THE SPINE JANUARY 24, 2011
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The numbers may look identical. But it was not the same bombing. Early last week, the Times' Stephen Lee Meyers, based in Iraq, reported (and I commented on) the bombing in Tikrit that took roughly 50 lives--give or take a dozen, more likely give. The number of wounded was, of course, enormous and also uncertain.
Alas, the Times news staff in Iraq is getting basic training in how cruel people can be to one another. On Thursday, John Leland, like Meyers, a brave and careful correspondent, brought us the grim news that 52 Iraqis in pilgrimage to the Shi'a holy city of Karbala were taken out in a series of three car bombings. About 150 people were wounded, just about the estimate for the wounded in Tikrit. Roughly 10 million Shi'a are expected at the shrine in the holiest days of their calendar. They are praying for the return of the "hidden Imam," the "guided one." Maybe soon. Maybe not at all.
One would think that the expectation of murder along the route would diminish the number of pilgrims going to Karbala. But Shi'a spokesmen (appointed or self-appointed) point out that faith carries them on.
I do not know how many Shi'a have been murdered since the "mission" was launched some eight years ago. And since President Obama also seems to think that the mission has now been "accomplished" I wonder, what with these kill numbers, would constitute failure.
It is not just the Shia who are victims of violence. No group right now may be suffering more in the Middle East than Christians. In last Wednesday's Times, Leland and his colleague Duraid Adnan wrote about how "the last Christian man in town," Habbaniya Cece, Iraq, "goes to church to clean the building and to remember the past." But this is not the only town which a whole variety of Christian sects have deserted. The lone Christian man may be a touching symbol, and I don't mean to be cynical about this. But Iraq is being drained of its Christians the way a soldier who's been shot has his blood slowly drained from his body.
The anti-Christian impulse has now translated into what is really a wave of pogroms, not less brutal than those that assaulted the Jews at the cusp of the twentieth century in the Ukraine and in Russia. Even the European Union, weak though it is, has raised a timid protest against the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. So not only in Iraq, but also in Iran , Nigeria ,"Palestine", Egypt.
After the firebombing of Coptic churches in Egypt and the riots that followed them, Pope Benedict issued a typically cautious statement asking Middle East government "to do more to protect Christian churches" in their countries. In a huff, Cairo immediately withdrew its representative from the Vatican, calling the request of the Vicar of Christ "unacceptable interference". But the real storm came later. Days after, the Islamic University of Al-Azhar, the oldest Muslim university and the highest authority in Sunni Islam, with its seat in Cairo, also cut off contact with the Holy See because of what its supreme council found unacceptable. The Pope had said there was a "strategy of violence" afoot in Islam but that Christians should respond to it only with non-violence.
If anybody remembers Barack Obama's June 4, 2009 speech to this Islamic institution they should be shocked at how cavalierly he threw compliments at it: "For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning..." (I've written about this tawdry piece of oratory several times.) But the fact is that it is not a beacon of anything save narrow dogma. This is only a sign of how little the president understands the societies and the ruling groups he is trying to flatter. (Perhaps some real scholar--not Karen Armstrong or Juan Cole or John Esposito with their idealizations of past and present--should have another look at Obama's much praised Cairo text .) Moreover, the statements his former press spokesman Robert Gibbs and that he himself have made about the victimization of Christians in the arc of Islam were actually understatements. And understatements under these conditions are falsehoods. He who denies the brutal realities--or even casually minimizes them--it is as if he is an accomplice to them.
Nobody has come up with a strategy for ending or even lessening the killing of Christians. Maybe there isn't even a tactic. But, then, one has to face the facts and the consequences, the worst being that Arab societies are emptying themselves of Christians more or less as Europe emptied itself of Jews. It was easy then: Europe had no particular sympathy for or empathy with its Jews. It wasn't as if the Europeans didn't know that Jews were being murdered or, more gently, simply being pushed out. It was just that they didn't care. There are various depopulating processes now going on against Christians virtually everywhere in the Muslim Middle East, including notably Bethlehem where Jesus was born, this particular end-stage of religious history having started when Yassir Arafat's authority took over. And the truth is that nobody cares much about Armenian, Greek or Roman Catholic Christians. Yes, like they didn't care about the Jews. Maybe it is not quite a Holocaust. O.K., no damn exaggerations. It is just a catastrophe, a human, historical, demographic, religious catastrophe. Feel better?
