down the road.

Haas, a diplomat, apparently did not notice that the U.S. military completely failed to stop the sectarian civil war in Iraq. I suspect Haas’s real concern is guaranteeing for the U.S. easy access to Libyan oil. Despite his knowing use of quotation marks, it is clear that Haas is actually making a more sophisticated version of the “humanitarian intervention” argument. I doubt, however, that Obama will take Haas’s advice. Among other things, the current political mood in the country is not favorable for such a move.

Is the revolution an unqualified victory for the U.S.? Bear in mind that the U.S. did not get everything it wanted in Iraq, and it certainly did not get what it wanted in Afghanistan. The U.S. may find Libya also hard to control.

Posted in Africa, Capitalism, Imperialism, Libya, Middle East | 1 Comment »

Glenn Beck and Israel

July 13, 2011

Glenn Beck has dabbled in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He has expressed admiration for the anti-Semitic writers Elizabeth Dilling and Eustace Mullins. Yet he was recently invited to speak before a committee of the Israeli Knesset, where he was well received and lauded as one of “Israel’s great friends”.

We live in a society in which anyone who criticizes Israel is labeled as an “anti-Semite”. Yet the Israelis have made it clear that they regard a genuine anti-Semite as one of “Israel’s great friends”.

What does this tell us about Israel?

Posted in Conspiracy Theories, Imperialism, Media, Middle East, Racism | Leave a Comment »

Bin Laden

May 4, 2011

It seems these government officials just can’t resist the urge to lie about military operations. Initially, we were told that Bin Laden took part in a firefight with the Navy Seals and that he used his wife as a “human shield”. The government now admits that never happened. Moreover, we are now told that Bin Laden was unarmed. If it is true that the Seals were to try take Bin Laden alive, then their killing him has to be considered a blunder.

Bin Laden was an evil man, and he caused nothing but suffering in the world. Some have pointed out that the U.S. military have killed more people than Bin Laden did. This is true, but it was Bin Laden who provided them with a convenient excuse to carry out their wars. Without the September 11th attacks, it would have been a lot harder for the U.S. government to persuade people to support the invasion of Iraq. Of course, that is what Bin Laden wanted: the U.S. sending its troops into Muslim countries. No doubt he derived satisfaction from this, though the only people who have benefited have been corporate CEO’s.

Will this change anything? The Arab revolutions have made Al Qaida largely irrelevant. With Bin Laden’s death, however, the emotional justification for the U.S.’s interventions in the Muslim world is gone. I have heard a number of people say that the U.S. should leave Afghanistan now. The Stratfor website has speculated that Obama may start pulling troops out of Afghanistan soon. I hope that they are right, though I fear that the government will find some other excuse to continue the occupation.

Posted in Capitalism, Imperialism, Middle East | 2 Comments »

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