“We Are All Jordan”…But Who Is We?
Obama’s Nuclear Postures
Jordan’s Risky Business As Usual
Political reformers in Jordan are struck by a sense of déjà vu. Jordan has been parliament-free since November 2009, when King ‘Abdallah II dissolved the legislature for not moving fast enough on his program of economic reform. The deputies had yet served even half of their four-year terms. Since then, a hastily assembled rump cabinet has been publishing its own laws, largely the very measures championed by the king but rejected or stalled by the last legislature. The king has done this before; for two years between 2001-2003, Jordan was without an elected assembly, during which time the cabinet introduced more than 200 “temporary laws.”
It’s Time for Israel to Lift the Gaza Siege
Why would the Israeli navy commandeer boats carrying collapsible wheelchairs and bags of cement to the Gaza Strip? Israel says that the aid convoys are trying to "break the blockade" of the densely populated Palestinian enclave. But why is there a blockade in the first place?
Sen. Chuck Schumer, an ardent supporter of Israel's policies, recently offered an unusually frank explanation before a Jewish audience in Washington. The siege of Gaza aims "to show the Palestinians that when there's some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement," the New York Democrat said. "To strangle them economically, until they see that's not the way to go, makes sense."
The Green Movement Awaits an Invisible Hand
It is the custom of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to devise a name for each Persian new year when it arrives. On Nowruz of the Persian year 1388, which fell in March 2009 Gregorian time, he proclaimed “the year of rectifying consumption patterns.” But Iranians would not be content to mark 1388 simply with thrift. That year of the Persian calendar turned out to be the most politically tumultuous since the revolution that toppled the Shah, as the loosely constituted Green Movement mounted massive street protests against election fraud.
Grave Injustice
On June 14, the Supreme Court buried the prospect of justice for Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian origin who was “extraordinarily rendered” by the United States (via Jordan) to Syria in 2002. Arar was suing the US officials who authorized his secret transfer, without charge, to a country infamous for torture. With the justices’ 22-word statement, the case of Arar v. Ashcroft exited the American legal system and entered the annals of American legal history under the category “grave injustice.” Alphabetically, Arar precedes Dred Scott v. Sanford, which upheld slavery, and Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the internment of Japanese Americans. In this case, however, the grave is literal: Arar spent ten months of his year in Syrian custody confined in what he describes as “an underground grave.”
Israel’s Palestinian Minority Thrown Into a Maelstrom
The first reports of Israel’s May 31 commando raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla surfaced among the country’s 1.4 million Palestinian citizens alongside rumors that Sheikh Ra’id Salah, head of the radical northern wing of the Islamic Movement of Israel, had been shot dead on the lead ship, the Mavi Marmara. Salah is alive, but at the time his demise seemed confirmed when it emerged that large numbers of police had been drafted into northern Israel, where most of the Palestinian minority lives, in expectation of widespread violence.
Cyprus’ Continuously Returning Past
The April 18 victory of a nationalist candidate in the Turkish Cypriot presidential election threw international observers of the Cyprus negotiations into mourning. They had to bid farewell to Mehmet Ali Talat, the leftist leader who had swept to power in 2004 in the wake of a popular revolution against long-time leader Rauf Denktaş, a man known for his ties to military and ultra-nationalist elements in Turkey and his intransigent stance toward negotiating with Greek Cypriots. Talat’s backers also saw conservatives cement the hold on power they had begun to regain in parliamentary elections in 2009.
Outlaws of the Mediterranean
Editor’s Picks (Summer 2010)
Abisaab, Malek. Militant Women of a Fragile Nation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010).
Backmann, René. A Wall in Palestine (New York: Picador, 2010).
Barfield, Thomas. Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
DiMaggio, Anthony. When Media Goes to War (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010).
Fred Halliday
The death of Fred Halliday, a contributing editor of this magazine since 1977, leaves an enormous void in the lives of many of us who were part of MERIP’s first decades. He also served on the editorial board of New Left Review from 1969-1983, and taught international relations at the London School of Economics from 1983 to early 2008. Starting in 2004 he spent increasing portions of his time in Barcelona, where in 2008 he became research professor at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies. He died there on April 26, 2010 of complications from cancer.
Willful Blindness
Joy Gordon, Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Harvard, 2010).
Investing in Inequality
BDS in the USA, 2001-2010
On April 26, 2010, the student senate at the University of California-Berkeley upheld, by one vote, an executive veto on SB 118 — the student body resolution endorsing divestment of university funds from General Electric and United Technologies, two companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Proponents of the resolution needed 14 votes to override the veto and, as 16 senators had spoken in favor of doing so, it appeared a simple task.
Drawing the Wrong Lessons from Israel’s 2006 War
For many military critics of COIN, the future of war is not to be found in the steamy jungles of Vietnam but rather on the rocky hillsides of southern Lebanon, where Israel was fought to a standstill by the guerrilla army of Hizballah in the summer of 2006. Israel possesses one of the world’s most powerful and technologically sophisticated militaries, yet Hizballah was not only able to withstand overwhelming firepower and to fire rockets deep into Israel, but also to inflict significant damage on its opponent. Unlike the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, who employed mostly hit-and-run tactics, Hizballah fighters often held their ground and even maneuvered against Israeli forces in lengthy battles. They intercepted Israeli battlefield communications, shot down an advanced helicopter and even struck an Israeli naval ship with a cruise missile.
The Problem with “Hearts and Minds” in Afghanistan
The New (and Old) Classics of Counterinsurgency
Two weapons today threaten freedom in our world. One — the 100-megaton hydrogen bomb — requires vast resources of technology, effort and money. It is an ultimate weapon of civilized and scientific man. The other — a nail and a piece of wood buried in a rice paddy — is deceptively simple, the weapon of a peasant.
—Lt. Col. T. N. Greene, The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him (1962)
Counterinsurgency is another word for brotherly love.
—attributed to Edward Lansdale
“Culture as a Weapon”
At the fourth Culture Summit of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in April 2010, Maj. Gen. David Hogg, head of the Adviser Forces in Afghanistan, proposed that the US military think of “culture as a weapon system.” [1] The military, Hogg asserted, needs to learn the culture of the lands where it is deployed and use that knowledge to fight its enemies along with more conventional armaments. This conceptual and perhaps literal “weaponization of culture” continues a trend that began with the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Iraq Moves Backward
The easiest way to understand the dramatic changes in Iraqi politics from 2009 to 2010 is to look at shifts in the discourse of politicians belonging to the Da‘wa Party of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
From the Editor (Summer 2010)
During his second term, his approval rating heading stubbornly south, President George W. Bush was fond of comparing himself to Harry Truman. The dour Missourian, too, was “misunderestimated” — lightly regarded when thrust onto the world stage and then raked over the coals for strike breaking and a stalemated war in Korea. Like Truman, Bush mused, he would be reviled in his own time only to be accorded great respect in popular history.