Read these next:
- No Arab Society Is Immune
- Eight Pieces, Really One: Iran, Israel's Military Doctrine, The President And One Dumb Jewish Woman, The Wages of Copenhagen, The Christmas Terrorist, We Should All Stop Talking About The Middle East
- “The Palestine Peace Distraction,” "The False Religion of Middle East Peace,” And Other Significant Recantations
25 comments
It's all Israel's fault.
- noga1
January 24, 2011 at 2:58pm
I think the "mission" was originally Bush's mission, not Obama's. Obama inherited it.
- ironyroad
January 24, 2011 at 4:55pm
Irony without shame. Good of you to absolve the murderers so generously. Awfully Christian thing for you to do.
- jacko
January 24, 2011 at 5:27pm
"I do not know how many Shi'a have been murdered since the "mission" was launched some eight years ago. And since President Obama also seems to think that the mission has now been "accomplished" I wonder, what with these kill numbers, would constitute failure." Isn't it obvious that Martin Peretz knows that Obama didn't initiate "the mission?"
- arnon
January 24, 2011 at 5:43pm
What's with the violent talk? "Kill numbers", "blood drained from the body". Do we need this, especially post-Tucson? Bad writing, in more ways than one.
- floydsm8
January 24, 2011 at 5:51pm
ironyroad: "I think the "mission" was originally Bush's mission, not Obama's. Obama inherited it." jacko: "Good of you to absolve the murderers so generously." Isn't that a non-sequitur? To say nothing about an irresponsible sublimation? And I wonder, what's a "Christian thing" this jacko speaks of? Is there some sort of an innate and self-evident equivalence between "Christian" and moral? I agree with floydsm8. Marty wishes to signal that he is very very angry. And he does so by invoking a lot of blood. If you go to Al-Jazeera and its coverage of news about Israel, or MEMRI's translations of the fulminations of the mullahs against the Jews, you will find a similar sensibility there. I'd like to remind Marty that he promoted Obama's election for president on these very pages. He refused to hear what Obama's critics observed about him. It may not come as a big surprise that in certain circles on the Left, and I speak of the Decent Left, Obama is perceived as a president who cares nothing for human rights. And Marty, you voted for him. You helped bring him about. And your erstwhile magazine continues to help him along.
- noga1
January 24, 2011 at 6:08pm
I wasn't absolving anyone, jacko, as Noga noted. However, to use the "mission accomplished" motif in relation to Iraq and apply it to Obama (who I think has been careful about that phrase) is to proceed as if all our memories have been cleansed of anything prior to 2009. That's how it seems to me, anyhow. Maybe I'm misreading what Marty meant, but the sentence as he writes it seems to demand that Obama declare his own mission a failure on the grounds of the "kill numbers." Those numbers were in fact much greater in 2005-7, the nightmare years for Iraqi internecine warfare, so perhaps we should take note of the fact that things have improved. Or not. But I'm the wrong person to speak on this, perhaps, as I believe the "mission" itself was a mistake. I do know one thing, however, and that is that the Iraqis have to want stability and a normal society as much as we do, and preferably more. We can't want it for them.
- ironyroad
January 24, 2011 at 6:23pm
Yeah. You got me Noga. I bow before Noga's superior intellect. Even though I often agree with of what she has to say..... hey... maybe a little of that keen is rubbing off on me. Jesus. I can only hope.
- jacko
January 24, 2011 at 6:23pm
Oh man Marty is quite simply openly discussing some very virulent habits of Islamism and the sickness which prevails. He is dissatisfied with the President's rhetoric in this regard and I for one share some of his unhappiness.
- jacko
January 24, 2011 at 6:27pm
I am unhappy with people period. How many police got shot in the US this week alone? People in general? As for "the mission." Should never have happened. Regardless people in general won't stop hurting each other and other creatures. Now Russia, bomb in the airport. Enough already.
- Sophia
January 24, 2011 at 8:53pm
I think the ongoing purge by terror of Christians from their original homelands - the Copts of Egypt and the Aramaic-speaking sects in Iraq were there before any British or American missionary came along - is a tragedy that may accomplish one small positive: the inherent intolerance of Islam. Maybe Peretz is just trying to keep his mind off the prospect of a Hezbollah-led government in Lebanon by fixating on sectarian carnage elsewhere. There is nothing a continued U.S. military presence can do for Iraq - it was horrible that two U.S. soldiers were murdered by a trainee week before last. now returning to the BBC on Victorian England while preparing for the next snow shovelling expedition...and reading Harry S. Truman's memoirs. The scope of that carnage puts everything into perspective - Truman is in 1945 before Okinawa and the atomic bomb whilst trying to keep Europe from mass starvation, and a few other tasks. There is only so much that an American President can do.
- K2K
January 24, 2011 at 10:53pm
The anti-Christian terror is the capstone of centuries of Islamic harassment and genocide. Bat Ye'or and others have documented this process. At first, the conquered Christians were useful for the jizya they paid, then and later for the intermediary commercial, political, and cultural services they provided for Islamic relations with the West. Turkish sultans famously used Greek and Armenian intermediaries, including an official Dragoman (targaman), or translator. This relationship is described by Bernard Lewis in his books. Only statehood can protect a minority group in the Islamic world. That is why the Muslims have waged unrelenting war in modern times against Christian Lebanon and Jewish Israel. With Islam comes forced cultural Arabicization. They haven't been friendly to new-born South Sudan either! They can't help it. Jihad is required by Islamic doctrine.
- amidut
January 25, 2011 at 6:15am
Christians anxious to accomodate the Islamic order provided Western-style ideological fig-leafs for their rulers: Arab nationalism, socialism. If they could not be accepted as Muslims, they hoped that they could protect themselves as "Egyptians", "Palestinians", "Iraqis", "Arab Socialists", "Baathists". Now the Muslims, knowing Western languages and technologies, or able to purchase such expertise elsewhere with their petro-dollars, no longer have use for their indigenous Christians.
- amidut
January 25, 2011 at 6:25am
Another portrait of Peretz, here; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Peretz-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all provides an explanation for Marty's crush on Obama in 2008: "Peretz had an Obama crush in 2008, largely driven by his son Jesse’s enthusiasm. Obama sought his advice on Israel during the 2008 campaign. That’s all over. “I’m not sure I feel betrayed, but it’s close,” Peretz says. “Our first African-American president has done less to fight AIDS in Africa than George Bush, he’s done nothing on human rights, nothing to fight rape in Africa.” BTW, according to a "Guardian" article, here is Bush's contribution to f AIDS in Africa: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/15/georgebush.usa "The $15bn (£7.6bn) President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) is in its fifth year and has been hailed as a "revolution" that is transforming healthcare in Africa and has been praised as the most significant aid programme since the end of colonialism."
- noga1
January 25, 2011 at 9:42am
Pres. Bush's Africa initiative was a remarkable piece of imaginative and effective foreign/aid policy and I can't think of anyone who has seriously argued otherwise. I don't quite see how that supports the implication -- if it is an implication -- that Marty should not have supported Obama in 2008.
- ironyroad
January 25, 2011 at 12:56pm
No. The implication was that Marty was minimizing Bush's Africa project by suggesting that Obama "has done less to fight AIDS in Africa than George Bush". Bush's efforts on behalf of Africa are often ignored or dismissed, for one reason of another. Marty's statement was doing the same. What he seems to say is that Obama has done even less than Bush did for Africa. Marty's statement intended to denigrate Obama because everyone hates Bush and thinks badly about him and here is Obama doing even less than this nonentity. Is it really necessary to explain in detail what I meant to illustrate with my example? I guess that, like jacko, you don't have that much respect for my ability to make rational arguments.
- noga1
January 25, 2011 at 1:42pm
noga: thanks for the heads-up on the NYT profile, confirming what some of us have noticed about Peretz: "...They see the proliferation of the ultra-Orthodox and immigrants from the former Soviet Union as a threat to their way of life. “ generally, a sad profile of Peretz, to what purpose? amidut: Somaliland is a nation which is mostly muslim, but is actively denied nationhood by everyone UN, EU, AU, OIC, except Israel. Seems the territorial integrity of failed state extraordinaire Somalia is a higher priority than acknowledging what Somaliland has accomplished by separating itself. I do not know where Somaliland fits into the jigsaw puzzle of global hypocrisy. I was reading their website (trying to figure out the newest fashion of recognizing the 'magical state of palestine'), and found this entry: "Somaliland: The Israel in the Horn of Africa" http://www.sirag.org.uk/Somaliland_%20The_Israel_%20in_%20the_Horn_of_%20Africa.htm
- K2K
January 25, 2011 at 3:02pm
Noga, yes this time, as I was genuinely unsure of whether you really meant to argue the proposition that "Marty's statement intended to denigrate Obama because everyone hates Bush and thinks badly about him and here is Obama doing even less than this nonentity." This seems a little extreme. Obama has not, to the best of my knowledge, reduced or blocked Pepfar in any way. The only dispute so far is over a potential flattening out of funding over the next few years. Nor, I want to note, has Bush been "hated"; rather, he has been praised, including among liberals, for his African Aids initiative (there have been some criticisms e.g. of the snooty moralizing of the "abstinence-until-marriage" education omponent that Congress mandates). That said, the African Aids initiative is not the only thing upon which one might reasonably evaluate the eight years of the Bush presidency, and it hardly seems relevant to whether or not Marty, as a Democrat, should have supported Obama or not in 2008, any more than, say, Clinton's policy on Bosnia should have been relevant to whether a Republican voter supported Bush or not in 2000. Disclaimer: This above is not meant to counter any legitimate criticism of the Obama administration's foreign policy, including on human rights and major African issues.
- ironyroad
January 25, 2011 at 3:50pm
I'll leave Marty psychoanalysis to the more subtle writers on this blog. As is well-known, I also can't abide the ultra-orthodox, but, unlike Marty, respect the "Russians". They bring a new, more natural and realistic, perspective to supplement that of the old Ashkenazi socialist elite. K2K, Somaliland (pop. 3.5 million) probably created to help the British protect their colonial fueling station at Aden, the entrance to the Red Sea, and the trade route to India. At its location, it is near the Bab el Mandeb strait between DJibouti and Yemen, a chokepoint to both the Gulf of Aqaba and the Suez Canal. Clearly a very strategic place to the Israelis and others. If it is friendly to Israel, more civilized than the rest of Somalia, and desired by its people, then it serves a useful purpose and is legitimate.
- amidut
January 25, 2011 at 4:00pm
Who really cares about the fate of Middle East Christians and other such minor affairs when the NYTimes Magazine article that Noga so helpfully linked contains this minor earthquake item: "Multiple New Republic staff members told me that The Spine would soon be replaced by a rigorously edited weekly Peretz column." Please discuss, with particular emphasis on how this news (if it should come to pass) would be definitive evidence of the existence of God.
- wildboy
January 25, 2011 at 4:09pm
amidut: yes, one would think a functional, democratic Somaliland would be higher on the list of nations deserving diplomatic recognition. What the Saudis want, the Saudis still get :) Plus, I guess there is that general fear of the slippery slope of redrawing most post-colonial African borders. I wonder who would get the honor of "rigorously editing" a weekly Peretz column? Someone trained in martial arts AND psychotherapy? I wonder why he agreed to this NYT interview. Good thing Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt are, so far this week, stealing the spotlight from anything-Israel because he certainly is going to lose even more credibility (imho). The most positive revelation was that he has a Degas, no doubt filched from his ex-wife's family collection - although I think she is from the side that did NOT create the Clark Institute, my favorite museum.
- K2K
January 25, 2011 at 7:58pm
I'm sorry, but I'm gonna say it. It's hilarious that the man who actually did bring TNR to a larger, electronic audience can't be bothered to post one single comment (on an allegedly canceled blog) about the free world, during his true country's second most important annual politically important day. What happened Marty? Stop calling it "The Spine." Like so many of your former fans are concerned, I'll continue to think of this dialogue as an increasingly polarized, increasingly offensive, increasingly intellectually-dishonest, but always amusing blog of a formal Liberal Hero of mine -- as one who lost "The Spin"-al CNS to his increasingly irrational, negative-emotional amygdala CNS. ..An Harvard professor who is losing either his intellectual capacity and/or superego control over emotions to discuss the world outside of Muslims, Jews, Israel, and Muslim-majority countries -- and only concerns in the US related to the aforementioned... Tragic :( What about your former grand ideas unrelated to Muslims/Jews/Middle-east/Israel/Palestine/Iran, etc. et. al.. Are they no longer important enough for you to discuss with us? If so, what a shame. At least give us the gift of commenting on the President's unsatisfactorily brief mention of Sudan!!! Or the silly Republican response! Or the un-unprecedented (and wildly entertaining) "Tea Party" response!!
- RJSampson1
January 25, 2011 at 11:24pm
It's a shame that Marty focuses on "Muslims, Jews, Israel, and Muslim-majority countries -- "?? How so? You would rather Marty focused on the smarmy, petty, intra American politics? That would be more befitting a Harvard professor's interests?
- noga1
January 26, 2011 at 6:58am
as if the world needs even more analysis of SOTU. Who knew Hamas arrested 150 witches in 2010 in Gaza? http://www.hudson-ny.org/1814/bewitched-animals-muslim-media In following the link about the fatwa issued to kill the Walt Disney character "Mickey Mouse", I was reminded of the savage murder on Dec. 19 of American Christian tourist Christine Luken. (60+% of the 3.5 million tourists to Israel in 2010 were Christians.) This just reported by Israel Today: "Palestinian killers of American Christian nabbed near Hebron" January 26, 2011 | Ryan Jones "Israel on Wednesday indicted four Palestinian Arab men, two of whom confessed to the December 19 murder of American Christian tourist Kristine Luken and the attempted murder of her friend Israeli tour guide Kaye Wilson while the two women were hiking in a forest near Jerusalem. Wilson’s life was spared in the attack when she managed to fool the terrorists into believing she was already dead, after being stabbed several times in the chest and back with what appeared to be a bread knife. Luken was not so fortunate. After the terrorists left the scene, Wilson struggled to reach a nearby Israeli community, where local residents provided aid and contacted police. Police officials later said the information provided by Wilson was “crucial” to capturing the terrorists two days later on December 21 in villages outside the Judean town of Hebron. But the story didn’t end there. After nabbing the men who attacked Luken and Wilson, police discovered they were part of a 13-man group that had originally been involved in petty crime, but had in recent years turned to terrorism. The men said that after the January 2010 assassination of top Hamas operative Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai, presumably by Israel, their thoughts turned to murder. “We wanted to kill Jews,” one of the men was quoted as telling police. They missed their mark with Luken, who was an American Christian working for the Anglican Church ministry Christian Mission to the Jews (CMJ). Wilson, who is an Israeli Messianic believer in Yeshua (Jesus), also works under the auspices of the CMJ. The men confessed to killing Luken and trying to kill Wilson, to murdering a Jewish schoolteacher near the town of Beit Shemesh last February, to opening fire on Israeli army patrols in Judea and to a long string of home burglaries and car thefts in Beit Shemesh and other Israeli towns. They are also suspected of raping a Jewish woman in 2009. Eight members of the cell have so far been captured." http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/22631/Default.aspx
- K2K
January 26, 2011 at 9:32am
noga1, re: "It's a shame that Marty focuses on 'Muslims, Jews, Israel, and Muslim-majority countries' -- ??" No, it's just a shame that it's ALL that he focuses on. And K2K, you're probably right, we don't need more SOTU analysis. I just missed the multitude of SO many other issues he used to discuss, US and non-US related.. He's a great Intellectual... Just kinda miss him, I guess.
- RJSampson1
January 26, 2011 at 1:19pm